By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on March 2, 2015
A few weeks ago we held a course on Project Management Fundamentals. Every student introduced themselves; they were all seasoned professionals with 7 years of experience or more in their field. Justine worked for a manufacturing company. Kumar was a software developer. Ann deployed projects for a Cable TV provider. Carlos was a construction manager. […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on June 29, 2014
Quite a few customers are jumping on the ‘Agile’ bandwagon these days, choosing an Agile methodology for specific projects, or for repetitive releases of their product. A challenge they are facing is how to manage and report Agile projects when the processes and templates provided by their PMO have been developed for Waterfall projects. And […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on February 22, 2014
In this ever shrinking business world, it is not uncommon to deploy a project with colleagues from different countries, with cultures different from our own. We can even implement a project in our own country and easily have stakeholders, say, from India, China, Mexico, Canada. Each one will bring different points of view, dependent on […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on January 7, 2014
As inevitably happens at the beginning of a new year, with all the thoughts about resolutions, a few colleagues and acquaintances have been examining their jobs and careers. Some are considering entirely new fields, like the lady who is considering leaving her IT job to open a hip Bakery because bread has always been her […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on September 17, 2012
Time tracking. Invoicing. Success metrics. Key Contacts. Managing a project can become overwhelming quickly. And the tools we use to track these aspects of projects can quickly become too time-consuming. That inclination project managers have to track any critical or risky component requires moderation and thought. As we know, with the addition of every tracker […]
By Carter McNamara on April 4, 2012
Guest post from Alexander Mitnikov. Where does a typical software vendor come from? IT-companies from the USA, the UK, Canada, India and Germany have a substantial representation in the market. However, in search for a suitable project management tool for instance one might bump into some extraordinary countries. Serbian business tool, software from Denmark, Latvian […]
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on September 20, 2011
When I started my working life, at IBM, years went by before I had any sub-contractors as part of my project team. We could handle just about every request with in-house skills. Alas, almost 20 years later those days are gone, and the opposite has become the norm. It is nigh on impossible to deploy […]
By Patrick d'Astous on May 4, 2011
Supporters of project management templates will try to tell you this is the only way to ensure best practices are embedded in project planning. While templates provide some form of guidelines that ensures information completeness, they have their limitations and drawbacks.
By Alicia Trelles-Duckett on April 14, 2011
Your next project involves implementations here as well as in other countries. Are congratulations in order? Or are condolences more appropriate? No doubt installations in other geographies come with their own inherent set of challenges. Currency fluctuations; centralized versus local procurement; languages; time zones. And those are even before considering difficulties due to the particular […]
By Patrick d'Astous on March 3, 2011
I wrote recently about the difference between senior and junior project managers in terms of decision making. More specifically, I argued that while senior managers focused on potential project difficulties, junior managers were more easily swayed by their project’s plan and its deficiencies. Spotting problem with your plan and being able to foresee difficulties are […]
