(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
Guys,
Here's what we see as the hot topics for project management in 2012 http://bit.ly/wyH5am
I know they would vary by industry, but overall, these are the one we see. Let me know what you think your hot topics are.
Emily
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Hi Emily
Don't you just love it when your thread gets hijacked.
Best regards
Mike Testro
Hi Steve
The England Pakistan test is in Dubai - just up the road from my appartment - and the last I saw Pakistan were not crowing too much.
Much respect
Mike Testro
Aren't you nice! Under the circumstances, I won't mention the Test match in Pakistan... ;-)
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Attaboy Steve.
I like most of these, Emily. But this one perplexes me: "4. Leadership buy-in is required for Agile."
Leadership is what is required to make Agile no longer necessary! Personally, I'd like to see Agile be rendered increasingly rare and ultimately be relegated to the dustbin of PM history.
Agile is a risk mitigation technique, quite valuable when requirements have not been established sufficiently clearly, especially if other project planning has been performed in an alf-hassed way (or not at all!). But, like almost all risk mitigation startegies, there are costs to Agile: more scope changes, re-work, time and money than if the effort had been made to define the entirety of the requirements properly in the first place.
Agile is like tacking a sailboat across a lake -- if you're fighting the wind in your face the whole way, it may be the only way to get there, but it can take a LOT longer. And time is money on a project!
Agile, of course, is most popular in informations systems development projects, which is the least mature of all project management applications (especially, alas, healthcare IS!). As a result, customers/users are ignorant/undisciplined in applying PM rigor, and PM teams have to mitigate risk in order to survive.
But attempts to apply Agile in mature industries are absurd: "Okay, go ahead and dig the foundation. After that, we'll discuss how big the footprint is and how many floors."
Leadership of PM at the executive level is definitely required -- to demand rigor in PM methods including requirements definition, scheduling, and value generation and monitoring. If value generation were adequately monitored in IS projects (which it's not), the difference between Agile and traditional PM tools would be stark.
I wonder if, when building their own homes, Agile gurus say to the contractor: "Let's not bother with architects or planning -- let's just start, see what we can do, then figure out where we go from there."
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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