I was recently involved in a virtual discussion on the Association for Project Management (APM - UK) website around the use and differences between a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) and a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The resulting briefing docu...
Most people when faced with a painful decision such as having a leg amputated seek a valid second opinion! Sitting for the PMP exam is no different – regardless of whose course you have completed testing your knowledge against a different set of rep...
Project controls processes and project reports are full of numbers and calculations and one would think that most project stakeholders, particularly senior managers, would see and understand the numbers in the same way. Unfortunately resent research...
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2453:]]Depending on the context this could be a compliment or an insult. During the second world war the Nazi’s used local government leaders to help them impose their brutal regime on conquered countries. The most infamous of t...
Projects are routinely finishing late. Whilst many have no effective schedule controls a significant proportion do outlay significant amounts of money on scheduling software and people to operate the computer systems and still finish late. The simpl...
Breakdown structures are central to the practice of project management and have their origins in the industrial revolution. In the ‘Wealth of Nations’ Smith advocated breaking the production of goods into tiny tasks that can be undertaken by people ...
Complexity is not a synonym for complicated or large is just one of the dimensions inherent in every project. The four basic dimensions of a project[1] are:Its inherent size usually measured in terms of value; The degree of technical difficulty in c...
Some organisations perform consistently well, others don’t! This statement is true of all aspects of an organisation’s performance including its ability to manage projects and programs effectively. Consistent high performance in the creation of valu...
One of the hardest things to do is to stop wasting money and resources on a losing proposition, emotions, biases and focusing on simple but irrelevant measures can all lead to bad decisions. A proper consideration of ‘sunk costs’ can help eliminate ...
What if you have carefully planned a project, and skillfully designed its construction, but your contractor does not have the capability to perform the work in a quality manner? That is a risk to your project. The PMI diagram only used to refer to th...
The odd one outIf you regularly drive to work, you’ll probably be all too familiar with roadworks. From your experience, which of the pictures below seems unusual?[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2348:]] Picture 3? It’s rare to see activity. From my car window,...
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:2364:]]This is part blogs series about Portfolio Management, the discipline of managing which projects you do and which you don't.So far we have observed that:Most organisations have a portfolio of projects that is profiled by ...
The way PMI deals with risk in the PMBOK® Guide is simplistic. Calculating the effect of one risk using the suggested probability x severity calculation provides one value. For example, if there is an 20% probability an estimate is under valued by $...
Project failure rates have remained steady for at least the last 30 years. Books’ Law was published in 1975[1], Cobbs Paradox was coined in 1995[2], project training and certifications have increased exponentially in the last decade, but projects are...
As planners we use numbers every day of the week but how real are they?In the western world, numbers in the form we know and use today appeared in the 13th century when Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (c. 1170 – c. 1250), known as Fibonacci an Italian mathem...
In 2014, the enterprise software for operating systems across the desktops of a large Aerospace & Defense company was being upgraded from XP to Windows 7. While the upgrade was beneficial from a company-wide technology perspective, it effectively ma...
It was almost midnight. Our 3-hour trip from Budapest through Frankfurt to Milan was now a 10-hour adventure. Our bags were coming off the luggage carousel completely soaked. My eyes were dry and uncomfortable. And, I realized I ignored the funda...