Fast-tracking means scheduling tasks in parallel when possible. Crashing is adding people or spending money to complete work earlier. Don’t be overly ambitious with these techniques. Here are some dos and don’ts for fast-tracking and crashing: Do look for opportunities to fast-track or crash. These strategies can shorten the schedule, but also add risk — […]
Agile methodologies accommodate change easily, which is why they’re called -er- agile! However, some things don’t change. Here’s an overview of what you can and can’t change with agile: Priority. Each sprint includes a review and re-prioritization of the functional backlog, so you can change priority before each sprint. Prioritization of items commonly occurs as […]
Dedicated project team members might appear expensive, but they provide significant benefits, which might reduce your project costs: Focused responsibilities. Dedicated people aren’t distracted by day-to-day operational issues. They can fully examine the project deliverables and understand how the project is proceeding so they can deliver what’s best for the project. You get better outcomes […]
The pessimism of Eeyore, the gloomy donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh, would make him an uninspiring project manager. But unchecked optimism isn’t good either—you come off as unrealistic. Here are some tips for achieving the balance of constructive optimism: Complement optimism with risk management. Balance your optimism with constructive risk discussions. Openly surface issues and the response […]
There are hundreds of things you can do as a project manager to deliver a project. How do you prioritize what’s on your project management to-do list? Here are tips from the pros: Let the environment guide you. Monitor your project environment and respond to concerns that arise. Things change day to day in a […]
You manage your project schedule by focusing on the critical path. But don’t stop there! Project time management requires examination of other items. Here are things to check to proactively manage your schedule: Examine “near critical paths.”A path with a small amount of slack means you have a near critical path. These tasks with very […]
It’s irresponsible to promote early estimates as being accurate. Early on, there are too many unknowns. A responsible approach focuses on communicating our estimates as gradually more accurate. Here’s what you can do to produce responsible estimates. Label your estimates. An estimate without a label implies the value is accurate. Label your estimates to […]
Each task has a start and finish, so there are four types of task dependencies: finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and start-to-finish. In most projects, most (90% or more) dependencies are finish-to-start (FS). When one task finishes, it triggers the start of the next, like when cooking dinner is finished, eating dinner begins (assuming you don’t sneak […]
Bob McGannon and I talk about whether a project manager can have too much authority. We also talk about what to do to make sure everyone understands the authority the project manager does have.
Tracking project progress is part of a project manager’s job. Gantt charts aren’t always the best way to report progress–they provide too much detail for busy leaders. Using milestone charts are better for reporting progress. Here are my recommendations. In your project schedule, create at least 2 milestones per reporting period. Capture dates the milestones […]
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