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The following is an excerpt from the book Practitioner's Guide to Requirements Management, Part I: Requirements Planning written by the authors.
Overview
Requirements management, like project management, is a discipline comprised of inputs and outputs, tools, and techniques, processes and activities, but just for the business analysis effort. Requirements management includes the planning, monitoring, analyzing, communicating, and managing of those requirements. Get a quick introduction or refresher on this important topic.How Bad Project Managers are Killing the Profession
Written by Jim Hannon
I often sit in meetings and either being the PM or the development manager I see eyes roll when you discuss project management. This response is sometimes baffling and also is somewhat warranted in certain cases. In this article I will attempt to lay the groundwork on why there is an internal destruction of the project management profession by some of it own members and what we can do about it.
The Case Against Project Portfolio Management
Written by Vilmos Rajda
Until recently I belonged to the wide-eyed crowd who was excited about the prospects of project management’s new silver bullet: Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software. Hordes of slick sales people from various PPM software vendors, will talk to you about the infinite value of applying their solutions. They will show you rainbow coloured bubble charts, black belt project prioritization features and six sigma resource management functionality. If you are not convinced by the end of their demo, then you probably do not own a cell phone that can make French toast (i.e. living in a cave), or you are a project neophyte who is just not getting it.
Managing a Virtual Project Team
Written by Gary Hamilton, Jeff Hodgkinson, Gareth ByattLet’s face it; virtual teams (where we work with colleagues in remote locations, be they close by or in different countries) are now a reality in the workplace. If this trend in the workplace environment continues, virtual working will increasingly influence the way we operate, and the ‘effective virtual team worker’ will be a valued asset. A key benefit to forming virtual teams is the ability to cost-effectively tap into a wide pool of talent from various locations. There are several definitions of the virtual team worker, but within the context of this article, we are talking about people who work on project teams and who display the following attributes:
It is with deep sadness that we inform you that Ollan Delany, our long-time friend and dedicated editor of ProjectTimes and BA Times, passed away on Sunday of colon cancer. Ollan was 68.
Ollan was an easy going and happy person who excelled in the Publishing industry. He was integral in developing content since the inception of both ProjectTimes and BA Times.
Ollan developed outstanding relationships with many key thought leaders in the PM and BA community and is a big reason for our success in presenting, the larger PM & BA Community, with timely and relevant content.
Ollan joined our ProjectTimes team within the first two years of publication (1998). He knew nothing about project management but everything about the English language and the written word. It took him very little time to figure us out and in turn became indispensible to us.
If you are interested in making a donation to The Cancer Society in Memoriam of Ollan, you can do so HERE.
Our deepest condolences to Ollan's family. Farewell dear friend. We miss you already.
Terms, Terms, Terms. Clarifying Some Business Analysis and Project Management Terms
Written by Elizabeth Larson & Richard LarsonIn order to clarify some basic concepts of business analysis and project management, we need to distinguish between terms that seem similar but are not. Below are some foundational terms and distinctions.
1. Project Management focuses on the work and methods to create new products. The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide - Fourth Edition) defines project management as "the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements."[1]
What Project Managers can Learn from Baseball
Written by Brenda HallmanIt may seem like a stretch to associate project management with baseball, especially when just giving it a passing thought. However, a good baseball coach would likely share that if you are going to ‘play’ the game in a position that provides a nice correlation to what a project manager must carry out during the course of a project, it would be as a catcher. This position requires a comprehensive understanding of the game's strategic elements and is crucial to the real-time action occurring during the course of a game.
Solving Challenged Enterprise Project Environments
Written by Chris Vandersluis
“So, what were you trying to accomplish here?”
It’s a common question that I’ve had to ask of many project management office managers. Because of my background in enterprise project management systems, this mostly happens in response to some request to review a problem with a project management system implementation. Over the years I’ve been called upon to try to fix, repair, re-establish or just replace a failed or problematic project management system and my approach is always the same:
Calculating Total Cost of Ownership when Choosing a Solution
Written by Curt Finch
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate that helps consumers and enterprise managers determine direct and indirect costs of a product or system. TCO goes beyond the initial purchase price or implementation cost to consider the full cost of an asset over its useful life. A TCO analysis often shows there can be a large difference between the price of something and its long term cost.
Four Steps to Value Improvement
In today’s economy, every company and organization is struggling to do more with less, and performance is paramount. This is true for public and private sector entities, as well as for non-profits. Which is why, in order to prevail in lean times, it’s essential to optimize every operation of your organization, especially the project management office (PMO).
It should be readily apparent that no organization will succeed if its projects are not managed effectively—on time, within budget, and delivering stated business outcomes for clients, whether they are internal or external. Your PMO should be an integral component in your organization’s project management practice, and should be delivering results that are critical to business and mission success. Accordingly, a careful analysis of the “state of current practice” of your PMO is extremely valuable in identifying areas for improvement and in ensuring that you’re delivering the highest level of value expected.