PMcrunch

Taxonomy refers to the categorization or breakdown to more clearly defined entities that can make an overall grouping of knowledge more understandable while there are many precise definitions for taxonomy, this should suffice for this particular discussion. The question is what taxonomy means to the project manager.

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Building the Work Breakdown Schedule is a lot of good hard project management work. While it is fundamental to the practice of professional project management, often it is soft skills – including plain old determination and leadership – that in the end produce a strong WBS.

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The TenStep set of free templates are helpful as a very basis step to structured management of your project, and the most helpful piece was the Project Charter. Given my use in framing a relatively small project, I would also say that it has limited use for larger projects, but is still of value as a first cut for any project. That being said, my breakdown was framing a larger project into a smaller, shorter term project that would define the larder project. This could be a great way for others to use the product.

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There are some key factors that must be in place in order to put Earned Value Management into practice. These ‘key factors’ are all good project management practices. Indeed, part of the benefit of practicing earned value management is the disciplined process that earned value demands up front! In other words, you cannot implement earned value management without practicing good project management!

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Outsourcing, in the project management world, starts with the Work Breakdown Schedule (WBS). After all, how would you know what to consider outsourcing without knowing what needs to be done, in detail?

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Earned value reporting is a powerful project management technique. It applies, one way or another, to ALL projects, large and small. What is important is to understand the concept, then adapting the application of the concept to an appropriate level that is effective for your projects.

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Business process modeling is closely related to project management. While projects are one time events – with a well-defined beginning and end – processes are continuous. However, even with these definitions, the world is not so black and white. We have processes for projects, and repetitive processes often are projects. Through the use of examples, here are some ideas on thinking aobut projects and processes to drive efficiency.

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Scrum or Agile is a hot methodology now, but I think there are a number of things to consider before “replacing” current methodologies with scrum/agile. Here are 6 key points to consider to build a good marriage between management and technology.

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There would seem to be a mismatch between these two approaches – but then again, maybe not. It depends, I think, on how it is handled from a management perspective, and it could be a great experiment! It seems that the answer could lie in the Work Breakdown Structure.

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I am dealing with a problemrelated to project portfolio management and web services that I think many others are dealing with today:  "How do you manage project, program, and project portfolio quality in a world with a growing presence of web services?" The problem – specifically in a large environment involving many different projects and programs [...]

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