PMcrunch

Project reporting is very important because it enables us to keep our stake holders informed as to the project progress, decisions, achievements, and issues. However, often reporting is done around a certain specific format that you as a project manager, or your stakeholders, may find to fall short of the information needed – or worse, provide a lot of extraneous information that does not add value. It is important to capture the essence of project objectives and map them to the reporting routine.

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The Student Syndrome is something that we all have experienced one way or another. It is evident that most of us tend to do at least to some degree of cramming for exams, completing papers, completing projects, doing problem sets and more. The student syndrome is based on our human tendency. For example, the student syndrome is demonstrated where, if we have 25 days to do an assignment, we put off most of the work until the final days or hours before it is due!

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Rolling wave planning is the process of planning for a project in waves as the project becomes clearer and unfolds. It is important in such projects to at least highlight in the initial plan the key milestones for the project.

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When it comes to press releases, there’s not much difference between creating one for newspapers or magazines, or for the World Wide Web. What’s important is that you are able to maintain all of the important elements that should be present in an advertising copy. But more important is that the release is, in some way, newsworthy.

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Edmund Hillary, of Auckland , New Zealand, , died on January 11,2008. On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, he and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first humans to climb Mount Everest. This hit me especially because I have always had a great interest and enthusiasm for the outdoors, and I just finished reading a great book about the climbing of Mount Everest. What makes Hillary’s death even more interesting for PMcrunch is that he was in practice actually a great project manager!

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Basecamp represents terrific “project management tools for the masses”. It is lighter weight, purely web-based, hosted, and oriented to smaller users who would benefit by connecting over the web. It is “everyman’s project management software” – but without being software at all.

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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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How do we define risks on projects? How do we control risks to ensure successful outcomes? These are some interesting risk management questions. Based on some current experience coordinating risk across scores of major defense programs, here are 5 key items that can be considered in a ‘closed loop’ risk management program.

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