PMcrunch

Project Management, Six Sigma, Business Analysis, and ITIL all provide domain frameworks, all have associated business certifications, all live largely in the ‘business’ versus technical realm, and all have a strong process orientation. But what does that mean to business professionals and organizations? Here are some thoughts on implications based upon the ITIL framework.

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What do Six Sigma, ITIL, and Project Management have in common? These three disciplines all have associated business certifications, living largely in the ‘business’ versus technical realm, and all relate in some way to processes. But how can these disciplines relate to one another in such a way that greater value is created for the individual as well as the organization?

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On our projects, and in our programs and project portfolios, we often struggle with how to make changes.  From my own personal experience, the most challenging part of change management has always been the area of making incremental changes versus making wholesale major changes.  Let’s take a look. 

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As a program or project manager, one must keep an eye on both the near term and long term.  Today, under tough economic conditions, we typically turn to more near-term thinking because the focus needs to be first on survival before considering future plans.  We need to be careful however to not take this near-term thinking too [...]

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Using project management templates is a great way to improve project performance rapidly. In addition, implementing proven project management methodologies and processes can also improve performance and deliver better results. Here is a look at a couple of low cost possibilities that project managers can deploy rapidly.

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Looking at lessons learned from the current economic crisis, one that stands out pertains to how people are incentivized in business. Banks with risky loan portfolios somewhere along the line had incentivized their people to fill their portofolios with these loans. Somewhere along the line, the incentives did not incorporate some of the risks involved. How does this play out in project and program management?

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I just completed a great book that was so stimulating, thought-provoking, and inspiring that I had to write about it here.  By the way, it does apply totally to the project management field.  But it also applies to all of life, as it is a great story of life.  Greg Mortenson has taken on life [...]

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Any project portfolio is likely to have a high degree of synergy among various projects. This is especially true of a portfolio of projects that make up a particular program. The challenge is how to best realize these synergies and to derive true value from them.

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Two methods of capital budgeting often used on project and in project portfolio management are internal rate of return(IRR) and net present value(NPV). They are close cousins but take a little bit of a different look at the value of a project. They are both time based and bothrelayed to cash flows over time on a project.

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Organizations of all sizes have been taking a much closer look at their project portfolios in these tough times. One of the bigger questions is “where does innovation fit in in the portfolio?” There are some interesting ideas around this and organizations must reckon with the fact that decisions about innovation could very well set the stage for the future of the company. At the same time, we must reckon with the fact that, in order to reach a future, we must be financially sound through the crisis. I have been thinking a bit about the relationship between innovation and portfolio management in tough times.

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