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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I say, a resounding YES to the question “Is a political campaign a project?”. Why? Well, a political campaign has a distinctive beginning and end, and in between there is a lot of planning, a great deal of execution, and a great deal of monitoring and controlling. And of course there is a closing – usually with lots of lessons learned. Let us look a bit at these elements.

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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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Developing a network diagram is an effective tool in the project planning process. It enables you to think through the relationships among the tasks and deliverables developed at a high level in the project charter, or at a much more detailed level in the Work Breakdown Schedule.

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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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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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