Strategic project management – Page 2

Why Good Communication is so important to project risk management.

There is a very good reason why PMs need to be good communicators – communication is vital to project success, especially on the more complex projects where team performance is highly scrutinized. Previous postings discussed some of the more critical communication items already – Priorities, Assumptions, Estimating and Planning, Change Management, and Risk Management. To… Continue reading Why Good Communication is so important to project risk management.

When Issues arise, Resist automatically Absorbing More Risk.

I have yet to have seen an example of a violation of the six constraints rule-of-thumb – whereby a change to one project constraint (Scope, Cost, Schedule, Resources, Risk or Product Quality/Technical Performance) does not impact at least one of the others (reference: PMBOK® Guide, fifth edition, p. 6). The first action we tend to… Continue reading When Issues arise, Resist automatically Absorbing More Risk.

Project Risk Management Basics under-pin the concept of Holistic Risk Management.

Whenever you are engaged in project planning you tend to follow the fundamental risk management process steps, whether you do so intentionally or in more of an ad hoc manner. You develop a plan to meet a set of objectives, and if your detailed plan is unable to satisfy all objectives you have to re-plan… Continue reading Project Risk Management Basics under-pin the concept of Holistic Risk Management.

Project Postmortems close the loop on Holistic Risk Management.

Obviously, a project postmortem will not improve the project that just ended, but it can certainly improve future projects within that organization, if conducted with integrity. Most organizations tend to want the team to wrap up the project with a retrospective assessment of what caused the good and poor outcomes. The easiest (i.e., most uncontroversial)… Continue reading Project Postmortems close the loop on Holistic Risk Management.

Parkinson’s Law versus Project Risk Management and “doing more with less”.

Parkinson’s Law 2 states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” So what does this imply? That we are either going to meet our commitments, are miss them – we are not likely to do better than the targets we set. This is obviously counter to “doing more with… Continue reading Parkinson’s Law versus Project Risk Management and “doing more with less”.