Author: Project Management Planet

Root Cause Analysis for Software Project Managers

Risk management and reduction is an important activity for the project manager. Accidents will always happen and corrective action is then needed to deal with issues encountered during projects. Unfortunately, actions taken to resolve a problem often only address the problem itself, not its underlying causes.

Self-Inflicted Scope Creep

Self-inflicted scope creep happens when a team increases the scope of their project without their customers actually asking for anything new. It’s painful to watch because it can mess up your plan, create fear and anxiety, and undermine the trust you’ve worked hard to gain with your client. This explains...

What’s Wrong With Agile Methods

Current agile methods could benefit from using a more quantified approach across the entire implementation process :t development, production and delivery. The main benefits of adopting such an approach include improved communication of the requirements and better support for tracking progress and getting feedback. This article first discusses the benefits...

Effective Teamwork

This video discusses issues and solutions for team collaboration in an interdisciplinary context.

Lean Principles and IT Demand Management

This article explains how, given the current global economic climate, many IT organizations’ frozen budgets and cost-cutting drive down value-adding and innovative IT initiatives. It describes how Lean principles can help to institutionalize IT Demand Management processes in the correct manner so that it reduces investment risk, optimizes resource utilization...

Transforming to Agile PMO

This video shares some key ‘waste’ areas within organizations and some ideas for how the PMO can focus their efforts on addressing these areas with special attention on limiting the number of projects in execution at one time.

Metrics for Better Software Teams

The article “Moneyball for software engineering” explains how metrics-driven decisions can build better software teams. The basic idea is that organizations can use statistical data to build more competitive teams. Most of us work in software project teams, but we rarely use metrics to identify strengths and weaknesses, set and...

Agile Planning Benefits

One of the most common myths is to believe that being “Agile” means avoiding planning. This myth couldn’t be further from the truth and people use it as a way to avoid agile practices. Agile planning does not mean “no planning” but rather a flexible plan that changes with the...