July 2010 PM Survey – The Project Schedule

It’s hard to believe it’s July already, but a new month means it’s time for a new survey.  This month, I’d like to get a feel for what we use for project scheduling and how we use it.

The survey is available now through late July at this address:

www.bradegeland.com/july-2010-survey.html

So, for question #1 – I want to know what tool you’re using.  There are a lot of tools out there so I’m just looking for the name.  You don’t have to tell me if it’s web-based or not – I think we’ll get into more of that in the next month or so.

Questions #2 & #3 – let the readers know how close to the vest you keep the project schedule.  Does just the project manager revise and distribute the schedule?  Is it a collaborative effort with the project team – do you let others go in and revise task status on percent completes and effort estimates?  And do you let the customer do anything but look at it?  Are there ever any projects where you allow update capability for the customer?  I’m assuming this is probably almost never, but who knows.

Question #4 – Do you use the project schedule to actually track project costs?  Are the hourly rates of the project resources and costs for materials entered into the project schedule or do you track project costs through a different mechanism?

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What Effective Collaboration Is Not…

Within a good project management system and process, you and your business should have outlined a team collaboration plan and seen collaboration tools and features to bring you closer together. These collaboration features can include anything from wikis for internal collaborative work development to online discussions and forums to hold and save on-going conversations around a specific topic.

But there are practices that are either confused with good team collaboration or reverted back to when collaboration proves “too difficult”. These just aren’t effective at bringing a team together to produce a quality outcome. Read more »

June PM Survey: Managing the Project – Part 2

Part 2 of the June PM survey is now available.  This 2^nd part of the monthly survey again deals with concepts associated with the ongoing management of the project.

The survey is now active and ready for your participation at:

http://www.bradegeland.com/june-survey-part-2.html

In this 2^nd part of the survey, we’ll be looking at the following topics:

Definition of project success

For this question, I’m looking for how either you or your organization primarily defines project success.  Is it on time project delivery, on budget project delivery, or customer satisfaction?  And for those of you who feel it’s something other than those three options, there is a write-in ‘other’ response area available.

Percentage of successful projects delivered

This one will definitely a best-guess scenario because I doubt that anyone has compiled hard numbers on this plus it’s somewhat subjective as to what one would call a ‘successful’ project.  I’m trying to get an idea of where our readership stands in regards to successful vs. failed projects.  Recent studies – as I’ve reported here in recent articles – place the percentage of failed projects between 62% and 75%.  It will be interesting to see where PM Tips readers fall in that spectrum.

Percentage of project revenue from change orders

Change orders are always a love – hate thing.  For the PM and team, they are a great way to increase project revenue and executive management loves them.  However, it’s often difficult and even uncomfortable for the project manager to present the customer with change orders – unless they are the result of direct customer requests.  Also, change orders are a necessary tool to bridge the gap between the originally defined requirements and what reality fleshes out over the course of the engagement.

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How Does The Holy Trinity Affect Project Management?

Early in May, Dan Pontefract of TrainingWreck wrote the post “The Holy Trinity: Leadership Framework, Learning 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0.” In this post, he discussed how different teams within organizations are thinking and acting in completely different ways when it comes to social media, social networking and utilizing these techniques within the enterprise. He suggests that when all business teams come together and agree on learning the best social tools to network internally, as well as take leadership in their organization, they will create a successful culture of collaboration.

The culture of collaboration is the result of the Holy Culture Trinity (updated leadership framework, learning 2.0 and enterprise 2.0) which is a more thoughtful way of ensuring organizational success.

For me, effective collaboration is going to be a huge factor in determining the success of the business and the business team. And team collaboration fits in so well with project management practices that they can be thought of as one overall effective approach for improving the team as a whole. Read more »

When Collaboration Isn’t Enough

With all the communication about business team collaboration lately, we are hearing a lot about the benefits. By integrating collaboration processes, practices and solutions in your business, you’ll be able to work better together to produce a quality product.

But sometimes collaboration isn’t enough. It isn’t good enough to just talk about what you’re going to do, nor is it good enough to plan on working together in one area and then do the work in a vacuum somewhere else.

Here are a few common instances when utilizing a collaboration solution just isn’t enough, and how to integrate the collaboration solution as needed. Read more »