One of the biggest issues I see with projects is an overly optimistic assessment of progress. Typically progress is judged by counting deliverables as part of an earned value calculation. Unfortunately deliverables are only one indication of progress and not that reliable. All to often as a project nears completion...
In my recent post on Common Ground I mentioned the critical role that a thorough understanding of scope has on establishing common ground for any project or service team. Given the criticality and the relatively low cost of defining scope you’d think that every project would do an exceptional job...
Driving home from Cambridge Steph and I were discussing teams and so I got to explain my favourite tool for establishing effective collaboration, building ‘common ground’. It’s an incredibly simple concept, but that simplicity makes it powerful. The basic idea: The more complex a collaboration, the more areas of common...
This morning I woke up feeling great, full of the joys of spring and ready to walk and garden. Unfortunately by about 11am I had searing pain through my left leg and right arm. Luckily I’m used to this sort of complexity in my life, which I’ve designed to be...
I’ve long known that a significant number of projects fail and that even more don’t succeed and I’ve read plenty of books that try to dig into why. Oft cited are poor requirements, poor customer engagement etc but I liked this snipit that seems to sum up my experience: The...
(updated with a link to Michael’s post that works!) Michael argues that we hide behind the need for culture change on many collaboration projects, his key point is illustrated by this example: if a team can run a project in email then they can run one in a collaboration tool....
A long time ago now I read the Mythical Man Month, and I remember two things from it: On a large activity conceptual integrity is really difficult to achieve and maintain In the sixties IBM seemed to do a better job at managing large development programmes than we do now...
I have been worrying for a long time about how to improve the benefits delivery from investments in desktop, office and collaborative systems and it’s always bothered me how little attention Microsoft has invested in the problem until now! They have come up with a tool called the Enterprise Learning Framework,...
Yesterday I posted some of my own ideas on improving product management. Today I thought I would share a few of the better articles I have read on the topic, and contrast them to my own ideas. First up Kathy Sierra has a post on leveraging the community to to...
This is part 1 – part 2 (to be published soon) looks at some recent articles I have seen that support this approach In one of my day jobs I get involved with product management and I often find that bridging the gap between our limited investment budget and the...