A project war room used to make sense especially if you are managing a complex project. Having a central place to hold project team meetings, brief stakeholders, and analyze data that helps you to control the project was needed as late as the early 90s. However, as with many other management methods, the rise ofRead… Read more »
“Ninety percent of a project manager’s work is communication.” You have probably seen this commonly quoted statistic but what you don’t see is a statistic that tells you how much of the 90% is devoted to listening. Why is that important? Because, poor communication is at least one of the three causes for failed projects.Read… Read more »
For the last few years, I have been working with a colleague on developing a new theory of project management. We argue that the project manager is not a manager in the traditional sense but a blending of manager and leader. This has been written about before by other project management scholars but I believeRead… Read more »
The graph below demonstrates something that every LEGO enthusiast quickly realizes: the more pieces in a set, the greater the number of different types of pieces. The same principle applies to projects: the more tasks needed to create the project product, the greater the variety of tasks. This is the first reason why projects canRead… Read more »
“Folks, I have some good news and I have some bad news” the pilot announced. “We have landed in Atlanta way early, but there is a plane at our gate and it will be about 20 minutes before they move.” Throughout the plane you could hear the moans and comments about the airline’s inability toRead… Read more »
Thanks to increasingly powerful networking and mobile devices, the idea of cloud is going mainstream. In the federal government, CIO Vivek Kundra last month compiled a list of 78 cloud computing initiatives agencies had identified. But analysis of the list shows that the 19 departments or agencies who reported cloud projects are taking a decidelyRead… Read more »
Today marks the first day of Advanced Distributed Learning’s (ADL’s) Future Learning Experience Project, a major new effort from ADL that returns our organization to its roots in Applied Research & Development in the learning technology space.For those unfamiliar with what ADL is, it is an initiative out of the Office of the Secretary ofRead… Read more »
Cross posted from my website: Streetsblog-Capitol Hill’s Elena Schor posted an interesting analysis a report titled Projects and Paychecks: a One Year Report on State Transportation Successes under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (and a website), released yesterday by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the trade group representing stateRead… Read more »
by Sophicity Is technology a part of your city’s long term vision? If not, it should be. While most cities have long term plans for economic development or infrastructure improvement, the prevailing thinking is that IT planning only covers short-term immediate needs that don’t go beyond the next budget cycle. However, such planning is reactionaryRead… Read more »
by Sophicity Every new budget cycle brings a bevy of projects and ideas before city council for approval. While projects like sidewalk improvement or traffic decongestion are easy to explain in terms of benefits and return on investment, IT projects can be a thorny subject, especially if the council is largely made up of non-technicalRead… Read more »