The ICPM is a collaborative online project management community providing resources and networking opportunities for project managers worldwide. Membership is Free. Join today www.theicpm.com http://www.theicpm.com Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:19:15 +0000 Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Management en-gb http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/M1cJoGMzQvQ/4659-maxs-pm-wisdom http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4659-maxs-pm-wisdom June 2012 - This month is the official launch of the Wideman Comparative Glossary of Project Management Terms version 5.5. We discuss the issue of Using the Right Vocabulary in our Musings this month and the list of new definitions in the Glossary are listed in its Appendix A. This new version of the Glossary is available at a reduced price.Our Guest, Dennis Bolles explains the need for Creating a Sustainable Project Business Management Office (PBMO) in Part 1 of his paper. The PMBO's purpose is to ensure that appropriate and specific tactics are identified and incorporated so that only the right projects are performed and initiated at the right time. The PMBO must also ensure that these projects receive the resources and management support necessary to be completed successfully. In our A Trilogy of Books on Project Management we follow up with Book 3 - Value-Driven Project Management, advice clearly intended for members of the project management community intent upon becoming more business oriented. In our Project Management 101 course we've added Lesson 4: Planning and Organizing the Work.]]> Blogs Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:26:36 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4659-maxs-pm-wisdom http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/K-dE_d6wf4g/4658-7-lessons-learned-from-the-pmp-exam http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4658-7-lessons-learned-from-the-pmp-exam Everyone has different ways of studying for the Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification. You may carry the PMBOK® Guide around with you, or use flashcards. You may join your local Project Management Institute (PMI)® Chapter and study in a group. Whatever your study path, someone has been there before you. While everyone has a slightly different story to tell, there are some things that make a big difference to your chances of success with the PMP Exam. Luckily, exam candidates are very happy to share their stories and lessons learned with you. We have reviewed and analyzed a number of lessons learned from the PMP Exam that successful exam takers have posted on our website. Here are our top 7 lessons learned.1: Make a plan“I had a plan laid out and had to rebaseline it twice but it helps to view where you are and align it once every 2-3 days,” says one student on our forum. Create a plan in a format that works for you and stick to it. It’s OK if it changes every so often, but having a plan will allow you to assess if you are on track with your studies. And you can take corrective action if you are not.2: Read the PMBOK® GuideYou might think this is obvious, but it really does help to have a copy of the PMBOK Guide. “Get a copy of the current edition and read it twice,” recommends one successful student. “The first time highlight the important parts and the second time make flashcards of those highlights. Doing the flash cards will help get the information into your head.” You can then go through your flashcards daily to remind yourself of the key points in the PMBOK® Guide. “It is also a good reference,” the new PMP adds. “Go through the glossary twice… you will notice a few interesting definitions like Elapsed Time and Duration.”The PMBOK® Guide is the basis for the majority of the questions in the exam, so you really do have to know the concepts and the terminology thoroughly.3: Take sample examsSeveral successful students recommend taking full PMP exams. “The use of full exams besides learning is to get to a discipline in taking the 4 hour exam,” one explains. “If you build on your mistakes, analyze why you are wrong, the final exam will be much easier. I also advise you to mark those answers which you guess, as next time you may guess wrong!”Note what you got wrong in your sample exams. “You should try to understand why you answered incorrectly,” recommends another successful candidate. “I made a list of some categories such as ‘ITTO knowledge’, ‘Concept not understood’, ‘Question misunderstood’.” Taking sample exams will help you establish where you need to concentrate your remaining study hours by flagging up the areas that you don’t fully understand.4: Make the most of your study timeOne exam taker explains how they found extra hours in the day to study. “Commuting to my work and back…]]> Blogs Thu, 24 May 2012 05:52:39 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4658-7-lessons-learned-from-the-pmp-exam http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/vwKWHCYhpNs/4657-5-ways-people-in-your-team-will-whine-about-tracking-time http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4657-5-ways-people-in-your-team-will-whine-about-tracking-time My company sells employee time tracking software that automates client billing, project accounting and payroll. We have implemented these systems for customers repeatedly where the employees previously were unaccustomed to accounting for their time. Occasionally this has generated some intense emotions. Some people really don't want to track their time even when their managers are very firm. Why is this? Why do people find tracking time so unpleasant, or even maddening? And how about you?  Do you like entering data into forms?  Why or why not?  Is tracking time any worse than filling out other forms?  My experience has shown that it often is for several reasons. Reason One: Reporting time can threaten status. For salaried people, especially if they’ve been employed earlier in their life in an hourly "time clock" environment, reporting time can make them feel demoted. Conventional wisdom (that I disagree with) is that "professional" people are more trustworthy and less in need of supervision than "blue collar" people. Reason Two: "What if I find out that I don't work as much as I like to think?" Some people, often the most productive people, garner self-esteem from the large number of hours they work. But sometimes they're not sure if they believe their own braggadocio and the thought of finding out the truth is scary. Reason Three: Time is an imperfect metric for effort or productivity. Knowledge workers know that managers, who have the power to reward some people over others, often forget the vague and aggregated metrics of real productivity in favor of some simple numbers that are tangible, like time records. Managers may take the easy path of rewarding based on time spent rather than develop more subtle and appropriate metrics of real productivity. (Hint: don't do this) Reason Four: "I'm too busy" The most responsible and busy employees - the most productive ones whose time is in highest demand - will, sooner or later, always have to stop doing the primary mission of the company to fill out a timesheet. The star employees tend to procrastinate regarding this task, subordinate it or even refuse to do it. Or worse, they'll create flawed records. On the other hand, the malingerers and marginal producers will often create perfect time records and never submit them late. This fact of life creates an impression in the minds of both that the whole exercise is worthless. Reason Five: "I've procrastinated too long - and now I don't remember what I did last week." Procrastination results in useless time records.  Who remembers what they had for lunch one day last week?  When information - which was mostly made up - is eventually recorded about how much time was spent and on what, it often tends to understate the real accomplishments of the workweek.  Reviewing this record can be demoralizing. So - newsflash - it's an imperfect world. And people hate tracking their time for many reasons. But how can you possibly run a project oriented organization, especially one that bills…

• Tracking time
• Software
• metrics
• workplace
• employees
• reporting

]]> Blogs Fri, 11 May 2012 21:01:06 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4657-5-ways-people-in-your-team-will-whine-about-tracking-time http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/Qwgblc7eU68/4656-time-track-your-way-to-improve-your-projects http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4656-time-track-your-way-to-improve-your-projects Everyone in business today is constantly seeking ways to improve.  No one can afford to remain stagnant or complacent, unless they want to be overtaken by their competitors in an ever-growing market.  Here are some surefire ways to improve your business and get ahead of your competitors with very little effort or investment. Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to gauge success. KPIs are used to measure the performance of an organization, frequently through measuring activities such as performance improvement derived from training, labor utilization rates, or customer satisfaction.  KPIs are often tied to strategy through techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard, but they don’t have to be as complicated as that to be useful and effective. As with most things, simplicity increases efficacy. KPIs can differ depending on strategy. They help an organization to measure progress towards their organizational goals, such as increased penetration of existing customers or markets, on time delivery or reduced scope creep. A KPI is a key part of a specific measurable achievable relevant time-based goal (a SMART goal) which is made up of a direction, KPI, target and time frame, e.g. "Increase Average Revenue per Sale to $10,000 by December."  In this case, 'Average Revenue per Sale’ is the KPI.  The above mentioned goal wouldn’t be SMART if it wasn’t an achievable goal.  Nor would it be SMART if the word ‘December’ was left out or if it was not relevant, e.g. if this was a portion of the organization that had nothing to do with sales or marketing, like HR. Track time in order to manage project risk. Time data can make a fundamental difference to your company if collected and used correctly.  One of the ways in which time tracking can lead to success is by using it to plan for projects and then follow their progress along the way.  Knowing a project is behind schedule or over budget towards the end of the project’s life span does no one any good.  Knowing this information sooner, however, will help you act accordingly and stop wasting time and money. How can you do this?  It is quite simple.  The early phases of a project are usually referred to as ‘requirements,’ ‘design,’ or ‘specification.’  Let’s say that after carefully tracking time on a batch of similar projects you find that the first two phases take approximately 10% of the project time.  You can then use that data to predict the length of future projects.  I’ve found this project estimation technique, an example, to be extremely accurate, regardless of whether your company’s magic number is 3% or 30%. Automate your time tracking system in order to reduce errors in data collection. Not only should you track time within your company, but you should find the appropriate time accounting platform to automate it for you.  According to a major research advisory firm, fully automating the timesheet process reduces errors and staff time by 75 percent or more. Automation technologies and practices reduce improper time tracking activities and…

• Tracking time
• SaaS
• KPI
• business
• SOX
• DCAA
• PTO

]]> Blogs Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:38:26 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4656-time-track-your-way-to-improve-your-projects http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/syWh7l0sbVI/4655-were-the-three-stooges-really-good-project-managers http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4655-were-the-three-stooges-really-good-project-managers? For those of you not familiar with the Three Stooges, they were an American vaudeville and comedy act of the early to mid–20th century best known for their numerous short subject films. Their hallmark was physical farce and extreme slapstick. In films, the Stooges were commonly known by their first names: "Moe, Larry, and Curly" and "Moe, Larry, and Shemp," among others. The film trio was originally composed of Moe Howard, brother Shemp Howard and Larry Fine. Curly Howard replaced brother Shemp, who later returned when Curly suffered a debilitating stroke in May 1946.  Starting in 1922 until Moe’s death in 1975, the team appeared in exactly 220 films (30 motion pictures and 190 short films). Some 50 years after their last short film was released, the Three Stooges remain wildly popular with audiences around the world. Their films have not left the television airwaves since first appearing in 1958, and they continue to delight old fans while attracting a new legion of fervent admirers. A hard-working group of working-class comedians who were never the critic's darlings, the team endured several personnel changes in their careers that would have permanently sidelined a less persistent act. Despite his watching two of his brothers die in a brief span of time, the Stooges would not have lasted as long as they did as a unit without Moe Howard's guiding hand. In the end, it is the durability of the 190 timeless short films the Stooges made at Columbia Pictures that acts as an enduring tribute to the comedy team.  Look for a full feature movie to be released in 2012. Guest Contributor We are thrilled that Eric Lamond, grandson of the Stooge, Larry Fine, agreed to be interviewed for this article.  Mr. Lamond is the Director of MarketingC3 Entertainment, Inc, which licenses the Three Stooges.  We asked if any of the original hand drawn production schedules were available for use in this article but, unfortunately, none remain.   So, how did the Stooges work? Each member was a successful Vaudeville entertainer in his own right; they teamed up in the late 1920’s somewhat by chance to become ‘The Three Stooges’, with a mutual career goal of going to Hollywood to make films. They signed with Columbia Pictures to make feature films; however, because their audience couldn’t get enough of their wit and comedy, they continued to make their numerous 16-minute ‘short films’.  Keep in mind that in the 1920’s, with television still decades in the future, the movie experience to the public consisted of a newsreel, cartoons, a short film, and then one or two feature films. A ticket cost 25 to 50 cents USD and, for another 25 cents, you could get all the popcorn, candy, and soda you could eat and drink.   During their lengthy careers, (from 1934 to 1958), the Stooges released a total of 190 short films, or 8 short films per year. A Master plan for the intended short films was published annually at a rate…

• pmo
• Project management
• lifecycle
• stooges

]]> Blogs Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:00:00 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4655-were-the-three-stooges-really-good-project-managers? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/ZQhBgjUaRVo/4654-three-little-letters-that-can-save-any-sized-company-from-a-rut-kpi http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4654-three-little-letters-that-can-save-any-sized-company-from-a-rut-kpi Time and attendance tracking is necessary for obvious reasons, yet many business owners do not realize that this data can deliver enormous benefits to the organization, aside from payroll.  In fact, having employees track their time against tasks and projects allows managers to develop key performance indicators to measure progress against strategic goals such as increased billability, adherence to project estimates and project profitability optimization. Key Performance Indicators A 'key performance indicator' or KPI measures an organization's progress towards a strategic goal.  When leveraged correctly, KPIs can make a huge impact.  First, you must determine what the most important business goals are. It might be increased profitability, reduced number of defective parts per thousand, maintaining a certain percentage of customer satisfaction, or perhaps revenue per store location. Once this is established, you can create a KPI to help you measure your progress. Next, you must ensure that your KPI is measurable. "Make customers more successful" is not an effective KPI without some way to measure the success of your customers. "Be the most convenient drugstore" won't work either if there is no way to measure convenience.  In addition, it is essential that your KPI definition remain stable from year to year. For example, "increase utilization rates” needs to be more specific and address such things as whether to measure by hours or by dollars. Keep in mind that a KPI is part of a SMART goal—one that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. For example, consider the goal, "Increase average revenue per sale to $10,000 by January." In this case, “average revenue per sale” is the KPI. This goal wouldn’t be SMART if it wasn’t achievable, if the word “January” was left out, or if it was not relevant (e.g. if this was a portion of the organization that had nothing to do with sales or marketing, such as human resources). Simple and Useful KPIsThere are three basic KPIs that you should be able to calculate from any time and data labor source. Billability. This is often termed the utilization rate. It is the percentage of time in a given period during which employees are working in a revenue-producing capacity. You must configure your timesheet system to track whether or not work is considered billable to the customer. Once you have this information, utilization for any period, group or person is found by the formula “B divided by T”, where:B = Billable hours for the employee/group in the periodT = All hours worked for the employee/group in the periodMost organizations try to keep their utilization rate above 70%. A higher rate is better, until you’ve reached a point where administrative tasks that are necessary to the business—like tracking time—are not being accomplished. Then you know you’ve pushed it too far. Adherence to EstimateMany contractors or consultants do a poor job with bidding appropriately. In order to avoid underbidding or overbidding, and general human error, you can use the formula [(E-A)/E] where: E = Estimated hours to complete project A…

• KPI
• time
• attendance
• metrics
• payroll
• tasks
• projects

]]> Blogs Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:40:34 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4654-three-little-letters-that-can-save-any-sized-company-from-a-rut-kpi http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/Ca13Ch09GnA/4653-project-manage-your-company-from-startup-to-scalable-organization http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4653-project-manage-your-company-from-startup-to-scalable-organization When we started out sixteen years ago, we had a simple product, no real competitors and product installation was so easy that project management for customer rollouts didn’t seem very useful to us.  Over time, as the flexibility of our products increased, we added a professional services capability to our company that was, in its earliest stages, somewhat haphazard and delivered inconsistent results to our customers.  This led to customer satisfaction issues that were a real impediment to our success as an organization.  Since delivering demonstrable customer value is the only moral way to achieve business success in our industry, we knew we had to fix this problem quickly. Once we inculcated some repeatable processes based on project management disciplines into our delivery, we were able to go so far as to productize our initial customer rollout service.  This has been so successful that we’ve been able to strategically virtualize that service in certain instances. For example, we use a vendor to assist with every rollout that includes integration with QuickBooks.  This is surgically precise outsourcing of a very specific portion of a certain kind of rollout of our product that is common for a subset of our smaller customers – firms that sell services to other businesses.  Our integrated Journyx/QuickBooks rollouts moved from a dismal 50% satisfaction rate to an excellent 100% once we got that process well-defined and adhered to.  We couldn’t have done this without outsourcing it because retaining a QuickBooks blackbelt in-house would have been too expensive; nor could we have succeeded in this without a very well-defined project management process that is both flexible enough to work for all customers in this category and strict enough to ensure success. This success has pushed and encouraged us to put tightly-defined processes in place elsewhere in the business to enable outsourcing of our software testing department overseas, as well as 100% of our accounting department, giving us the capabilities of a much larger company in those areas albeit at lower costs.  Those benefits wouldn’t be possible without rigorous processes born of excellence in project management.  We’re now a business that has virtualized itself globally.  We’re convinced that this adds tremendous value for our customers and that it cannot be done without good process definition, planning and execution. Some of these processes have enabled us to achieve understanding of our profitability on a per-person per-project basis, using the same technology that we sell to others, thereby making us a showcase for our own software. At present, we have only a few people who have been through formal PMI training, but we want 10% of the company to become PMPs.  We can see the value it adds every day, and we want more.  We’ve applied the principles in development, marketing, partnering, vendor management and even in sales to generally great effect.  Our software development process has always been what is now commonly termed ‘agile,’ and we want to be very careful in introducing too much rigor there.  The right…

• Project
• startup
• management
• QuickBooks
• PMI
• organization

]]> Blogs Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:23:53 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4653-project-manage-your-company-from-startup-to-scalable-organization http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/L5aOIcT1Zqc/4651-understanding-the-greatest-challenge-for-managers http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4651-understanding-the-greatest-challenge-for-managers The current state of the global economy has created new challenges for companies all over the world.  This has led to executive decisions being made out of panic, such as firing quality employees and slashing important programs.  Regardless of their efforts, many companies have seen plummeting revenue streams, sometimes being forced out of business altogether. It may surprise you, but I actually believe that the greatest challenge in this economy is avoiding the mistake of blaming everything on the economy.  It is easy for managers and executives to wring their hands and say, “This is the worst economy we have had in 80 years, and that is why my company has all of these problems.”  To a certain extent, they are right.  Yet that type of thinking does not lead to solutions. What if the economy never improves very much? Take Japan for example: they have been stuck with an anemic economy for decades now. Of course I know the tsunami didn’t help much either. Yet within that environment, some Japanese companies have excelled while others have withered or accepted the status quo. Is the sale of Apple products like the iPad or the iPhone 4G suffering from the economy?  Considering the fact that people will wait in line for 12 hours to get them, I imagine not.  People will wait in line that long to buy something that they really want.  So how can you offer something that people will want regardless of the economy?  The first step is to wake up and realize that things will never improve for your company until you do something to make it happen.  You can figure out how to improve your products or find new markets – maybe even create new markets – where you can outthink, outsell and outperform your competitors.  Is there a problem in your industry that everyone recognizes but no one is fixing?  Fix it! Once you have convinced yourself that new opportunities in a recession are possible, you just have to convince everyone else with whom you work. And that is the real challenge of this economy. About Curt Finch Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx. Founded in 1996, Journyx automates payroll, billing and cost accounting while easing management of employee time and expenses, and provides confidence that all resources are utilized correctly and completely. Curt earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech.  As a software programmer fixing bugs for IBM in the early ‘90’s, Curt found that tracking the time it took to fix each bug revealed the per-bug profitability. Curt knew that this concept of using time-tracking data to determine project profitability was a winning idea and something that companies were not doing – yet… Curt created the world's first web-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offerings in 1997. Learn more about Curt at http://journyx.com/company/curtfinch.  

• challenge
• Economy
• iPad
• iPhone
• company

]]> Blogs Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:00:33 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4651-understanding-the-greatest-challenge-for-managers http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/tXUT2_u61sc/4650-how-to-tell-if-youre-cutting-the-right-costs http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4650-how-to-tell-if-youre-cutting-the-right-costs The global financial marketplace has recently become quite volatile, as fears of an American recession affect economies all over the world.  In addition, the Dow Jones Industrial Average currently hovers at around 12,400, while it was at around 14,000 in October 2007.  A drop of 11% in just four months is cause for concern for many people. At times like this, executives typically search for ways to cut costs, which can be a sticky business.  And yet, what if you could know where your company is profitable and where it's not, and then figure out a way to do more of the profitable work?  In other words, what if you got rid of unprofitable customers instead of loyal, productive employees? The truth is, many companies that slash costs in response to an economic recession find it difficult to achieve top-line growth when the recession ends.  This is not hard to believe, considering the fact that their best workers are gone and their long term projects were cancelled.  A company cannot grow on short term plans alone.  Overzealous cutting of people and projects can, however, be avoided, or at the very least, they can be performed with more intelligent precision.  All that are required to handle such problems the right way are per-customer per-project profitability metrics. Understanding costs is the first step to understanding profitability. Most companies know their profitability company-wide, but few of them know it on a per-product or per-customer basis.  Such precision of understanding is necessary in order to develop and implement the right growth strategy. Here is a five step process that will take your company there. 1.  Current situation: “Chaos” If you don’t know your costs on a per-project basis, then you have no way to validate future project estimates.  Without knowing how long your last project took to complete, how can you determine how accurate the initial estimate was?  Calibrating project estimates is not just about calendar time, since a project that was delivered on time may not have been delivered on cost.  For example, some organizations provide on-time delivery by adding resources to projects that are behind schedule, and they do it without drawing attention to the fact.  This is something you must know in order to avoid over-commitment and under-pricing. You also need this information in order to repeat past successes.  Not knowing which projects were on-time and on-budget means you cannot know which projects were successful, and therefore, which processes to continue following and which to improve. Over-commitment, under-pricing, inability to repeat past successes and abandoning proven processes in times of crisis leads to chaos, which is especially dangerous during a recession. 2.  Track project labor hours Having your employees track their time on a per-project basis lets you know when projects are in trouble much earlier than you otherwise would.  Contrary to what you might think, total compliance is not necessary to gain significant insight into project progress, profitability, and adherence to estimates. The basic time tracking data you obtain from…

• ROI
• Project
• managers
• Recession
• profit
• revenue
• finance
• cut costs
• costs

]]> Blogs Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:29:53 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4650-how-to-tell-if-youre-cutting-the-right-costs http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theicpm/feed/~3/Z6Xd5K0drqg/4649-business-benefits-realisation-–-the-unfortunate-truth http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4649-business-benefits-realisation-–-the-unfortunate-truth Business Benefits Realisation – The Unfortunate Truth By Craig Wilkins, Gareth Byatt, Gary Hamilton, and Jeff Hodgkinson (Gareth, Gary and Jeff would like to thank Craig for agreeing to partner with us and share his expertise as the primary author for this article.) Business Benefits Realisation for programs and projects should be tackled very early in their lifecycle. A concerted effort towards the management of business benefits realisation is key to the success of programs and projects. The Current Scenario Business Perspective Business benefits realisation (BBR) is a process which is sometimes practiced, and often hypothesised about. However, the unfortunate truth is that more often than not, the business case proposition is not analysed post-program or project to verify whether the benefits are being realised – and what happens if they are not. Project Management Perspective The traditional role of the Program or Project Manager (PM) is to deliver an outcome of some sort. The PM is typically not tasked with identifying benefits, nor do they remain active in the program/project when the time arrives to harvest those benefits. The responsibility of “harvesting the benefits” is passed back to the business or, if pertinent, back to the program of which the project was a part. It is imperative for the PM to be cognizant of the benefits their project has set out to gain, and, as such, all advanced PMs should be acutely aware of the benefits’ lifecycle and to know their role in that lifecycle.

• pmo
• lifecycle
• BBR

]]> Blogs Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:35:28 +0000 http://www.theicpm.com/blog/item/4649-business-benefits-realisation-–-the-unfortunate-truth