Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

By nature, agile requirements are considered "lighter." With requirements often taking the form of user stories recorded in a product backlog, some requirements may become obsolete as the project progresses.

To avoid the waste of implementing unnecessary or lower priority requirements, prioritization by the business owner is critical.  One aid that helps the business owner think things through an...

All projects generate vast amounts of data beyond regular items, such as retrospectives and lessons learned.  As the project progresses, the project manager needs to collect, index, and perhaps even diarize it for current and future use.

Project data and documents contain information such as:

• Changes to the product backlog for agile projects, change requests for predictive
• Performance of the
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An important concept for agile projects is the “definition of done.” The team must discuss and understand this concept in terms of the specific project at hand before the first iteration.  Without this understanding, the ability to deliver value will be both difficult and chaotic. 

There are two overarching concepts which are ingredients in the definition:

• Requirements: Are all business, funct
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Julia couldn't be more frustrated! There were less than three months to finish the project, and yet everything was going wrong. And to top it all, the budget to complete the work was nearly exhausted.

Julia's problem boils down to ineffective project management. She may have failed to complete the steps necessary to prepare for project success.  She may have also failed to create a proper plan fo...

For over 10 years, stakeholders tried to make the Denver International Airport Automated Baggage Handling project work before giving up. The cost of continuing was around $120M, on top of an already over-budget project that was too complex to fix. Project leaders should know when to give up and cancel a project. Here are 5 circumstances that signal the necessity of cancellation:

1. Project objecti
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Decades of Project Management research shows that lack of user involvement/ executive sponsorship and requirements management are consistently high on the top 10 causes of project failure list. Over time, there has been a modest uptick in project success rates, but still, large percentages of projects fail to meet their goals. Why? Here is a short candidate list to consider:

• Not enough of the r
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The execution phase of a project, while not immune to issues, can be as effortless as possible if you follow these principles:

1. Do the right amount of planning: too little and things "fall through the cracks", too much planning risks "analysis paralysis".
2. Get the right team: people that want to do the work, have the skills and have a supportive network.
3. Exercise key soft skills: delegation, fo
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For the last two weeks, we looked at two different ways to evaluate project selections to determine which to work on. This type of activity is often carried out by senior management and not the project manager. The project manager is usually involved once the project charter has been developed. A special form of project charter is the Statement of Work or SOW. Its often associated with a contract ...

For the next few weeks, I'd like to take a closer look at initiating projects, with special attention to costs. This is an area of weakness for many who jump in to do work before looking at the consequences or rewards. Rather than use a microscope, you need a telescope to see to the far and of the project. We'll focus on costs, but once again, there are many other factors that must be analyzed.

T...

Getting the right requirements are important for project success. Whether you are in a dual role or collaborating with a business analyst, project managers should make sure all their projects include, at a minimum, these three basic types of requirements:

1. Business requirements usually represent the rationale - high-level goals and objectives - for undertaking a project. These should include the
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