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...

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...

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...

A project management fable: A payroll improvement project was presented to an organization as a fait accompli. Only senior management had input into the selection and decision making for the project. Rather than allow the project manager to focus on the project, the project sponsor assigned him...

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...

These tips are from Pursuing Project Excellence: Six Ideas to Improve Your Projects by Bob Jewell, PMP (with permission).

1. Define the word "scope" carefully. It is "the ... work to accomplish the ... deliverables (product, service, or other results) to the agreed-upon requirements."
2. Get clear...

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...

A lot of folks in San Diego wonder how the construction of Petco Park, a managed project, could have possibly spent all the funding before it was half completed without anyone knowing. While I certainly don't have proof as to the actual cause, there is a very good way a project can get into this...

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...

To recap parts one and two of this post, we saw:

- how earned value is useful for monitoring both costs and schedule
- the basic formulas used to see if our projects are off track (and by how much)
- the recommendation that earned value be looked at weekly
- the ideal values for cost and schedule...

Last week we looked at the basic principles and formulas surrounding Earned Value Management. While the full practice of EVM may be very complex, it also provides a simple way to update clients on the status of smaller projects. But before we look at the "how", let's take a look at the "how...