Projects have problems. That’s why we select life cycles, approaches, and apply risk management as we proceed so we can manage these problems. What’s your #1 project problem? The nice folks at Mavenlink identified 5 major challenges in project management. Here are the top 3: Project plans and scheduling are not aligned (45%) Contention for […]
3 Quick Project Portfolio Tips The second edition of Manage Your Project Portfolio is available now, in ebook and paper. I’m so excited. To celebrate, here are three tips to help you manage your project portfolio. Tip 1. Make your work visible. When I lead workshops to help people understand how to manage their project
I’ve been teaching workshops these last few weeks. A number of the participants think that they need to create great estimates. I keep hearing, “I have to create accurate estimates. My team needs my estimate to be accurate.” I have found that the smaller the work, the better the estimate. If people work as a team,
I was problem-solving with a potential client the other day. They want to manage their project portfolio. They use Jira, so they think they can see everything everyone is doing. (I’m a little skeptical, but, okay.) They want to know how much the teams can do, so they can do capacity planning based on what
In Cost of Delay: Not Shipping on Time, Part 1, I introduced you to the notion of cost of delay. I said you could reduce the cost of delay by managing your projects: have shorter projects, using release criteria, or selecting a lifecycle that manages the risk. Sometimes, you don’t have short projects, so projects
Do you know about the Cost of Delay? It’s the way to think about the revenue you can lose plus the cost of continued development. One of my managers many years ago had a back of the napkin approach to cost of delay. “Johanna, we want to ship this product in the second quarter this
While I was on vacation in early January, there were two interviews posted on InfoQ: Ben Linders interviewed Esther Derby, Don Gray, and me about the Change Artistry book. I’m really pleased about the way the interview came out. Thanks, Ben! Back at Agile 2013, Shane Hastie interviewed me. The interview is here. We spoke
The nice folks at ScheduleMailer interviewed me about how I accomplish what I do. They consider me a time management expert. That’s what project portfolio management will do for you. I thought it was funny that one of the questions was about work/life balance. I wanted to say, “Honey, it’s all life.” I managed to
I have an article up on TechTarget, called Alternative project management styles are faster than multitasking. I had originally called the article “Multitasking makes you stupid-you have alternatives.” 🙂 There’s my Queen of the Career-limiting conversation thing going again. Would you have read the article with the original title? Eh, maybe not. In any case,
Johanna’s New Year’s Tips For the past three years, I’ve shared three tips with you just in time for New Year’s. This year is no exception. 1. Make time for reflection and observation. I bet this week has been a pleasure for you. You’ve either had a more relaxed week at work, because fewer people