One of the big problems in organizations is how to fund projects. ROI does not work. I learned how to lie with ROI back in 1988—I can make the numbers be anything you want. But if you don’t have ROI, how do you know what projects to fund? One set of projects is the set
John Cook wrote a blog post, Scaling the number of projects, that starts addressing the issue of why it’s everyone’s job to manage their own project portfolios. Here’s an example of the problem he’s noticed: It sounds easy to manage independent projects: if the projects are for different clients and they have different developers, just
Dwayne’s comment on my post, Architecting from the Features, made me realize I hadn’t provided an example of how I’d changed the book. Head slap on me! One of my rules of writing, which I use when I’m revising because I rarely remember as I’m writing the first draft, is to explain what I’m writing
I’ve been writing pieces of the project portfolio book, and was wondering how to explain how managers get caught in the trap of having too many projects. Then I read Joe Ely’s Minimizing Work-in-Process for Knowledge Workers, and had an “aha” moment. (Well, I think I did. You let me know.) For many managers (and
I posted last month’s Pragmatic Manager email newsletter, How Many Emergency Projects Do You Have? I just sent out a newsletter on timeboxes and how they help multisite teams. You can sign up for my newsletter, and see the issues right away.
Summary: Drawing up a to-do list sounds like a logical starting point when you want to prioritize your workload. But if you have an extra-long list of tasks, the list you should start with is the not-to-do list. Doing so forces you to take an extra hard look at what you’re doing and if you should
Summary: Knowing how much work your group can accomplish–and how much it takes to complete that work–is critical to your success as a manager. In this week’s column, Johanna Rothman explains how to ascertain your team’s potential and how to use that information to define and manage your project portfolio so it doesn’t manage you. I
You’ve got a ton of projects. You can’t do them all at once because you don’t have the people to do them. You know better than to ask people to multitask on more than one project—no one will get anything done. One tactic is to organize the projects into a portfolio and rank them by
PM Boulevard just published How Often Should You Review the Project Portfolio?. You have to be a member to see whole article (membership is free). You can’t leave comments there, so please leave them here.
Janice strode down the hall and made a sharp right at a cubicle decorated with dragons. “Hey, Steve, got a minute? I need your help with a problem.” “Janice, the last time you asked me for my help, I got stuck in that installation mess. I appreciate being one of your team leads, but I