Project Shrink

Yes, it is that time of the year. Well, almost. I want to start early this year with my “Best of 2007″ series… I hope I am the first… my Top 5 Project Management Blogs. The ranking is based upon the 5 blogs I shared or starred the most in my RSS reader. The blogs [...]

Its difficult to really put your finger on the subject of stakeholder interests. It is more a guessing game than a science, so we need to make as much sense of the topic as we can. I conducted a small study on visitors to my website who work on software projects, in an effort to [...]

If your project team is spread all over the globe, you will sometimes scare yourself with the amount of prejudice you have when dealing with people from different cultures. I know I do. Humans have a tendency to categorize everything, including people. Stereotyping can be dangerous, because it tries to say something about an entire [...]

Every element of a project method has a reason. If you know the reason, you know when to apply or use this method component. To explain this, I created a small sample using Scrum, and I turn to some global observations about it. I use the word global as I will not go into every [...]

Or “Yes, You Can Mix and Match” Just to reassure you: yes, you can use different techniques together. I will take as an example the usage of burn-down charts as described for Crystal Clear. However, this technique can also be found elsewhere, as in Scrum and Extreme Programming. A burn-down chart is a chart that [...]

Earlier this year I experimented with a small video about the importance of project goals. Quality and content were not great, but heck, it was an experiment. I uploaded it again… enjoy! BTW I have some great new videos lined up for you… all I need is time Other people who liked this article liked [...]

Project Management Lessons from a Doomed Satellite Program “Sunday’s New York Times features a lengthy discussion of the factors contributing to the spectacular failure of the government’s $4 billion spy satellite program. The project was ultimately canceled in yet it is clear from the the various participants that are quoted in the article that the [...]

Or Not Every Single Process Component Is Effective Alone Although I propose picking different techniques and process components from every method that you can lay your hands on, this doesnt mean that you can just pick a single piece from a method and hope it will work.I stress that an issue should be tackled by [...]

Or Different Circumstances, Different Effectiveness in Techniques Traditional approaches (read “plan-driven”) will dictate that you first specify in detail what you want, before you start building the software. In the rigid approach, where you may not code anything before the design is approved, we call this the “Big Design Up-Front”. Photography by HouseOfText. We all [...]

For the person who wrote: “When looking daily at the remains of my planning I feel like an FBI Profiler, or more appropriate, a Project Profiler.”, the latest article by Malcolm Gladwell is a welcome wake up call. I am the person writing about the Project Profiler. And Gladwell, author of the The Tipping Point [...]