The current economy is forcing vendors to re-organize, cut staff, and re-think their strategies and business models. These changes often have the potential to impact the commitments they have already made to their clients and customers.
How will you make sure that your project is not affected by such changes?
In the case of a conflict or [...]
Author Archives: samad_aidane
Tips for Effective Statements of Work
Tailoring Agile Practices for Enterprise System Integration Projects – Part 2
In my previous posts, Agile Practices in Large System Integration Projects and Tailoring Agile Practices for Enterprise System Integration Projects – Part 1, I argued that we need ways to incorporate Agile in system integration projects without (a) changing the entire organization or (b) waiting for the organization to change. We also need to tailor [...]
Tailoring Agile Practices for Enterprise System Integration Projects – Part 1
In my previous post, Agile Practices in Large System Integration Projects, I argued that some Agile practices are not easy to implement in enterprise system integration projects without tailoring.
In this series of posts, I will identify a set of key Agile practices that offer the greatest value and recommend ways to tailor them to fit [...]
Don’t get caught between your Vendor and a Hard Place
The reputations of many great project managers were ruined because their projects failed due to their mismanagement of vendors.
The biggest mistake project managers make in discerning the status of their project is to rely solely on vendor status reports. These reports give only one version of the project’s progress. And that version happens to be [...]
Sorry seems to be the hardest word
Sometimes, to break an impasse on your project you may need to say you are sorry, whether you are right or not and whether the other person is right or not.
This is hard.
Saying “I’m sorry” is hard because it challenges our natural need to protect ourselves. Our ego has been engineered to protect us. Its [...]
What I know for sure
A project manager asked this question on askaboutprojects.com:
“I am a new project manager working on my first project as project manager. Can someone please share the examples of challenges they faced in projects”
I gave the following advice before and I think it is appropriate for this question:
The biggest challenge you will face in transitioning to [...]
Agile Practices in Large System Integration Projects
The reality of organizations is that they don’t come in a very neatly packaged configuration to which we can apply a single project management methodology.
I spoke a couple weeks ago at an Oracle users group conference about my experience applying Agile practices in a large Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) upgrade project. From discussions with project [...]
How to become an All-Terrain Project Manager
The more successful projects you deliver, the more likely it is that your management or clients will call upon you to lead more complex projects that are outside your repertoire of skills and even beyond your domain of technical expertise. When you deliver the goods on these projects, success will strengthen your self-confidence and enhance [...]
Making Emotional Conversations Unemotional
Listen now:
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In this edition of the Guerrilla Project Management podcast, I interview Rick Morris, author of the outstanding and popular book: Project Management that works.
I attended Rick’s presentation at a PMI Global Congress a couple of years ago and the insights that [...]
The “Chaos Report” Myth Busters
In a previous blog post titled, Let’s say “No” to groupthink and stop quoting the Chaos Report, I wrote that:
“We need to be able to examine the underlying data and measurement methods used as the basis for any report or study on IT project failures. Without examining the data, to continue quoting such reports is [...]
