Concept of Operations. One of the root causes of project failure is the failure to apply the first principle of the five principles of project success What does done look like in units of measure meaningful to the decision maker?
Those units must include Measures of Effectiveness and Measures of Performance. But where do these live? Where do they come from? The answer to that is the Concept of Operations (ConOps). The ConOps contains the conceptual view of the system and illustrates the top-level functional threads in the proposed system or situation. Johns Hopkins University's Whiting School of Engineering provides an approach to making the decision about what's in the ConOps and its format based on some Systems Engineering analysis of criteria:
Useful Online Resources for Project Managers. Being a project manager is one of the most toughest jobs in the world.
You have to keep yourself updated, manage your team, take care of deadlines, and also keep up your pace with clients. This is a big challenge especially in such a technologically advanced era. But there are a lot of tools and resources that can make your job simpler. Following is a compilation of useful and helpful tools and resources for project managers. Simplify the way you manage your projects and teams To Improve your Knowledge Base 1. ProofHub blog is the best place to get the daily dose of inspiration for yourself and your team.
How to Become a More Challenging Project Leader - LiquidPlanner. If you want to be a strong project manager and leader, you need to know how to challenge and support your team members in equal measure.
This means that you are able to set clear performance targets that stretch the individual while at the same time providing them with the support they need to reach their targets. While it might sound easy in theory, it’s far more difficult in practice. During my years of project management coaching, I’ve come across a large number of PMs who feel competent in the area of being supportive and nurturing, but find it far harder to be challenging and to set the standard. When these leaders try to challenge a team member—for example holding them accountable to goals—they often lose their confidence in the process, which leads to questioning themselves or stopping in their tracks because they fear that their words will be too harsh and hurtful.
Why your team needs to be challenged Set expectations, agree on the outcome.
Don't confuse project outcomes with business outcomes. Reducing Unwelcome Surprises in Project Management. References (19) 1.
These five project subsystems have been noted in several prior works, including T.R. Browning, E. Fricke and H. Negele, “Key Concepts in Modeling Product Development Processes,” Systems Engineering 9, no. 2 (summer 2006): 104-128; S.D. 2. 3. 6 Tips to Become a More Collaborative Project Manager - LiquidPlanner. Do you want to be an effective team leader?
According to the Project Management Institute’s Pulse Report, more than 80% of high performing organizations report that leadership skills are the most important acquired skills for project management professionals. Researchers at PMI reported that project management elements such as cost, schedule and performance are necessary but insufficient; due to international partnerships, decentralized teams and working alliances, project managers also need negotiation and collaboration skills.
Organisation Change Management. Quantify How Much Time Your Company Wastes - Ryan Fuller. By Ryan Fuller | 8:00 AM May 28, 2014 Forty-four hours of meetings per week.
Forty-six average attendees per meeting. Twenty-two hours of e-mail per week. These numbers are not a dramatization; they are the actual year-long averages for a large technology company’s vice president. And at the managerial level, things don’t look much better: One IT manager, for example, spends 35 hours a week in meetings, sends emails during 85% of those meetings, and interfaces with an average of eight different teams each day. There are so many initiatives, goals, people, customers, and vendors competing for our time that it’s extraordinarily challenging to just simply focus. The IT Project That Brought a Bank to Its Knees - Joe Peppard, and John Thorp. By Joe Peppard and John Thorp | 9:00 AM May 15, 2014 Sir Christopher Kelly, a former British senior civil servant, recently produced a damning report, which reviewed the events that led to the £1.5 billion capital shortfall announced by the U.K.’s Co-operative Bank in June 2013.
This shortfall resulted in its parent, Co-operative Group, ceding control of the bank to bondholders, including U.S. hedge funds. One section highlights the problems the bank encountered as it attempted to replace its core banking systems, a program that was cancelled in 2013 at a cost of almost £300 million. “The weight of evidence supports a conclusion that the program was not set up to succeed,” Sir Christopher writes. “It was beset by destabilizing changes to leadership, a lack of appropriate capability, poor coordination, over-complexity, underdeveloped plans in continual flux, and poor budgeting. NASA's PMO: Building and Sustaining a Learning Organization.