Industrial Project Management: Planning, Design, and Construction - E-kitap

Publisher: Springer | Pages: 230 | 2008-09-11 | ISBN: 3540775420 | PDF | 2 MB

Kitap temel proje yönetimi prensiplerini , uluslararası standartları ve şirket bazında çoklu proje yaklaşımını anlatıyor.

Kitaptaki akademik yaklaşım çelik endüstrisine 120 anahtar teslimi proje yapmış Danieli'nin katkısı ile çok daha gerçekçi hale gelmiş. Temelde büyük ve uluslararası projelerin başarılmması ve yönetilmesine ilişkin güzel bir kaynak.

Bilgisayarınıza indirmek için;

http://rapidshare.com/files/166576794/Industrial.Project.Management.rar

What Not to Do - Project Management Mistakes to Avoid

I'm a big fan of lists. Heck - show me a project manager who isn't a fan of lists! I'm especially fond of lists that explain how not to do something. This way, I feel as though I'm learning from the expensively-gained experience of others.

The list isn't meant to be exhaustive and isn't meant to be in order, but I hope this list proves useful to someone, somewhere:

Mistake #1:Keep the team and the stakeholders apart - I've worked in some (large) organisations where the lead developers are on good drinking terms with the Directors. I've worked in other organisations where there has been a wall of separation between the people who have the business vision and those who actually need to build the tools to deliver that vision. In one memorable case, the only contact the team was permitted to have with stakeholders was a set of documents written by business analysts from another part of the business. Of course there always has to be a balance struck between proper use of time and the importance of the project, but communication, especially at the outset of a project, is vital.

Mistake #2: Communicate infrequently - If the project is important, people will be interested and should be asking as much as being told how the project is progressing. Frequent, early communication allows for project plans and budgets to become exposed to real life challenges and be up for discussion. Early communication allows stakeholders to see what they're getting and reject or change it early. Frequent communication builds up an important level of trust: that the stakeholders care what the team is doing and that the team is doing its level best to deliver what the stakeholders need. This trust is a useful currency for when the challenges come later in the project.

Mistake #3: Save all your testing until the last minute - If you're running an agile project, you're likely to be testing every 2-4 weeks, depending on the length of your sprint. "Fail Early" is the philosophy here. If you're doing things in a traditional waterfall manner, you're probably hoping that there'll be only a handful of defects revealed during your testing phase. Consider instead breaking your project into a series of mini-waterfalls that will allow your testers to get on the case as early into the development process as possible.

Mistake #4: Don't tell a client when they're wrong - The client has brought you in for a reason, so you shouldn't be afraid of making suggestions on how to best set up the project for success. Of course, there are diplomatic ways of doing this, and it helps to know when to exercise discretion.

Mistake #5: Put the client on the critical path without telling them - Working in collaboration with a client means that very often, you're dependent on them for things like servers, meeting attendance, approval etc. Make very clear up front just what you need from the client and when you'll need it by. If you're nervous, keep it on the risk log for regular review with the client (you're doing that, aren't you?)

Mistake #6: Focus on contracts not collaboration - Something unexpected always happens in a project. If things go very wrong, there's always a temptation to throw blame around and cover your back. It's just the human thing to do. It's also the wrong thing to do. Both you and the client have a lot invested in a project; financially, emotionally and in terms of career. It's in both your interests to find a way out of a problem together: fix the problem not the blame: focus on working together, rather than scoring contractual points and you'll be much closer to a positive result for all.

Mistake #7: Mix your methodologies - Are you running this project in Agile or in Waterfall? Does everybody share the same expectations about how the project will proceed and what their responsibilities are? A common mistake for newcomers to Agile is to fix your time, scope and cost on a project, which is fine if you have contingency, but Agile doesn't work like that. Similarly, people who have dipped a toe in the Agile water and have decided it's not for them often take the bits they like, such as the great flexibility in accommodating changes to requirements, and try to apply this to Waterfall - this is dangerous because waterfall projects, by their non-iterative nature, don't allow for iterative changes without some significant upheaval or nimble footwork.

Mistake #8: Just get on with it and never look back - Make sure you kick your project off well. At no other time in a project do you get such a golden chance to motivate your team by sharing the vision with them, agreeing ways of working, setting expectations and understanding risks. Simillarly, take time throughout the project (and again at the end) to look back and see how you're all working, what to keep doing and what to do differently. Agile calls these moments retrospectives, but you can call them whatever you like.

Mistake #9: Extract every waking hour from your team - Overtime is quite often a fact of life, especially at the end of a marathon project. Overtime is demonstrated to give your team a performance boost in the short term, but carry this on indefinitely and you get burn out, a dip in quality and a loss of momentum. Swapping out burnt-out people is costly. Not to mention, it's not very nice to put people in this position in the first place.

Mistake #10: Never, ever change your plan - Again, this is where project management is as much art as science. Be risk averse: We project managers love risk and issue logs. Change is as often as not a good thing. If a plan changes throughout the project, it's a sign that it's being used, understood and reflects reality. If the plan isn't changing, perhaps nobody's actually following it.

Proje Yönetiminin İki Yüzü - İngilizce

Customer side

• Blame game project management. the main goal of project manager is not to finish the project on time, on budget and within agreed scope but to protect himself/herself. Nothing against procedures. Forget about common sense. As far as no one can prove you did something differently than it was stated in procedures you can’t be blamed for anything, right? You just wanted to do it correctly. As a side effect a lot of blame game can be detected in that scenario.

• Never pay project management. Force the vendor to agree to deadlines impossible to meet. Then move the project into production before it’s stable enough. Then start complaining about all issues which can be found. When they’re fixed find another. When they ask about their money tell them you’ll pay when all the issues are cleared. Avoid making hard commitments. As a side effect you hear a lot of “We haven’t bought a piece of software but a system which should cover our business needs” or similar statements.

• Clueless project management. Start a project first and then think what the scope is if there’s any. Throw in all the new features you can think of and force the vendor to propose some implementation or something. Change scope. Much and often. Don’t go into details when you talk about the solution but go into the smallest and the least important details when you talk about the business issues. As a side effect you’ll see dramatic time and budget overrun.

• Overactive project management. Call them. Mail them. Get them on meetings. As often as possible. Expect they’re all fully and exclusively dedicated just for you. Make them cry whenever they see your number on their mobiles. Become their worst nightmare. Expect the same intensity of communication from the other side. As a side effect the PM will have a brand new set of haters. Paradoxically sometimes this leads to successful project management.

• I know it better project management. You pay and you expect. You actually expect everything will be done exactly the way you want. It doesn’t matter if the idea is good or not. Don’t even list arguments of adversaries. You just know everything better. As a side effect the ego of the Project Manager will be boosted and you’ll hear a lot of golden thoughts in type of “It is so because it is so.”

• Marketing project management. Leave the role of the project leader to market. Possibly the one who always has those crazy ideas. Let him decide what, how and when things are done. Vague requirements with no feasibility study whatsoever. You’ll end up with a bunch of impressive products. Unfortunately they’ll be solving the wrong problems. As a side effect developers will scream whenever they’re forced to do another great thing before even being halfway done with the previous one.

Vendor Side

• No one cares project management. Or no project management at all. What for? Project management is overrated anyway. Assume everyone know what to do and will do it correctly. As a side effect you end up with project which solves the wrong problems but exploits all cool new technologies or without a project at all or with some unusable monster. Who knows?

• Wishful thinking project management. Close your eyes. Relax. Suppose there’s no issue. No time overruns. No bugs. Now, go tell it to the customer. Hey, that’s something they want to hear. Don’t tell them about anything bad as long as you can. There will be time for this… later. As a side effect you’ll have deal, on occasions, with some angry customer at the end. What a great lesson, don’t you think?

• I know it better project management. It happens on both sides of the barricade although the reasons are usually different. In this scenario you’re the boss and you expect. No matter what is reasonable. Don’t let them even think you can be wrong. Effects as above.

• Methodology zealot project management. You know the best project management methodology in the world (whatever it is). That’s the best choice because… just because. You switch off common sense and thinking and you apply your methodology exactly as it was described in the books. Absolutely no exceptions. Often seen, but definitely not limited to situations, when some impressive agile techniques are applied. As a side effect you’ll learn when the new impressive methodology can be applied with good results and when it is useless.

PMP sınavında nereden kaç soru çıkıyor?

Yaklaşık soru adetleri aşağıdaki gibidir;

I. Initiating the Project 11% 22 questions

II. Planning the Project 23% 46 questions

III. Executing the Project 27% 54 questions

IV. Controlling the Project 21% 42 questions

V. Closing the Project 9% 18 questions

VI. Professional Responsibility 9% 18 questions

A New Way of Thinking About Organizational Projects

In my most recent series of columns, I have talked a great deal about the challenges projects face in most organizations. Many of these challenges stem from the fact that project management is not the primary purpose of organizations, and never will be. Companies are created, structured and run primarily to deliver operational products and services. Projects, however, are still critical to these organizations success - in creating, enhancing, replacing and retiring products and services in response to competitive and market demands. The challenge, then, is to arrive at an approach to managing projects in organizations that can co-exist with their current operational focus. This series addresses the practical steps that organizations can and must take to successfully create an effective project management capability.

Many companies pride themselves on their management discipline and rigor. Dell for its tight supply-chain integration and made-to-order factories. General Electric for its discipline to become the market leader in industry segments, or to get out of those markets. IKEA for popularizing the concept of affordable, stylish and flat-packed assemble-it-yourself furniture. Starbucks for good coffee and better customer service. What characterizes these companies is a single-minded commitment to attaining operational excellence in what they do. They understand their market and their capabilities, and have developed the structures, processes and capabilities necessary to execute consistently and effectively.

What you see very seldom, however, are companies that consistently, effectively and reliably execute projects. Project management is regarded as a bolt-on capability, and one that relies more upon the skills of the project manager than the support of the organization. As I have argued in an earlier column, organizations are - and will increasingly become more - willing to secure their projects in whatever way is most efficient and cost effective and still allows for competitive advantage. This does not mean, though, that they do not have a role to play in either realizing or sustaining a consistent approach to managing projects.

Regardless of how project success is arrived at, there are fundamental responsibilities that the organization has in order to ensure their success. Taken alone, they are not a guarantee of project success. Without them, however, no organization can hope or expect to realize consistent and reliable performance in developing and delivering its projects effectively:

• A clear sense of direction and a plan for its attainment. Lets be frank. Strategic planning is typically looked upon with as much fondness as an ex-lover at a wedding. Strategic plans are all too often viewed as airy-fairy, theoretical statements that have no practical bearing on the direction of the company; they are the original shelf-ware. The disconnect here is that, while they don't necessarily bear on the operation of the company, they should most assuredly define its direction. The disconnect for many is the failure to follow through. The mechanism for delivery, however, is project management - every strategic plan should articulate the projects that will allow for its attainment, and every project should directly align with and support the delivery of the strategic plan.
• An objective means of defining project priority. For many companies, the priority of projects is determined by who last screamed loudest. For others, priority is 'high' - for everything. In both cases, priority is a reaction rather than a deliberate choice. To be successful, a prioritization must be objective, flexible and balanced. It must be able to allow the organization to determine a clear order of delivery. It must be able to respond to changes in the marketplace and the availability of resources, money and time. And it must be able to provide a balanced picture of the fit, value and risk factors associated with a project.
• Clearly defined project outcomes and benefits. One of the key failures of projects today is not defining and agreeing on requirements and scope. While requirements may change over the course of the project, the reality is that all projects are initiated for a reason. They are intended to deliver some tangible benefit for the investment being made, and this return must be understood and objectively defined. While I have argued that requiring the development of a business case for anything that moves may be considered to be overkill, this doesn't change the fundamental need to consider and quantify what constitutes project success. And sometimes a business case is exactly what is required.
• A commitment to realize the project outcomes. Even where projects take the time to define the outcomes they are expected to deliver, for the majority of projects there is no formal effort to evaluate whether the benefits were actually attained. The realization of project benefits - ensuring that we receive our return on investment, in whatever form it was defined - is essential to both governing individual projects and verifying the attainment of the organization's overall strategic goals. Without ensuring that the benefits are delivered, we should be questioning whether project investments should even be made.

As I have said, these factors will not in and of themselves guarantee project success. Without their being present, however, companies can have no clear and objective understanding of what projects are being conducted, why they are being done, or whether they are being effective. It is time that organizations made the same commitment to project excellence that they do to attaining operational excellence. And this is a good a place as any to start.

4 Big Ideas For Management

If you want to dig a little deeper into new BIG ideas surrounding "management", I'll recommend the following four (have fun, it will take some time :))

Socialutions (free ebook)

"Companies must begin to apply Socialutions to their existing and future problems before the problems become social and public relations nightmares. For this reason we have just released a free eBook titled Socialutions: New Management Methods for the Social Era. This is a short ebook has nine chapters which cover the following topics:promotes this concept and is a movement for users to organize and set the agenda for the future of the web."

Bioteaming (free manifesto)

"A Conceptual Framework For The Successful Management Of Physically Distributed Collaborative Business Networks And Highly Mobile Virtual Teams."

Tribes (free audio book by Seth Godin)

"A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It's our nature."

Peer-To-Peer

"P2P is a specific form of relational dynamic, is based on the assumed equipotency of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network."

what is the Passing Score for the PMI?

Establishing the Passing Score

The passing score for all PMI credential examinations is determined by sound psychometric analysis.

PMI uses subject matter experts from across the globe to help establish a point at which each candidate

should pass the examination(s) and the examination point of difficulty. Data that shows how candidates

actually performed is cross referenced with the subject matter experts to ensure that the point of difficulty

on each examination is healthy.

Source: www.pmi.org/pdf/pdc_pmphandbook.pdf

Achievers

Fitting theme song: "Climb Every Mountain." - * The following discussion of motivation and personality is based on the published work of Harvard Professor David McClelland.

These are internally motivated people with high, self-set standards and goals. Uppermost for them is accomplishment. Although we all feel we have an achievement motive, research indicates that about 10 percent of the population is strongly motivated by achievement. We find many Achievers in positions of business management.

• Achievers like situations in which they take personal responsibility for finding solutions to problems. They tend not to seek advice or help except from experts who can provide needed skills.

• They tend to set moderate achievement goals, attainable with hard work and ability.

• They take calculated risks, preferring to work on the outcome rather than leave it to chance.

• They want concrete feedback on how well they're doing.

• They're quite accustomed to having the task itself be enough motivation for them; concepts about persuasiveness and motivating others don't naturally occur to them.

• Communication is often little more than a one-way street for Achievers, related to explaining what needs to get done. They're so strongly goal-oriented that when they look across the desk,

the people they see may simply appear as implementors of the tasks assigned, not as multi-dimensional, fallible, needy individuals.

• Entrepreneurs tend to be classic Achievers.

To the outside world, Achievers can look insensitive and unfeeling. Not true. They just work from a different set of motivations than many of us; the software of human consideration and understanding doesn't always seem to be part of their concept of work. Achievers are hard taskmasters for themselves and therefore bring the same demanding standards to others with whom they work.

Considerations such as "Do you like me?" are usually beside the point for Achievers, though this varies. They give themselves love when they accomplish. An extension of that is to have others know of and acknowledge their accomplishments. Achievement is where they find their identity and feel their usefulness. Money may be regarded as a further affirmation of their ability to achieve.

Project Management Metaphors

• The Extended Mirror Metaphor (Timothy Johnson, 2008)- The use of extended mirrors to see beyond the present is an excellent metaphor for project planning because it stretches the thinking process and imagination to enter a space before physically entering it. In defining your requirements, you have to mentally go forward, then look in your rear view mirror and mentally drive backward through your project, define your route (plan your scope), and then actually drive forward.
• Helicopters Metaphor- helicopters allow the seeing of the forest with the simultaneity of allowing for zooming on the trees. For projects, this metaphor allows for overseeing the overall progress or zooming on certain tasks. We believe this metaphor may be further enriched by supplying the helicopters with infrared camera, CIS information system and meteorological data to capture information and plan ahead.
• Star Wars Metaphor (Phil Bennett, 2006) - This metaphor links the roles in the movie with the roles that project managers undergo
• The Chimpanzees Tea Party (Helga Drummond and Julia Hodgson, 2003) - This is a very interesting metaphor and in a way remind us of chicken herd. The Chimpanzees follow no rules and chaotic party results. How to bring order into project is what this metaphor provides skillfully. This metaphor highlights the limits of assumptions and shows how control-based approaches to project management can be counterproductive. Paradoxically, situations may arise where projects can be more effectively controlled by not attempting to impose control. This metaphor is in essence another example of the extended mirror metaphor.
• The Pie Metaphor (Kevin Shockey, 2005) - This is an interesting metaphor on how to allocate project resources to project tasks and how to expand on the share of a tasks pie. The pie metaphor gives a useful way to relate to management. Sometimes it is who puts on the biggest show that gets more pie.

How to Write a Project Charter

The project charter is the document that formally authorizes a project. The project charter provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities. A project manager is identified and assigned as early in the project as is feasible. The project manager should always be assigned prior to the start of planning (if possible) and preferably while the project charter is being developed.

In my experience this is not always possible, but I highly recommend that you follow this and as the very least, as soon as you (or someone else) is assigned as the Project Manager, draft this document and have it signed off by the stakeholders.

A project initiator or sponsor external to the project organization, at a level that is appropriate to funding the project, should issue the project charter. Projects are usually chartered and authorized external to the project organization by an enterprise, a government agency, a company, a program organization, or a portfolio organization, as a result of one or more of the following:

· A market demand (e.g., a car company authorizing a project to build more fuel-efficient cars in response to gasoline shortages)

· A business need (e.g., a training company authorizing a project to create a new course to increase its revenues)

· A customer request (e.g., an electric utility authorizing a project to build a new substation to serve a new industrial park)

· A technological advance (e.g., an electronics firm authorizing a new project to develop a faster, cheaper, and smaller laptop after advances in computer memory and electronics technology)

· A legal requirement (e.g., a paint manufacturer authorizing a project to establish guidelines for handling toxic materials)

· A social need (e.g., a nongovernmental organization in a developing country authorizing a project to provide potable water systems, latrines, and sanitation education to communities suffering from high rates of cholera).

These stimuli can also be called problems, opportunities, or business requirements. The central theme of all these stimuli is that management must make a decision about how to respond and what projects to authorize and charter.

Make sure to have these requirements documented and signed off as they will be used to create the Project Scope Document.

Project selection methods involve measuring value or attractiveness to the project owner or sponsor and may include other organizational decision criteria. Project selection also applies to choosing alternative ways of executing the project.

Chartering a project links the project to the ongoing work of the organization. In some organizations, a project is not formally chartered and initiated until completion of a needs assessment, feasibility study, preliminary plan, or some other equivalent form of analysis that was separately initiated.

Developing the project charter is primarily concerned with documenting the business needs, project justification, current understanding of the customer’s requirements, and the new product, service, or result that is intended to satisfy those requirements. The project charter, either directly, or by reference to other documents, should address the following information:

· Requirements that satisfy customer, sponsor, and other stakeholder needs, wants and expectations

· Business needs, high-level project description, or product requirements that the project is undertaken to address

· Project purpose or justification

· Assigned Project Manager and authority level

· Summary milestone schedule

· Stakeholder influences

· Functional organizations and their participation

· Organizational, environmental and external assumptions

· Organizational, environmental and external constraints

· Business case justifying the project, including return on investment

· Summary budget.

During subsequent phases of multi-phase projects, the Develop Project

Charter process validates the decisions made during the original chartering of the project. If required, it also authorizes the next project phase, and updates the charter.

Inputs:

Contract (When Applicable)

A contract from the customer’s acquiring organization is an input if the project is being done for an external customer.

Project Statement of Work

The statement of work (SOW) is a narrative description of products or services to be supplied by the project. For internal projects, the project initiator or sponsor provides the statement of work based on business needs, product, or service requirements. For external projects, the statement of work can be received from the customer as part of a bid document, for example, request for proposal, request for information, request for bid, or as part of a contract. The SOW indicates a:

· Business need – an organization’s business need can be based on needed training, market demand, technological advance, legal requirement, or governmental standard.

· Product scope description – documents the product requirements and characteristics of the product or service that the project will be undertaken to create. The product requirements will generally have less detail during the initiation process and more detail during later processes, as the product characteristics are progressively elaborated. These requirements should also document the relationship among the products or services being created and the business need or other stimulus that causes the need. While the form and substance of the product requirements document will vary, it should always be detailed enough to support later project planning.

· Strategic plan – all projects should support the organization’s strategic goals. The strategic plan of the performing organization should be considered as a factor when making project selection decisions.

Enterprise Environmental Factors

When developing the project charter, any and all of the organization’s enterprise environmental factors and systems that surround and influence the project’s success must be considered. This includes items such as, but not limited to:

· Organizational or company culture and structure

· Governmental or industry standards (e.g., regulatory agency regulations, product standards, quality standards, and workmanship standards)

· Infrastructure (e.g., existing facilities and capital equipment)

· Existing human resources (e.g., skills, disciplines, and knowledge, such as design, development, legal, contracting, and purchasing)

· Personnel administration (e.g., hiring and firing guidelines, employee performance reviews, and training records)

· Company work authorization system

· Marketplace conditions

· Stakeholder risk tolerances

· Commercial databases (e.g., standardized cost estimating data, industry risk study information, and risk databases)

· Project management information systems (e.g., an automated tool suite, such as a scheduling software tool, a configuration management system, an information collection and distribution system, or web interfaces to other online automated systems).

Organizational Process Assets

When developing the project charter and subsequent project documentation, any and all of the assets that are used to influence the project’s success can be drawn from organizational process assets. Any and all of the organizations involved in the project can have formal and informal policies, procedures, plans, and guidelines whose effects must be considered. Organizational process assets also represent the organizations’ learning and knowledge from previous projects; for example, completed schedules, risk data, and earned value data. Organizational process assets can be organized differently, depending on the type of industry, organization, and application area. For example, the organizational process assets could be grouped into two categories:

· Organization’s processes and procedures for conducting work:

o Organizational standard processes, such as standards, policies (e.g., safety and health policy, and project management policy), standard product and project life cycles, and quality policies and procedures (e.g., process audits, improvement targets, checklists, and standardized process definitions for use in the organization)

o Standardized guidelines, work instructions, proposal evaluation criteria, and performance measurement criteria

o Templates (e.g., risk templates, work breakdown structure templates, and project schedule network diagram templates)

o Guidelines and criteria for tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes to satisfy the specific needs of the project

o Organization communication requirements (e.g., specific communication technology available, allowed communication media, record retention, and security requirements)

o Project closure guidelines or requirements (e.g., final project audits, project evaluations, product validations, and acceptance criteria)

o Financial controls procedures (e.g., time reporting, required expenditure and disbursement reviews, accounting codes, and standard contract provisions)

o Issue and defect management procedures defining issue and defect controls, issue and defect identification and resolution, and action item tracking

o Change control procedures, including the steps by which official company standards, policies, plans, and procedures—or any project documents—will be modified, and how any changes will be approved and validated

o Risk control procedures, including risk categories, probability definition and impact, and probability and impact matrix

· Procedures for approving and issuing work authorizations. Organizational corporate knowledge base for storing and retrieving information:

o Process measurement database used to collect and make available measurement data on processes and products

o Project files (e.g., scope, cost, schedule, and quality baselines, performance measurement baselines, project calendars, project schedule network diagrams, risk registers, planned response actions, and defined risk impact)

o Historical information and lessons learned knowledge base (e.g., project records and documents, all project closure information and documentation, information about both the results of previous project selection decisions and previous project performance information, and information from the risk management effort) and defect management database containing issue and defect status, control information, issue and defect resolution, and action item results

o Configuration management knowledge base containing the versions and baselines of all official company standards, policies, procedures, and any project documents

o Financial database containing information such as labor hours, incurred costs, budgets, and any project cost overruns.

Develop Project Charter: Tools and Techniques

Project Selection Methods

Project selection methods are used to determine which project the organization will select. These methods generally fall into one of two broad categories:

· Benefit measurement methods that are comparative approaches, scoring models, benefit contribution, or economic models.

· Mathematical models that use linear, nonlinear, dynamic, integer, or multi-objective programming algorithms.

Project Management Methodology

A project management methodology defines a set of Project Management Process Groups, their related processes and the related control functions that are consolidated and combined into a functioning unified whole. A project management methodology may or may not be an elaboration of a project management standard. A project management methodology can be either a formal mature process or an informal technique that aids a project management team in effectively developing a project charter.

Project Management Information System

The Project Management Information System (PMIS) is a standardized set of automated tools available within the organization and integrated into a system. The PMIS is used by the project management team to support generation of a project charter, facilitate feedback as the document is refined, control changes to the project charter, and release the approved document.

Expert Judgment

Expert judgment is often used to assess the inputs needed to develop the project charter. You will see this technique used in many of the Project Processes. Such judgment and expertise is applied to any technical and management details during this process. Such expertise is provided by any group or individual with specialized knowledge or training, and is available from many sources, including:

· Other units within the organization

· Consultants

· Stakeholders, including customers or sponsors

· Professional and technical associations

· Industry groups.

İlgi Diyagramı - Kawakita Jiro ya da KJ Method

İlgi diyagramı fikirleri, problemleri ve çözümleri beyin fırtınası sonrasında gruplamaya yarar.

Örnek - İlgi Diyagramı

Genel Kullanım

Yöneticiler beyin fırtınası sonrasında ortaya çıkan fikirleri kategorize ederek düzenleme yoluan giderler.

Nasıl Uygulanır?

• Amacı belirleyin. Diyagramın en üstüne amacınızı yazın.
• Grup başlıklarını belirleyin.
  
• Maddeleri belirleyin. Beyin fırtınası ile ortaya çıkan maddeleri listeleyin.
• Organize edin. Her maddeyi bir grup başlığı altına koyun.
• Analiz edin ve paylaşın.
  

How can the Project Manager seize the Web2.0 movement to be a PM2.0

By Kumar Sarma, PMP

Most of us working on various projects have our usual morning ritual of spending hours checking our emails. We need to do this activity to catch up on information and critical announcements regarding the project. It is also a common situation in many projects where only some members of the team are aware of important information regarding the project. This situation creates information imbalance among the team members and can be very detrimental to the project outcome. We are in a knowledge based economy where information is power. It becomes increasingly the responsibility of the Project Manager and Project Leaders in the team to disseminate the right information in an effective and concise manner, which brings all the team members to the same page. For the Project Manager, planning, structuring and controlling the communications that are inherently complex is critical to the success of the project. In this article we look at how Web2.0 wiki can help a Project Manager to complement the existing methods of communication and make his or her life easier.

Read complete paper in English

Powering Past the Post-PMP® Syndrome

by Michelle LaBrosse, PMP®

Post-PMP® Syndrome (noun) – A group of symptoms commonly found after project managers tirelessly prepare to pass the PMP exam pass it and bring home the gold, and then find themselves asking: What’s next?

Does this sound familiar to you? If so, you or someone you know may be suffering from Post-PMP Syndrome. Here are a few tips to make sure you get the most out of your PMP.

• DON’T KEEP IT A SECRET. Send an e-mail out to team members and managers letting them know about your achievement. Talk to your manager about how you might be able to use your PMP immediately to help the organization. Volunteer to do a “lunch and learn” to help others in your organization learn more about the PMP and prepare for the exam. Update your resume and any online profiles where you professionally network. Put your PR hat on and get the word out.

• WALK THE WALK. The best way to strut your PMP is to show results. Project Management is the art and science of getting things done, and now you can embody that with every project. In our careers, we are often as good as our last hit. You don’t have to be a one-hit wonder. Now, you have the knowledge to keep charting, year after year, with success after success.

• BECOME A STUDENT OF HISTORY. Abe Lincoln has nothing on you. With your freshly-minted PMP credentials, you can show ‘em how it’s done. At the end of every project, capture best practices and lessons learned, creating an invaluable documentation of hits and misses. You’ll quickly become the “go-to” person who is always in the know.

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You Can't Avoid Change

Customers change their minds. Competitors zig instead of zagging. Technology advances. Change is constant, and prohibiting it on projects does not work.

In Flexible Product Development, Preston Smith asks, “Is a frozen specification simply fiction?” Citing thirteen years of data collection by Donald Reinertsen at Cal Tech, Smith concludes, “It is not that specifications seldom remain constant during development; it is that they never do. The concept of frozen requirements is a complete fiction in the real world.” [Smith, p. 13]

You can’t prevent changes to your projects, but allowing rampant uncontrolled change dooms projects. Is there solution to this dilemma?

Make Change Valuable

In The New Project Management, J. Davidson Frame points out that change can be valuable. [Frame, p. 48] Companies that react flexibly and quickly can take advantage of market shifts, new technologies, and changing customer desires, giving them an advantage over their slower, less flexible competitors.

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15 Faydalı Proje Yönetimi Uygulaması

1. Basic Project Management Apps

These applications are marketed specifically for project management. Most include things like task-, team-, and goal-management features. Some include additional features such as time tracking and invoicing.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is a bug- and issue-tracking app that tracks timelines and milestones, integrates with your email client and more. You can update tickets through your inbox, manage your beta testing (by making tickets and milestones public), integrate it with subversion and manage and prioritize your tickets.

Project creation is simple; only a project title and description is required. Once a project is created, tickets, messages and milestones can be entered. Ticket creation can be done by email (the email address to send tickets to is displayed on the “Tickets” page). You can show tickets based on a variety of criteria, including date, state (open or closed) and who is responsible for them. Message creation is easier than email, and you can attach files up to 50 MB in size. When you create a milestone you simply enter the title, the date it’s due and the goals or focus for that particular milestone. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Permissions are easy to set, and you can invite users by email. One of the best features of Lighthouse is its Beacon and API integration. With the API, you can customize tickets, projects, changesets, milestones, messages and more. Integrate it with other services (such as Google Calendar), or make desktop applications that use Lighthouse. The APIs make Lighthouse infinitely more useful, because you can really customize it to fit your current workflow.

Lighthouse is great for Web development teams (or individuals) and has a very easy-to-use interface. They have paid and free plans, all of which include unlimited open-source projects. The free plan lets you manage one private project with up to two people on the account. The paid plans range from $10 per month for the Personal plan (with up to 3 projects, 10 users and 100 MB of file upload storage space) to $120 per month for the Platinum plan (with unlimited projects, up to 50 public projects, unlimited users and 30 GB of file upload space).

When combined with a subversion app, Lighthouse provides a pretty complete project management app for developers. Subversion integration is pretty straightforward, and the help file provided gives complete step-by-step instructions for setup.

Springloops

Springloops is another subversion browser that integrates project management. It counts a unique AJAX code browser and Basecamp integration as among its features.

The Springloops interface is very intuitive and easy to use. Tabbed navigation provides access to the log, source and deployment information. Adding users is done via email, along with the ability to create usernames and passwords (making it easier and faster for them to get on board with a project). Creating new projects is simple, with a few different templates available (including a starter template). You can migrate an existing repository into Springloops as well (including plain text dumps). For added project management ability, Springloops can be integrated with Basecamp.

Springloops has a number of plans available, both paid and free. The free plan includes 25 MB of space, 3 projects, 3 deployments per day (using FTP or SFTP connections), roll-back capabilities, Basecamp integration, subversion and an unlimited number of users. The paid plans range from the “Flowerpot” plan at $9 per month (including 1 GB of space and 10 projects) to the “Forest” plan at $96 per month (including 18 GB of storage, unlimited projects, automatic deployment and secure SSL encryption). All of the paid plans include a free 30-day trial.

CreativePro Office

CreativePro Office offers complete office management tools. CreativePro Office is completely free, setting it apart from the other apps here.

CreativePro Office has the usual tabbed navigation, including tabs for clients, projects, time sheets, finances and team members. The dashboard presents a calendar with upcoming events, a list of your projects, outstanding invoices, notes and search functionality. Project creation is a bit more in-depth than with most other apps listed here, though only a client name and project name is required (you can also fill in a project URL, description or comments, category, date range, status, contacts and tags). Client tracking is integrated, making this handy for those who work with lots of different clients, and it could even serve as a simple CRM program, depending on your needs.

Integrated invoices and financial information is handy, and the finances page gives you options for viewing and creating invoices, expenses and reports.

CreativePro Office is very robust for a completely free application and is definitely worth checking out before shelling out for an expensive paid solution.

Jumpchart

Jumpchart is a website planning application that allows you to plan the navigation of your website by creating, dragging and dropping pages into the plan. You can also add text and formatting to pages and then export your CSS files and site map when you’re finished.

This is a great planning app for Web designers, though it’s not strictly a project management application. You can add comments to each page, which could serve to keep track of tasks related to specific pages. More traditional project management functions could be kept track of in the text of each mockup page or through the comments. The mockup and planning capabilities of Jumpchart make it worth using, even if hacks are needed to make it more conducive to full project management.

The free Jumpchart plan offers 1 project with 1 MB of storage and a maximum of 10 pages and 2 users. The paid plans range from the Simple plan at $5 per month (including up to 5 projects, with 25 pages and 5 users per project, and 100 MB of storage) to the Deluxe plan at $50 per month (including up to 30 projects with unlimited pages and users and 5000 MB of storage).

No Kahuna

No Kahuna is a simple project management and issue-tracking platform. It’s very straightforward and easy to use, with an excellent user interface. Features include task and activity tracking and collaboration tools.

No Kahuna is excellent for basic project management and ticket tracking. There aren’t a ton of features, which can be a very good thing. It’s very quick to get started, also a big plus.

There are free accounts available that include unlimited projects and users. However, if your projects accumulate more than 30 open tasks, you will need to upgrade. Paid options are reasonably priced, ranging from 3 projects for $9 per month up to 100 projects for $99 per month. Open-source projects are always free, no matter how many open tasks you have.

Basecamp

Basecamp is often considered to be the best project management and collaboration platform out there. Its features are impressive: to-do lists, file sharing, message boards, milestones, time tracking, project overviews and commenting.

The user interface is definitely one of the best out there, and because of its popularity, tons of other companies are making products that integrate with Basecamp, extending its capabilities.

Pricing is reasonable, though it’s definitely not the cheapest solution out there. The Basic plan is only $24 per month and includes up to 15 active projects, 3 GB of file storage and unlimited clients and users. The Max plan is a hefty $149 per month, but includes unlimited projects, 50 GB of file storage, time tracking, SSL security and a free Campfire Premium account.

2. Wiki-Based Project Management

Wikis are another option for project management, whether you use one instead of a basic project management application or in addition to one. One of the solutions below is geared to complete project management and includes additional features, while the other is just a wiki and is suitable for project management and other uses.

Trac Project

Trac Project is a project management app that is based on wiki functionality. It also includes a subversion browser, a timeline, ticket tracking, a road map (showing milestones and the number of current open and closed tickets) and builds status tracking.

One of Trac’s best features is the range of plug-ins available for it. There are plug-ins for Web administration, authentication, code documentation, file management, ticketing, testing, user management and version control.

Another big advantage: Trac is free and licensed under a modified BSD license.

PBwiki

PBwiki is one of the easiest free wikis out there to use. You can share files with other users, set access controls for individual pages and folders, add other users to your wiki, monitor and track version changes and more.

Setup is quick and easy and can be done in less than a minute. The PBwiki interface is very intuitive, and there is virtually no learning curve. Creating folders and pages is straightforward, as is editing existing pages. You can also comment on each page, and get a printable version with a single click.

There are multiple themes you can choose from for the design, as well as templates for individual page content (or you can start from scratch). There are a few different plans available, both paid and free. The free plan allows from 1 to 3 users. Paid plans range from $4 per month per user (if you have more than 10,000 users) to $8 per month per user (for 4 to 999 users).

3. Bug and Ticket Tracking

Any time you work on a Web application or website, there are going to be bugs and issues that crop up. While some basic project management applications have built-in ticket tracking, others don’t, and sometimes the built-in solution doesn’t quite meet your needs (either because it’s too robust or is missing key features).

16bugs

16bugs is a very simple bug-tracking system. Its main advantage is the color-coding system used for different types of information (like updates, comments and closed tickets).

Setup is quick and easy. The user interface is easy to figure out. Creating bugs is easy, and the color-coded labels on the activity tab make it easy to see what’s going on at a glance.

There are a variety of account types available. The free account allows 1 project, 1 MB of storage and Basecamp imports. Starting at $8 per month, paid plans include more projects (3 with the Basic plan), 150 MB to 10 GB of storage, RSS and email notifications, Campfire notifications and SSL (starting with the $15-per-month Big plan).

JIRA

JIRA is issue- and bug-tracking software that includes a lot of great features. It has advanced reporting features, workflow mapping as well as issue and project organizing; it is also customizable.

JIRA also offers a number of plug-ins to extend its functionality, including Bamboo integration, charting, time tracking, project management, a calendar and more. By using plug-ins, you can customize JIRA to meet your exact project management and issue-tracking needs.

JIRA’s biggest drawback is its pricing; it’s not cheap. A hosted account starts at $299 per month for up to 25 users and goes up from there (250 users costs $599 per month). If you want to download JIRA and host it on your own server, it starts at $1200 for a single project team, and goes as high as $4800 for an entire organization. If you need an academic license, solutions start at only $600.

4. Collaboration and Conferencing

If you’re working with a remote team on your project, you’re probably going to need some online space to collaborate and meet, whether it’s to work on general concepts or to work out specific bugs. Here are three solutions to help you collaborate with those on your team or with your clients.

activeCollab

activeCollab is a project management and collaboration tool that lets you set up a collaboration area right on your website. You can have unlimited projects, organized into groups for easy management.

Collaboration features include file sharing, discussions (set up like an online forum), assignments, collaborative writing and reminders. Project management features include printing and exporting, time tracking, calendar and schedule functionality, ticket management and milestones. Plug-ins (modules) mean that activeCollab can be extended to suit your specific needs.

There are two pricing options available: Corporate and Small Business. The Small Business edition includes source-code browsing, plug-in support, themes, discussions, milestones, checklists, files, project templates, a mobile interface and localization support. It’s priced at $199, with support and upgrades being an additional $99 per year after the first year. The Corporate edition has all of the above features, plus the calendar, tickets, time tracking, pages (with collaborative writing and more), a project explorer, and status updates. Both packages include unlimited projects and users. You can also purchase a Copyright Removal license, which removes the “activeCollab Powered” graphic from the footer of each page, for an additional $199.

DimDim

DimDim is a Web-conferencing platform that provides collaboration tools for meeting online. It’s scalable, reliable and flexible, with both hosted and on-site versions available.

DimDim allows you to share your desktop with those you’re meeting with, as well as share and present documents (both PowerPoint and PDFs). You can also share Whiteboards, and it has built-in voice-over-IP and teleconferencing capabilities. There are public and private chat capabilities as well as annotation and markup tools.

There are free and paid plans available. The free plan offers the complete feature set, with support for meetings of up to 20 people. DimDim Pro offers the complete feature set, plus custom branding and up to 100 people in a meeting for only $99 per year. There is also an Enterprise-level package that includes all of the above but also allows simultaneous meetings with up to 1000 attendees for $1998 per year.

Vyew

Vyew is a browser-based Web presentation service that allows for custom branding and PowerPoint-like authoring. With Vyew, you can give a live presentation or just post a document for your colleagues to review at their convenience.

Features include real-time desktop sharing, whiteboarding and drawing tools, embedded comments, built-in voice over IP, free teleconferencing, built-in webcam video support, text chat, dedicated rooms and direct URLs and more. It’s a complete solution for Web conferencing.

Vyew has a number of plans available, including a free plan, which includes unlimited meetings, SSL secure log-in, up to 20 participants (all seeing ads) and up to 5 VyewBooks (presentations) with up to 50 pages each. There are two paid plans: Plus at $6.95 per month, which includes everything the free plan has plus up to 25 participants (or 5 with no ads), and up to 25 VyewBooks with up to 100 pages each, and Professional at $13.95 per month, which includes everything the Plus plan has, but with up to 45 participants (or 15 with no ads), and up to 100 VyewBooks with up to 300 pages each.

5. Invoicing

Unless you’re working on an internal project, chances are you’ll need to send out invoices. Having an invoice program that also does proposals is helpful, as is having one that integrates directly with your project management app.

Simply Invoices

Simply Invoices integrates with Basecamp, More Honey, Tick and Harvest to invoice based on time that you track with those programs. Features include invoice templates, unlimited invoices, the ability to save invoices as PDFs and invoice tracking.

There are a few different plans available, including a free plan that includes up to five invoice templates and SSL support. Paid plans start at $9 per month (which includes up to ten invoice templates, plus a custom logo and link-free invoices) and go up to $25 per month (which includes an unlimited number of templates).

Less Accounting

Less Accounting is a simple online accounting and invoicing program that is incredibly easy to use. Less Accounting has a variety of features, including proposal creation and tracking, mileage tracking, sales-lead management and expense tracking. You can import your existing Wesabe.com account, and you can even invite your CPA to look at your books. Less Accounting also sends a weekly email with an update on the status of your accounts.

There are a variety of account plans available, including a free plan. The free plan includes up to 5 invoices, expenses, sales notes, deposits, proposals, mileage logs each month, SSL encryption, reports and bank-account integration. The paid plans range from the Even Less plan at $12 per month (including invoicing, expenses, contacts, SSL encryption, technical support, deposits and reports) to the More plan at $24 per month (including everything in the Even Less plan, plus sales notes, bank accounts, proposals, mileage logs, bank reconciliation, support for multiple types of sales tax and more). A 30-day free trial is available for all plans.

6. Time Tracking

Whether you need to keep track of your time for billing purposes, for your boss, or just to measure your own productivity, chances are you’ll need a time-tracking application.

LiveTimer

LiveTimer is an easy-to-use time-tracking program that works on both your computer and iPhone. It can be used for billing purposes or simply to improve your productivity and accountability.

Features include a daily ledger, bulk time entry (by day or week), customizable classifications, multiple currencies, custom billing rates, intelligent report filters and a developer API. The iPhone integration makes it easy to track your time even if you’re not at your desk, making it more useful than many other Web-based time-tracking applications.

Pricing is cheap, at only $5 per active user per month. Qualifying non-profits get a 50% discount. There is a 30-day free trial available.

fourteenDayz

fourteenDayz is a time-tracking program specifically for teams. It features day-by-day time sheets, exportable reports (in both PDF and Excel formats), drag-and-drop categories and no user limit.

There are 6 different plans offered, including a free account (which includes up to 4 active projects/clients, 10 project categories, an unlimited number of users and reporting functions). The paid plans range from the Personal at $5 per month (which includes the free account features plus up to 7 active projects/clients, 15 project categories, 30 project subcategories and PDF reports) to the Platinum at $99 per month (which includes all the Personal features plus unlimited active projects/clients, unlimited project categories and subcategories, XLS/CSV exportability and SSL connections).