Method123 Blog

Business Case and Project Management Templates

Jim Lombardi

Writing a Business Case with Project Management Templates We all know that successful Project Management is about delivering projects on time, within budget and to specification. But what many forget is that it’s also important to deliver the business benefits to the customer. If your projects do not result in the stated business benefits, then your customer will not gain the return on investment expected, thereby affecting the level of success of your project. So how do you ensure that your projects consistently deliver the stated business benefits to your customer? You can do this, by creating a “Business Case”...

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Resource Management

Jim Lombardi

Resource Management

5 Common Mistakes We have seen many organizations mistakenly undertake a failed attempt at performing what they routinely call "Resource Management" in the name of organizational effectiveness and accountability. Unfortunately, what we have found is that too many of the organizations espousing the virtues of resource management are really attempting to address internal problems that they are not tackling head-on -- namely, what are all these people in my organization doing? The first step in an effort to do real resource management is to ask the hard question "What problem are we trying to solve with resource management"? Let me...

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Conducting a Business Case Analysis

Jim Lombardi

he conducting of a business case analysis is always done by the stakeholders of a project. This is because they will be financially responsible for the success or failure of this business venture. They will also be the ones that have the greatest chance of losing money if the right decision is not made. There is another person in the organization that should also do a business case analysis. This is the project manager. This will allow them to thoroughly understand just what is needed, to gain approval from the stakeholders. The first step in a business case analysis is...

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Be Proactive Managing a Project with Unrealistic Budget

Jim Lombardi

Be Proactive Managing a Project with Unrealistic Budget

If you are a project manager dealing with what you perceive to be an unrealistic budget, the first thing you will want to do is discuss this with your sponsor to see if there are any factors that are driving the project budget. For instance, there may be budgetary restrictions. If you are a vendor, it is possible your sales people committed to a fixed price for the project. In some cases your manager or sponsor might set an arbitrary budget without much justification. It does not necessarily make your challenge any easier, but you may find that by better...

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Dealing with Troubled Projects

Jim Lombardi

Every organization will have to deal with projects that are under-performing, over budget, behind schedule -- in a word troubled ! We identify 2 very specific things that organizations need to do in response. The first is immediate and the later is a more systematic response to prevent projects in the future from becoming troubled. 1. Deal with Troubled Projects Head On When a project gets in trouble, too often, the first tendency is to extend the deadline and spend more money on it in hopes of getting it finished. This is a bad idea, especially if the situation occurs...

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