Method123 Blog

Project Management Life Cycle ...Avoiding confusion with Project Life Cycle   Project Management Life Cycle vs Project Life Cycle Unfortunately, I've seen many cases where these two are used interchangeably without acknowledging that they are truly two different and distinct things. The Project Management Life Cycle is defined by the methodology used to manage projects in your organization. MPMM©, like the PMBOK©, utilizes Initiation, Planning, Executing, and Closure phases in the PMLC. The Project Life Cycle (PLC) lives mostly within the Executing phase of the PMLC. If the project is a software development project that PLC will often be referred...

We've worked with many organizations that have put in place some fairly mature project management processes and implemented what they call 'Governance'. While we 100% support the practice of providing a defined process around project, program and portfolio management we have detected a trend in organizations experiencing some unintended consequences of governance. Specifically, adopting a 'one size fits all' model to governance can be detrimental to the organization and to the PMO. By forcing all projects to conform to a rigid standard of controls (governance) we risk slowing down the execution of projects and overburdening them with too much process....

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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...

One of the most frequently debated questions we have seen in today's PMO environment is that of "How much is enough process, governance and oversight"? Business managers want to be nimble and responsive and sometimes have little appetite for what they perceive as the bureaucracy of the PMO office. Project team members and SMEs may likewise feel like they are being slowed down by complying with the methodology of the PMO. To all sides of this argument, we say "Yes! You can make reasonable compromises to reduce project overhead." It all comes down to Risk management and how much tolerance you have...