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9 views into your organization with a project management lens

Portfolio Planning August 30, 2010

Project management offers a way to breath new life into your organization’s competitive and operational advantage, but why is project management seemingly stuck in engineering or scientific theory? Project management may look like an engineering, top-down control process, but project management is less process and more a discipline:  like accounting.  Anyone familiar with accounting knows asset [...]

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2 priorities for competitive advantage

Organization Behavior August 26, 2010

In addition to sales and finance, there are 2 complimentary organization priorities that leaders should focus on to achieve and sustain excellence: understand motivation deliver projects in a routine manner Organizations can stake out a competitive advantage by doing things cheaper or doing things better.  Motivation and project management are 2 ways an organization can [...]

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Organizations don’t change, people change

Organization Behavior July 30, 2010

Organizations are, quite simply, made up of social interactions:  groups of people.  Organizations will not change if people do not change.  There is no such thing as organization change, they don’t change, people change. All change:  transformation, business process reengineering, technology implementation, mergers & acquisitions, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, strategic planning or, if you [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 2

Portfolio Planning July 2, 2010

The key for organizations to grow and to thrive relies on how to manage projects and how to manage projects for organization success becomes an industry competitive advantage.  But why do so many projects fail? Is it lack of preparation? Is it lack of communication? Is it lack of commitment? No, those are symptoms. Projects [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template

Portfolio Planning June 29, 2010

On my previous post, Scope or:  how to manage projects for organization success that included the eBook Scope – Kills Bad Breath and Kills Projects [link below] I introduced the importance of scope before a project launches.  The numbers on project failure are sobering:  90% of all projects fail and this post follows up both the [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 1

Portfolio Planning June 18, 2010

Organizations rely on projects to remain competitive.  Projects are the way organizations deliver and realize their executive strategies.  The ability to deliver a project is the ability to compete.  Scope kills projects and projects that are not delivered kill organizations.  Scope is one of the most important ways to manage project success.  And when projects [...]

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Jane Stachowiak, Director, Student Wellness & Health Promotion-LiveWell, Berklee College of Music

Impact May 20, 2010

Working with Toby Elwin in 2009 I was fortunate to reverse the role of mentor/mentee.  The mentor (me) received great advice and help from someone I have been mentoring over the past two decades. Toby Elwin played a major role at Berklee College of Music in transforming its student 8-page print newspaper into an electronic [...]

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4 tips to use Twitter for project management

Portfolio Planning January 21, 2010

In my last post I presented a case to manage your projects as a business portfolio. The ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and within scope directly impacts your organization’s ability to compete and stay alive and project failure is an organization-wide risk. In this post I want to introduce Twitter to manage [...]

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Why your business strategy is a project portfolio

Portfolio Planning January 13, 2010

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy. The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as [...]

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IT failure, too much information in Information Technology

Portfolio Planning December 8, 2009

Technology enables information, but why are so many information technology projects failing? 74% of all projects fail, come in over budget, or run past the original deadline* 90% of major Information Technology (IT) project initiatives fail to be completed on time and on budget* A survey by the international consulting firm KPMG finds that 56% [...]

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Change management, project management, and the intervention

Organization Behavior October 15, 2009

Change Management is the Illness Overwhelmingly, organizations rely on process analysis to identify opportunity for savings. Process analysis is most commonly identified as change management. Change Management: Analyze and diagnose business and operations processes with a focus on the greatest areas of improvement in cost, schedule, and quality. Very few enjoy having themselves and their [...]

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Change: this time let’s try something new

Talent Management October 5, 2009

In today’s Boston Sunday Globe Ideas section, under the Uncommon Knowledge, Surprising insights from the Social Sciences, by Kevin Lewis, I read the following: A Time to Try Something New* Whenever you’ve experienced major changes in life, have you sought comfort in familiar things? If you’re like most people, your answer is yes. However, new [...]

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Statistically, your strategy will fail

Portfolio Planning May 14, 2009

I recently ran across a statistics book and began to think about similarities to strategic planning. Statistics:  a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data.  It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data. Until this week, I had not thought statistics had as much in [...]

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