Selected Course Videos & Articles Dick Billows,PMP and a project manager discusses techniques for defining project scope on even small projects. This includes the questions to ask and how to handle a boss or project sponsor who wants you to start work NOW. They also cover how to know if you have a well defined project scope. Don't bury small projects under a mountain of paperwork and project management processes that contribute no value. Follow our 5-step Achievement-driven Project Methodology. In an excerpt from our new Self-study Video: Project Basics, two project managers closeout the WBS lecture with a discussion of the "right" amount of detail. They also debate how to cope with a sponsor who demands micro-management. Add your suggestion on handling this situation to our PM Blog. Watch the video of a PM making two try's at convincing a sponsor of the value of a project management plan. Evaluate the PM's work and make your suggestion on handling this situation in our PM Blog. Gathering requirements is a key step in launching a successful project. Dick Billows, PMP, GCA answers a project manager's questions about this tricky process. The video is a sample from our just-released Video-Book: Project Basics.  Video: Contracting & Outsourcing
Evaluate a project manager's performance on three ways to handle soliciting bids from contractors. Then share your thoughts in our Project Blog Video: Handling a Poor Performer Watch the video of a project manager trying three techniques to cope with a poor performing team member borrowed from another department. Is the PM using PMI Best Practices? Video Risk Mgt for small & mid-size projects 8 minute video lecture on risk management techniques that make risk management pay for itself on even small projects . Answer questions about your project plan Presenting your project plan and schedule is not enough. You need to be able to answer executive and stakeholder questions about how you’ll control the project. The answers need to build your credibility, not undermine it. Try your hand at these three video skill checks from our 4PM.com courses then write your answers in our blog. Executives who ask PMs foolish questions Watch the project video and test your skill in handling a tough but foolish sponsor. Even savvy execs can have wrong ideas about projects and you need to be subtle in coaching them to avoid executive wrath. Project from Hell Video: Organizations Our 4PM.com investigative reporter, Lisa Lamoure takes a humorous look at a serious subject. What really happens inside organizations where projects almost always fail? Is it the team members, the PM, the executives? Lisa eavesdrops and tells all. Work Breakdown Structure The work breakdown structure (WBS) is the spine of a project schedule and a glance at one will tell you how a PM intends to manage and what kind of control he or she will exercise over the project and its team. Crafting your WBS the right way is a complex design challenge which takes a lot of thinking about project design and making crystal clear assignments. Doing it the wrong way is an easy, almost clerical task. Project from Hell: The Sponsor Watch the latest project from hell videoor read how our project superhero(ine) handles project planning with the worst sponsor you have ever seen. Making Good Assignments to your Project Team Consistently successful projects are built on project team members who know what is expected of them before they start work. But the majority of team members don’t know so they waste time guessing and worrying about doing the wrong thing. There is a better way read the whole article. Planning with a Demanding Project Sponsor Watch the video as three project managers try different techniques to plan a project with a demanding sponsor who wants a date commitment now but wants to plan the project "as we go." Watch the video (5 minutes) Project Estimating: Good, Bad & "In the Ball Park" Estimating project duration and costs is tough for even the most skilled PMs and it taxes executives too. See some of the estimating fantasies and some ideas that will help. Read the article and then comment in the blog Three Moments of Truth on a Project If your projects are like a circus where you march behind the elephant with a big shovel, consider how you are handling the three moments of truth that largely determine how sponsors, stakeholders and your team will interact with you. Top-down Project Planning Illustrated lecture about how top down project planning improves success rates and increases project control . Watch the Video (5 min) by Dick Billows, PMP Don't fall into the the Activity Trap Instead, frame your project within measured business achievements and give everyone crystal-clear and unambiguous checkpoints to monitor. Borrowing Project Team Members Try to borrow a team member or two from another department and suddenly it's the middle ages with feudal department managers fighting to the death to avoid sharing a resource. Sure they promised their "full support"; during initiation but now you have to battle for each of your resources. Read the article. Project Offices: Good, Bad & Clueless Too many project offices (PMO) are known for paper-shuffling, pointless meetings, bureaucracy and little else. There are alternatives designs that may fit your organization and produce business value, not just paper Manage Projects with More than Just Dates Sponsors and project managers doom their projects to failure when they manage only the due date rather than all four corners of a project: business value, budget, risk and due date. When we focus only on dates, people may lower the business value, increase the risk, and increase the cost of hitting that day without giving decision-makers the opportunity to decide which trade-offs they want. In this issue we lay out how to manage the trade-offs between these four corners to improve project success rates. Read the article Status Reports that Stupefy Too often project managers deliver progress reports that stupefy executives and tell them nothing about what's going on. This undermines the PM's credibility. These mind-numbing techniques range from "techno -babble" to the "Girl Scout cookie approach." Read the full article. Where is your Organization in its PM Evolution? As organizations evolve though stages in their project management processes, knowing where your company is can help you survive and do better on your projects. Read the whole article What's The Right Size WBS? The WBS is not just a big "To Do" list, but too many project managers think it is. It's better to view it as the platform for your assignments to team members, your early warning triggers on problems and your foundation for solving them. See how we do it in our AdPM approach. Read the article Why do so Many Project Fail? Many organizations suffer 50% or higher project failure rates. We look at the reasons and what's required of PMs, sponsors, portfolio managers and team members to improve success rates. Read the full article Chartering: Throwing Gasoline on Smoldering Embers A good project charter throws gasoline on smoldering embers. We want all the potential problems to flare up before we start work on the project so we can resolve then early. 5 Dumbest Things a Project Manager Can Say We've identified the dumbest things that a PM can say to a sponsor or team member. We take you through the lifecycle with examples of all the bad moves Fast Food Project Management Are users and clients pulling up to your project drive-in window and just shouting their requirements? All project drive-ins are unhappy places that get lots of complaints because 80% of the projects leave their users with indigestion. See how to do initiation the right way. Making Good Team Assignments By Dick Billows, PMP At 4pm.com, we spend a lot of time teaching clients and students to manage projects with achievements and not fall into what we call the “Activity Trap.” PMs fall into this trap when their project plan is nothing but a “to do” list of features, good ideas and a laundry list of requirements. These PM’s projects fail most of the time - finishing late, over budget and producing little of value because of the double-curse of the activity trap: Click to read the rest of the article WBS Style: Designer or Tacky You can slop together a tacky work breakdown structure (WBS) that is just a big "to do" list. That leads to : -
unclear assignments for project team members, -
poor scope control, -
limited ability to measure progress or spot problems until it is too late -
inaccurate estimates.
Are puppy projects making a mess of your portfolio? Gaining control of an organization's portfolio of projects is no easy matter. Each segment of the portfolio presents its own challenges. But, no segment is tougher to control than the segment we call puppy projects. Organizations give birth to litters of these little projects every year and they usually run uncontrolled, making a mess everywhere. Executives often kid themselves, thinking that they can focus on only the large strategic projects and somehow ram those through. However, that never works because there are too many puppies underfoot, and the mess they make is down low in the organization. Click to see the remainder of the article. Tiers of PM Evolutions Organizations pass through stages of development as their PM processes evolve. Read what happens at each stage and how to cope. Read the article Resource Leveling: Smart Move? In the PM's lounge here at 4PM.com, we hear tales of old-timers or academics who tell newer project managers never to use resource leveling. For those who don’t know the term, or how it’s applied in modern project management software, resource leveling is a process where the software ensures that no resources are assigned more work than their maximum availability on the project. The software delays tasks to achieve this. The old timers say resource leveling increases the duration, and sometimes it does. But not leveling a schedule is just a form of kidding ourselves about the project's completion date. Why turn out a schedule that shows us finishing on June 30th, but hidden in the details are work schedules that are based on some people working 80 hours a week for months? In certain environments you can make a phone call and get 15 new resources who will start work on your project Monday morning. Only then can you skip resource leveling, but in today’s resource constrained organizations, we have to use resource leveling to ensure the schedules we're creating are based on people’s actual availability, not on some fictional utilization. | 
