There have been many articles written about requirements development from many perspectives. I happen to believe this is one of the hardest tasks of any project, and one of the key contributors to scope creep. As the initial scope statement is defined, everyone believes they understand it. But the devil is always in the details. As detailed requirements are elaborated from the scope definition, the misunderstandings emerge and the estimates in time and resources get blown. Now as project manager you are faced with the all too familiar triple constraint dance of getting permission to add more resources, or time, or reducing some of the requirements. › Continue reading…
Tag: Objectives
Tags: Goals, Objectives, Requirements
Week 2 of celebrity apprentice was another star studded showdown, where the teams began to move past the usual team dynamics of forming, through to storming. Last week things were so cordial that when the women were in the boardroom, Donald was reduced to vulgarity out of frustration because they wouldn’t throw each other under the bus. This week, we began to see some of the personality conflicts staging as the stress of the task set in.
Some people think of those 3 letters and hold up the sign of the cross as if to ward off vampires. For some reason this seems to be one of those areas of project management work that meets with more resistance than most from beginning practitioners. I’m often asked “Do we really need to go to all the trouble of creating one of those?” There seems to be confusion about what a WBS is and why anyone would need one, and generally speaking a lot of fear about the effort involved to prepare one. › Continue reading…
In the hectic pace that can set in on projects, in spite of our best intentions in the beginning, we often find ourselves racing frantically through the end of one phase of work right into the next – especially if we’re a wee bit behind schedule and need to catch up. Don’t do it! Take the time to stop and assess the work effort in a tollgate phase review. Neglecting to get formal stakeholder approval of the work can backfire later in the project. › Continue reading…