If you want to know how to reduce financial wastage and cost overrun on projects and the applied best practices to enable project success, then this book is for you. This book reveals the many challenges of project control in practice and then provides practical good practices to overcome them. This is done by presenting a robust project control framework that includes several good practices to mitigate project control inhibitors and enhance the entire project control process. The core project control techniques and methods in practice and how to design an enabling environment for effective project control are also explained. The aim of this book is to expose the readers to several good practices which they can then apply confidently to enhance the success of their projects.
In previous years, setting up IT infrastructure involved just the preparation of the data center. It has become much more complex and evolved today. The infrastructure includes not only the data center facility, but also the entire organization by providing internet connectivity to customers, vendors, and company executives on the move. Mastering IT Project Management is the first book to detail how to create IT infrastructure rather than simply describe how to manage the IT function or software development. This unique and comprehensive reference covers all aspects needed to successfully manage this type of project in an organization. J. Ross Publishing offers an add-on at a nominal cost — Downloadable, customizable tools and templates ready for immediate implementation.
ADVANCED PROJECT MANAGEMENT AUTHORITATIVE STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT Senior managers at world-class corporations open their office doors to discuss case studies that demonstrate their thought processes and actual strategies that helped them lead their companies to excellence in project management in less than six years! Following the Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®), industry leaders address: Project risk management Project portfolio management The Project Office Project management multinational cultures Integrated project teams and virtual project teams
Follow three project managers as they apply the 44 best project practices in different organizations. See how they adapt them to each organization and projects of differing sizes and scales. Chris Pimbock is a new project manager who works for a small rapidly growing startup. Their continuing growth, however, is slowed by customer service problems. Staff and resources are severely limited. Chris has to design a project to fix the problem without busting the budget. He needs to work with marketing people who are nearly hysterical over losing clients because of the customer service problems. They need better systems, more efficient facilities and streamlined operations. Projects are fairly new to the company and the sponsors, affected managers and the professional staff don't know the role they should play. Management also has a problem in setting priorities and sticking to them.Terrie Evans has her PMP and 5 years of experience in a medium-sized Midwest public corporation. Her company is also suffering from customer service problems that are causing customers to leave for smaller more agile competitors. Marketing blames Operations and fingers are pointed in many other directions so blame avoidance is a major issue. There is also significant money involved. Terri is already getting project change requests to add items cut from last year's budget plus other "goodies". Additionally, everyone's favorite vendors are wrestling for advantage in the upcoming competitive bidding. If that wasn't enough, Terrie also has problems building her team. Departments are hedging on committing to lend resources to the project. Worse many of the team members see themselves as representing the interests of their "home" departments rather than doing actual project work.Preston McCarthy is a senior project manager (engagement manager) for an international consulting firm. He's managing a strategic project to improve customer service for a client's global operations. His team is composed of technical experts from Preston's firm and the client's employees. The latter are drawn from 5 countries, speak 3 different languages and have starkly different cultures. The client has twice tried to solve their customer service problems with solely internal teams. Both efforts failed miserably without fixing the problems. The top client executive will be retiring in a year and the VP's have already begun competing for the position. Everyone views customer service improvement project as either a prize or a target.
The rules and practices for Scrum—a simple process for managing complex projects—are few, straightforward, and easy to learn. But Scrum’s simplicity itself—its lack of prescription—can be disarming, and new practitioners often find themselves reverting to old project management habits and tools and yielding lesser results. In this illuminating series of case studies, Scrum co-creator and evangelist Ken Schwaber identifies the real-world lessons—the successes and failures—culled from his years of experience coaching companies in agile project management. Through them, you’ll understand how to use Scrum to solve complex problems and drive better results—delivering more valuable software faster. Gain the foundation in Scrum theory—and practice—you need to: Rein in even the most complex, unwieldy projects Effectively manage unknown or changing product requirements Simplify the chain of command with self-managing development teams Receive clearer specifications—and feedback—from customers Greatly reduce project planning time and required tools Build—and release—products in 30-day cycles so clients get deliverables earlier Avoid missteps by regularly inspecting, reporting on, and fine-tuning projects Support multiple teams working on a large-scale project from many geographic locations Maximize return on investment!
The key to successful project control is the fusing of cost to schedule whereby the management of one helps to manage the other. Project Control: Integrating Cost and Schedule in Construction explores the reasons behind and the methodologies for proper planning, monitoring, and controlling both project costs and schedule. Filling a current void the topic of project control applied to the construction industry, it is essential reading for students and professionals alike.
You CAN Turn Around A Failing Project! Poor project results are all too common and result in dissatisfied customers, users, and project staff. With countless people, goals, objectives, expectations, budgets, schedules, deliverables, and deadlines to consider, it can be difficult to keep projects in focus and on track. How to Save a Failing Project: Chaos to Control arms project managers with the tools and techniques needed to address these project challenges. The authors provide guidance to develop a project plan, establish a schedule for execution, identify project tracking mechanisms, and implement turnaround methods to avoid failure and regain control. With this valuable resource you will be able to: • Identify key factors leading to failure • Learn how to recover a failing project and minimize future risk • Better analyze your project by defining proper business objectives and goals • Gain insight on industry best practices for planning
Incomplete or missed requirements, omissions, ambiguous product features, lack of user involvement, unrealistic customer expectations, and the proverbial scope creep can result in cost overruns, missed deadlines, poor product quality, and can very well ruin a project. Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects describes how to elicit, document, and manage requirements to control project scope creep. It also explains how to manage project stakeholders to minimize the risk of an ever-growing list of user requirements. The book begins by discussing how to collect project requirements and define the project scope. Next, it considers the creation of work breakdown structures and examines the verification and control of the scope. Most of the book is dedicated to explaining how to collect requirements and how to define product and project scope inasmuch as they represent the bulk of the project scope management work undertaken on any project regardless of the industry or the nature of the work involved. The book maintains a focus on practical and sensible tools and techniques rather than academic theories. It examines five different projects and traces their development from a project scope management perspective—from project initiation to the end of the execution and control phases. The types of projects considered include CRM system implementation, mobile number portability, port upgrade, energy-efficient house design, and airport check-in kiosk software. After reading this book, you will learn how to create project charters, high-level scope, detailed requirements specifications, requirements management plans, traceability matrices, and a work breakdown structure for the projects covered.
This book is intended to train the readers in basic project management principles for directing the course of a project. The hands-on approach presented in this book takes them through the necessary details for a good understanding of what to expect to complete a successful project. Users of this book will have an understanding, after following through the step-by-step stages, of how to plan and schedule projects. This systematic approach includes the application of project management software.
