Entries by Bonnie Biafore

Objectives for Successful Testing

Testing your project’s products is a critical step in delivering successful projects – testing is one way to confirm that your project accomplishes what it’s supposed to. An effective testing scheme must meet the following objectives. Validate that requirements are satisfied. There should be a specific test for every requirement to confirm that it has […]

Win-Win: Increasing Project Delivery Capability by Providing Opportunity to Your Teams

Providing opportunities to team members makes them individually more capable, which leads to more organizational capability for delivering projects. Here are things you can do – TODAY – to create this win-win environment.  Encourage sharing of risks and issues that may arise. Project status can change based on what’s been completed, what’s delayed, what stakeholders […]

What Conditions Must Be Met to Close Out a Change Request?

In project change management, stakeholders might request a change to introduce new functions, modify a requirement, or resolve an issue. Many project managers close a change record when the change control board approves the change to proceed. Others when the change has been completed and included in the project deliverables. Neither approach is valid, because […]

Refining Your Project Resource Plans

The people who work on your project are both a significant factor in its success and a significant cost. So, it’s a good idea to analyze resource plans with an eye to maximizing success while minimizing cost. Here are a few things to think about to make your resource plans shine. Get skill levels just […]

Boost the Power of Milestones

Project managers typically show progress with milestones that represent the completion of significant deliverables. But that only scratches the surface of what milestones can show for progress. Here are some other ways to highlight progress with milestones. Progress points on the timeline. Particularly for longer projects, you can create milestones to denote that one quarter, […]

Creating Achievable Project Goals

Want to make project goals achievable? Start by making sure they’re clearly articulated and supported by key stakeholders. That’s no guarantee though because other conditions can affect their achievability. Here are actions to help ensure your project goals are reasonable and motivate your project team. Include training and experimentation tasks in your plan. You will […]

Organizational Factors to Consider in Project Requirements

Business needs aren’t the only things you need to look at when developing project requirements. Organizational customs and characteristics as well as the regulatory environment within an industry also come into play. Here are other elements to analyze as you work on project requirements.  Language and process variation across the organization. To create requirements that […]

Are You an Overloaded Project Manager?

Project managers usually manage more than one project at a time, which means they provide more value to their organization. But problems can arise when a project manager has too much work to do.  The Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct recommends that project managers be honest and work within their skills […]

How to Leverage Organizational Change Management in Your Projects

Projects drive change, so good change management is important for delivering project objectives successfully. Integrating project management with organizational change management means  that you manage the development of deliverables while also  making sure that stakeholders can use those deliverables to deliver business value. Here’s are some tips for  leveraging change management in your project plans. […]

Managing Virtual Team Members

Managing a remote (virtual) team has some nuances over managing an onsite team. A few adjustments can make a big difference in your success with virtual team members. Here are a few techniques that can help your remote resources work as part of a productive team. Hold frequent short meetings. Schedule meetings 3 times a […]