Keys to Project Success - Part 4

Use the Plan and Keep It Alive

Failing to plan is planning to fail. And failing to use the plan after it is developed is just as bad as no planning at all. It never fails to surprise me when I see a project manager move into a ‘fly by the seat of their pants’ approach part way through a project, no longer using their plan. A typical conversation might go as follows:

Me: “So where are we on the project?”

Project Manager: “Um, good, I think…”

Me: “You think? I don’t understand. How are we tracking to schedule and budget?”

Shawn Sheridan, Tuesday, 13 May 2014

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Keys to Project Success - Part 3

Don’t Skimp on Planning

I should start off this segment by defining what I consider “planning” to be. Planning is not just scheduling, although many ‘project managers’ I’ve encountered in my career consider the creation of a project schedule the totality of their planning work. For me, planning is much, much more. Planning is determining not only the sequence of events and the expected effort involved (in other words, the schedule), and not just who of the existing team is going to do the work, but is in fact the creation of a comprehensive model of everything that will happen to

Shawn Sheridan, Tuesday, 29 April 2014