Project Sponsor Attributes and Responsibilities List
The project sponsor is your project's champion. This guideline will help you pick the right person for this important job.
View ArticleBusiness Case Planning Checklist
Formulating a business case and proposing your project to senior management for buy-in can be tricky. Don't dive right in and start writing. Begin with a solid checklist of guidelines to ensure a...
View ArticleMethodology Implementation Project Charter
This is a high-level example of a Project Charter for implementing a methodology, but the structure and approach will work for many projects. This example is heavy on risks and assumptions, light on...
View ArticleQuick Project Risk Assessment Questionnaire
What's the first step in looking at the risks you face in delivering your project? Before performing a full-blow assessment, you may want to ask yourself a few simple questions. This 10 minute, 27...
View ArticleApplication Development Risk Assessment Checklist
Building an application? This checklist outlines 52 potential risk areas in application development, defining low, medium and high risk levels for each. Classifying your project risk in each of these...
View ArticlePresenting Your Business Case to Management
Presenting a winning business case with the right amount of the right information for the right audience is the key to getting approval and funding for your project! Here is a presentation that will...
View ArticleStandard Business Case
Document a business case to persuade upper management to fund your project. Keep it short and succinct enough that the busy executive management audience will read and digest it. It should directly...
View ArticleProject Concept
Finding sponsors to back your project is an art. Make a compelling case for the project to gain sponsor support when you are pitching your business case to executive management. Here is an example of a...
View ArticleTips for a Successful Business Case
This excellent project justification guide will provide sophisticated advice to maximize the impact of your business case, making it accurate, complete and persuasive. In addition, learn some handy...
View ArticleROI Calculator
The attached tool has been developed to assist you in generating some solid payback data to be used to evaluate the return potential of your proposed method. Not only will it help the gods of finance...
View ArticleRisk Analysis and Contingency Plan Guidelines
No project was ever completed on time and within budget. Identifying risks associated with a project and mitigating them is a crucial activity of project planning. Managers need to not only analyze...
View ArticleRisk Assessment Summary Checklist
This checklist is a quick and dirty way of weighing risk factors against project criteria to discover level of risk.
View ArticleProject Sponsor Checklist
The project sponsor checklist describes ways for the project sponsor to provide commitment and project support in an effective, visible manner.
View ArticleStrategy-Focused Project Charter
This template outlines a classic Project Charter with a focus on project definition and strategic ties. Risks and stakeholder needs are covered, but not in granular detail. It is appropriate for fairly...
View ArticleBusiness Case
Mission-critical projects need to be well-justified, with clear goals that can be referenced throughout the life of the project. This business case template offers an excellent approach to goal-setting...
View ArticleUntangling the Project Organizational Chart
Organizational charts can become a tangled mess of lines and overlapping boxes. The project manager must untangle this mess so the project can progress. Sounds like a little R&R is what we all need...
View ArticleYou Wanna Be Starting Something?
Determining the nature and scope of a project is essential to refining how the resulting effort will accomplish business needs. A crucial component of this is having the knowledge of the business...
View ArticleCalculating Level of Effort: How Do We Approach It?
Why is LOE as important for a project as other aspects like stakeholder satisfaction, cost overshoot and schedule variance? And are you approaching it the right way?
View ArticleJekyll & Hyde PM: Managing Project Shifts
The most significant challenge for any project manager is when projects shift modes. The shift from startup to execution, and the shift from execution to closeout, requires a change in mindset. Each...
View ArticleOpening Day PM: How to Start on a New Project
Starting a project is difficult. It's important as a PM to establish who you are as a person in the beginning, particularly with respect to how you will treat the project work and the individuals who...
View ArticleDivide and Direct
Dividing your project into smaller parts that are more controllable helps you move closer to your ultimate goal: successfully achieving your project deliverables and high user satisfaction. Follow...
View ArticleBeware of Assumptions!
Assumptions are some of the biggest culprits in scope creep, misunderstandings and successful projects being declared failures. This article will provide examples of each--and ways to take the...
View ArticleThe Status Quo Problem
If you have always done something a certain way, no growth or development has occurred in capability. This is called stagnation, which breeds complacency, which often yields discontent. This in turn...
View ArticleTransparency in Project Management
Transparency in everyday project management practice sets the bar high and gives project managers and their teams a sense of responsibility to stand by. Aligned with selected Process Groups and their...
View ArticleProject Performance Demystified: The Five Project Phases and How to Master Them
This article proposes that the most effective projects naturally develop and evolve through a series of distinct phases and asserts that failing to recognize these transitions helps explain why so many...
View ArticleThe (Often Overlooked) Importance of Project Initiation
We all know the importance of the initiation stage...right? So why do some companies utilize all of the project stages except initiation? Here, the author tackles some common misunderstandings.
View ArticleGetting Risky with Project Phases
Managing early-phase risks is akin to laying a solid foundation on which future project success can be built. The central theme of this article is to identify and create an awareness of major risks...
View ArticleProject Kickoff Worksheet
The project kickoff is one of the most critical activities on the project. This worksheet is intended to assist the project manager in preparing for the kickoff so that the meeting is as effective and...
View ArticleLogistics Project Management: The Basics
"Where's my package?" It's a question we are all familiar with. Project management in the field of logistics requires broad insight into a true end-to-end process, quality documentation and...
View ArticleAre You Failing Right?
An organization that isn't failing at anything is either paralyzed strategically or dangerously unaware of what's actually going on. Indeed, successful organizations often fail more than faltering...
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