Most people are aware of a Value Proposition and Business Case. The purpose of the Value Proposition document is to define the overall benefits and costs of a project at a very high level. The Business Case document allows you to provide much more diligence on the costs and benefits, while still not requiring you to actually go through the effort of chartering the work at this time. [Read more…]

At the completion of a major project milestone or phase, the team should take a short pause to ensure that the prior work was completed successfully and that the project team and the client are ready to proceed to the next major phase. Here are some of the activities in the phase gate review meeting. [Read more…]

by Omar Al Saadoon

The title of this article does not suggest the fear of stakeholders in the construction industry in the UAE or any other country affected by the global downturn is wholly irrational. No, on the contrary, the fact the UAE is currently experiencing a dramatic and unprecedented slowdown in its construction industry (which apparently accounts in part for Dubai’s first budget deficit in 2009) is symptomatic of the global fear of the instability of global financial markets and the ability of banks to lend to the public and each other. It is difficult to guage the actual effect of the downturn on the local construction industry given the UAE does not publish its GDP date on a quarterly basis. [Read more…]

by David Dale

Break Summary Activities into Two or More Detailed Activities

Since you chose to break a summary activity into smaller activities, it does not make sense to only have one detailed activity under a summary one. If you do, the detailed activity represents the exact same work as the summary activity. This does not buy you anything. If this occurs in your WBS, you either need to: [Read more…]

The larger your project gets, the more you will find that the issues you encounter are more and more political in nature. The issues have to do with the use of resources, project direction, project deliverables, how the project should be run, how the project impacts people, etc. The resolution of these issues requires you to gain consensus among people that have differences of opinion. In other words, the resolution requires you to recognize and work in office politics. [Read more…]

Large projects should apply more diligence throughout the change management process. Change does not always happen neatly. In many cases, it may be hard to understand the nature of a change and the impact to the various aspects of the project. For example a small request can come into the project that results in a change to scope. The scope change request may lead to a request to increase schedule and budget. The request might impact the types of resources that are needed on the project ands it might effect a vendor contract. The project manager needs to understand the nature of the change and how it might impact all other aspects of the project. [Read more…]

Sometimes when you try to resolve a problem, you find that what you thought was a root cause is really a related symptom, not the actual cause of the problem itself. Consider the following classic example. [Read more…]

The process for building the WBS is as follows: [Read more…]

The project approach is a section in the Project Charter that describes in words the thinking that goes into the creation of the project schedule. There are two benefits to creating an approach section. First, this information will help the client and stakeholders understand how the project will progress without having to interpret the actual schedule. [Read more…]