In some organizations, the project manager is accountable for the success of the project, but does not have the right level of responsibility. You are typically asked to manage a project utilizing people when you do not have direct management responsibility over them. You may also find that your ability to resolve issues is hampered because you are not high enough in the organization and you must often rely on more senior management for help. In other instances, you may find that your ability to be innovative and flexible is constrained by organizational policies and inertia. [Read more...]

The Requirements Management Plan describes how you will elicit, analyze, document and manage the requirements of the project. This plan will cover the up-front gathering of high-level project and product requirements, as well as the more detailed product requirements that you will collect during the project lifecycle. [Read more...]

The Staffing Management Plan describes your overall approach for acquiring and managing human resources on your project. The types of information to include in this plan include: [Read more...]

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...]