Projects Articles

Alex S. Brown, PMP IPMA-C

Driving a Marketing Vision Using Project Management

Saturday, 12 May 2007 by Alex Brown

Most marketing professionals do not understand or profit from the discipline of project management. Learn how one company used project management as a way to drive and define its marketing vision. Learn from this case study, so your marketing and sales departments can begin experiencing the benefits of project management.

Presented at the PMI Asia Pacific Congress in Hong Kong on January 30, 2007.

Hear and See the Full Presentation of “Project Charters Bridge Cultures”

Sunday, 14 January 2007 by Alex Brown

Learn how project charters successfully bridged cultural gaps when making decisions among a community of Japanese and U.S. executives. Establishing a clear chartering process was the key to project management’s success at the company. The presentation will include templates and overviews of the processes established.
This speech was delivered and recorded live for the PMI New [...]

Strategic Project Management

Tuesday, 21 November 2006 by Alex Brown

It is time to put project management on the agenda of the board meetings for your organization. Traditionally project management has been a tool for scheduling, planning, and execution. It brings efficiency and predictability to organizations that embrace it. Usually it is adopted by mid-level management to optimize one or two department’s activities. Learn about how the President and CEO of a 400-employee company have made project management their core method to execute their Strategic Plan. Project management is ready for the board room. Learn ways to bring it to the attention of senior managers.

What Knowledge is Unique to Project Management?

Monday, 15 May 2006 by Alex Brown

Project management is not yet a profession. One barrier to becoming a profession is the lack of a unique, well-defined body of knowledge. This editorial explores the issue and lists a few knowledge areas, tools, and techniques that could serve as the start of a unique body of knowledge.

Sample Scheduling Standards

Sunday, 19 March 2006 by Alex Brown

To help create consistent, high-quality schedules, organizations may create standards for schedules. These standards help all project managers follow similar principles when creating a new schedule, making them easier to integrate into a portfolio and easier to manage overall. Standards can also help ensure that newer project managers do not repeat common mistakes made by the organization in the past.

This article provides sample standards, and advice on how to customize them to an organization’s practices and needs.

Best Practices for Red-Yellow-Green Reports

Friday, 3 March 2006 by Alex Brown

Describes the use of a red-yellow-green status report at a particular company, and some best practices for this popular report format.

Published in early 2006 in the PMI New York City Chapter e-newsletter.

Schedule, Jr.: Professional Scheduling in a Small Company

Sunday, 29 January 2006 by Alex Brown

Describes the key decisions of one 400-person company implementing project management across the enterprise, including IT and all insurance business units. Many project management techniques were designed to help the largest organizations and the largest projects. This paper examines which of them work well in smaller organizations.

To be presented at the 2006 PMI College of Scheduling Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida between April 23 and April 26, 2006.

Project Schedules and Return on Investment

Saturday, 10 December 2005 by Alex Brown

key financial terms, including return on investment, time value of money, payback period, and first-to-market advantage. Applies these financial concepts to sample projects, to help project managers understand the business impact of schedule changes.

Presented at the 2006 PMI College of Scheduling Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida between April 23 and April 26, 2006. Also presented at the PMI North America Congress in Atlanta, Georgia on October 8, 2007.

A Sample Template for Project Charters

Saturday, 8 October 2005 by Alex Brown

Organizations may choose to adopt a standard process for approving all projects. Using a template for all proposals can make the approval process easier and provide other benefits to the organization. This article provides a simple template, instructions on filling it out, and a sample completed project charter.

Any organization developing their own standard process to charter new projects can use this template as a starting point and customize it.

Examples of Project Charters

by Alex Brown

Four examples of possible project charters, with an explanation for each showing why it is or is not a charter. The examples are useful teaching examples, designed to challenge people’s ideas of what a project charter is and is not.