Projects Articles

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.

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.

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.

The best time to market your project to your organization is at the very start, in the project charter. It is the best chance you have to tie the project into the organizational strategy and to explain its value. Yet the charter is one of the least talked about deliverables in project management.

This material helps you market your projects by preparing a great charter. Learn how simple a good charter can be. Understand how this document can help build executive support and provide documented authorization for your work. Focus on creating a lasting, respectful bond with your senior managers or executive sponsors. It all starts with the charter.

Presented at PMI 2005 North America Congress in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 12, 2005. Presented again at a meeting of the PMI New York City Chapter on February 15, 2006.

Addresses the question about whether it is better to model a schedule with only full-time assignments or part-time assignments for resources. Reviews pros and cons of different solutions, and points out critical mistakes schedulers can make when assigning part-time, concurrent work.

Experienced schedulers build their schedules carefully, using dependencies, calendars, and other tools to build a model of their project. Delays are useful, little-used tools to adjust dates for resource leveling and other purposes. Unlike fixed-date constraints, they help build schedules that react gracefully to change. Proper use of delays can eliminate all unnecessary fixed dates from a schedule.

Published in the PMI Information Systems SIG newsletter, Fourth Quarter 2004 and in newsletter of MPA, the Official Industry Association for Microsoft® Office Project, “The Project Network” Volume 9, Issue 1-2005.

Presented at the PMI 2004 Global Congress — North America on October 25, 2004 in Anaheim, CA.

Provides career advice for IT project managers, whether they wish to leave IT or stay in IT. Reviews employment trends in IT that may force IT project managers to make tough career choices. Based on industry publications and employment trends, as well as my own experience crossing over from IT to business-oriented project management. The raw employment and industry statistics used in the presentation are available for download, as well as the paper and the presentation slides.

Reviews fundamentally difficult scheduling problems, including:

• resource leveling
• representing task dependencies - hard and soft
• managing difficult-to-predict or quickly-changing work assignments
• making schedules easy to maintain during project execution

Focuses on proven techniques and principles, NOT the pros and cons of specific software tools.

Presented at the PMI 2003 Global Congress — North America on September 23, 2003 in Baltimore, MD.

These exercises go with the “Tough Scheduling” paper. They review fundamentally difficult scheduling problems, including:

• resource leveling
• representing task dependencies - hard and soft
• managing difficult-to-predict or quickly-changing work assignments
• making schedules easy to maintain during project execution

Focuses on proven techniques and principles, NOT the pros and cons of specific software tools.

Presented at the PMI 2003 Global Congress — North America on September 23, 2003 in Baltimore, MD.

Task Calendars are one of the most powerful tools available for scheduling special events. Introduced in MS Project 2000, they help project managers precisely schedule certain types of work.

Learn advanced techniques to schedule work that must be performed on a certain schedule. The article builds on “Calendars”, which shows how to schedule work according to resources’ schedules.

Published in Microsoft Project Users Group (MPUG) Newsletter - The Project Network, Volume 7, Issue 2-2003.