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PMAlliance | Company Video

admin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:22:07 +0000

http://www.pm-alliance.com
PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Our goal is to give you a competitive advantage through improved project planning and control techniques. Our flexible combination of project management services is tailored to meet your individual needs. We develop long-term partnerships with your team as we work together with the highest level of integrity. Our immediate project management solutions and long-term assistance can transform the way you manage projects.

Video by Petit Robot Media
http://www.petitrobot.com

Confronting Challenges by Adding a Project Management Consulting Firm to Your Team

admin — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:41:37 +0000

There are many reasons that corporate executives turn to external consultants to provide project management support for their projects. The challenges that organizations face include: sub-par project performance, the potential for lost credibility, lack of experience with a particular project type, and a lack of internal project management practitioners. Project management consulting firms can supply experienced practitioners that offer high-quality solutions to the complex issues facing project teams. Here are six ways that project management consulting firms are making a difference with leading organizations.

Addressing Project-Related Issues

Often times it is the highly visible, at-risk project that drives management to recognize that a better project management approach is required. Frequently, project management consultants are brought in to address various project-related issues including: poor on-time performance (key dates being missed), unsatisfactory financial results (unnecessary expenditures to meet deadlines), dysfunctional team dynamics (poor communication, team in-fighting, and misdirection), and complicated team composition (multi-locational, language barriers, external partnerships, etc). By providing the right combination of methodology,training, resources and technology, project management consulting firms can help executives determine how to most effectively focus the resources they have available. They can also help preserve the integrity of project deliverables by ensuring that issues are identified in a timely manner and key dates are being consistently met. These tools and support solutions help improve overall project metrics, while enabling project teams to work more effectively and efficiently in high-stress environments.

Providing Advanced Analysis to Management

In many cases, upper management has difficulty evaluating project performance and making the best decisions because they lack visibility to key project information. A project management consulting firm can provide the necessary reports and analysis to equip managers with key information on upcoming obstacles, possible project pitfalls, and potential resource constraints. When this type of information is incorporated as part of a more encompassing project management approach, the consultant can convert standard project data from a reactive snapshot of historical information into a predictive project analysis tool.

Filling an Expertise Gap

Projects are sometimes launched without regard for the expertise and experience of the project teams working on them. Also, a project’s complexity, magnitude, and uniqueness may be a significant concern even for the most experienced teams. Finally, the project management proficiency required to lead major a project initiative may be unavailable or in short supply. In these instances, a project management consulting firm can provide the required expertise necessary to drive the project to a successful outcome.

Establishing a Proactive Approach

Many projects, by default are managed using a reactive approach to problem solving. This style of project management creates an environment where “fire fighting” is the norm and the latest project emergency demands the attention. A proactive project management approach enables project teams to identify obstacles earlier in the project,
which allows them to make better decisions and provide more cost effective solutions. By implementing the right mix of training, consulting and advanced tools, a project management consulting firm can establish an early warning system that provides management a forward-looking tool to ensure their project will be executed as-agreed.

Offering Short-term Support Solutions

The lack of qualified personnel to support a congested project pipeline is an ongoing concern to many organizations. Hiring and training full-time resources and mentoring them in the intricacies of an advanced project management approach can require more time than organizations have available. Project management consulting firms can fill the gap between the immediate need for project management support and the organization’s current capabilities.

Project Assurance

Some projects are so critically important to the success of an organization that failure is simply not an option. In some cases, a past project may have been so poorly executed that management wants assurance that future projects will be more successful. A project management consulting firm can assist in this scenario by helping to deploy advanced risk mitigation tools and providing expert scrutiny of existing project schedules.

Conclusion

Project management consulting firms can bring a combination of experience, knowledge and advanced tools that are not readily available in most organizations. By combining those capabilities with an understanding of best-in-class project management practices it is easy to see how the benefits realized from using a project management consulting firm can far outweigh the out-of-pocket investment.

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.

Software is a Tool, Not the Answer to Project Planning & Control

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:44:04 +0000

No matter what the job is at hand, great tools in the hands of a trained professional will lead to exceptional results. But what about providing great tools to an untrained person? Would you expect comparable results? The answer is a resounding NO!

If this is true, then why do some people believe that having good project management software tools will make them good project managers and ultimately lead to successful projects? The missing variable in this equation is a sound project management methodology to guide them through the planning and control process. Engraining a sound project management methodology in your organization, supported by a suite of great tools, is the first step towards getting great project results.

Select a Sound Project Management Methodology

All projects have three major elements that need to be controlled in order for a project to be successful. Those elements are Time, Cost, and Quality. Time is measured by using a schedule, cost is measured by using a budget, and quality is measured by using specifications. Projects are only successful if they are completed on-time, within budget, and to specifications. If the project management system you have selected does not take into consideration all three of these elements then you will have a difficult time planning and controlling your project through its completion. Your project deadline, budget, and quality constraints will require you to make trade-offs in these three variables. A sound project management approach creates an opportunity to make better decisions about those trade-offs earlier in the process and thereby increases the probability of success.

Select Tools that Support the Chosen Methodology

There are many project management software packages currently available in the market today. Finding a software tool that quickly provides the information needed to analyze and make decisions for your project is not a simple task. While many project management tools are good for planning the initial schedule, sometimes it can be difficult to update the schedule, change resource allocations, modify activity durations or change precedence relationships. Select a tool that has a friendly user interface, easily allows plan changes and supports your chosen project management methodology.

The PMAlliance Planning Process

A good planning process is made up of three distinct steps:

Define the Project
Develop an Initial Project Plan
Compress the Schedule and Develop a Baseline Plan

Defining the project is the first step towards having a successful project outcome. During this step the project manager is selected and the sponsor(s) of the project is interviewed to determine exactly what he/she is expecting the project team to deliver. Once the project has been defined by the sponsor(s), the project team is assembled to develop the project charter. The charter should contain a short background statement, the expected deliverables, the project objectives, the list of the project team and sponsors, a list of key dates, and any assumptions, risks, and constraints that the project team can identify. In addition, the project charter should also contain the time-cost trade-off rate. This is defined as the cost to the organization if the project is finished late or the benefit if finished early. The time-cost trade-off rate is used to make cost effective decisions for compression of the project plan. Once the team is in agreement about the project’s scope, key personnel requirements, major constraints, assumptions, and risks, those items should then be presented to stakeholders for approval. By completing this process up-front, the project team will have a clearly defined (and understood) set of deliverables and an agreed-upon direction prior to making the investment in developing the project plan.The initial project plan is developed by the project team around the deliverables identified in the charter. The deliverables are broken down into work tasks (activities) through the development of a work breakdown structure. Once this is complete, the team needs to identify the task owners, durations and the precedence relationships. The precedence relationships are developed and documented using a network diagram. After the network diagram is developed, the project plan is entered in to the selected project management software for validation and schedule compression. Upon completion of the project plan compression and validation, a baseline of the plan is saved. The baseline plan is used to measure variance as the project is moved into the control mode.

The PMAlliance Control Process

The Control Process is the most important part of managing a project once a good plan has been developed. All projects should be updated on a regular basis, typically, every one to two weeks. The main objectives of project control are to:

Gain an objective indication of the status of the project and key milestone dates
Keep team members focused on the project and their activities
Uncover and resolve any schedule-related problems
Update the schedule to reflect the most current information about the project

The first step in the control process is to collect activity status information from the team members. The project plan should then be updated and the remaining activities should be rescheduled. The plan is then compared against the baseline plan and the variance is analyzed. If necessary, based on the update, the plan may need to be recompressed to meet the project deadline/key dates. The recompression is typically done with the project team. After the schedule has been recompressed, all team members need to reconfirm that they can meet the near term commitments for their assigned tasks. A project status report is then developed and distributed to the management and project team members. In some cases, a formal control meeting is held to communicate the update results directly to management and the project team members.

Conclusion

There are many good project management software packages available on the market today, but without a team that is well trained in sound project management principles that utilize a proven planning and control process, successful projects will be difficult if not impossible to achieve. Software is not the answer, a sound project management methodology is!

PMAlliance uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project office development services.