Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

These tips are from Pursuing Project Excellence: Six Ideas to Improve Your Projects by Bob Jewell, PMP (with permission).

1. Define the word "scope" carefully. It is "the ... work to accomplish the ... deliverables (product, service, or other results) to the agreed-upon requirements."
2. Get clear requirements. "Assign each of the project's deliverables to a team member and give them the responsibil
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A lot of folks in San Diego wonder how the construction of Petco Park, a managed project, could have possibly spent all the funding before it was half completed without anyone knowing. While I certainly don't have proof as to the actual cause, there is a very good way a project can get into this state -- they failed to look at all three key project success factors -- time, cost, and performance.

Here are some additional tips for getting better plans with MS Project:

1. Manually scheduled tasks have shortcomings. Set up Project such that new tasks are automatically scheduled (Options>Schedule>Scheduling options for this project); use manual sparingly.
2. As plans expand, section them out by project phase or major deliverables through space separation, changing bar colors, highlighting, etc.
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Microsoft Project does not encourage best practices and may result in plans with unintended consequences. Here are 5 functions to use as you create your plan. These tips are good for virtually every version of Project:

1. Add project critical success factors as milestones at the top of plans as a reminder. They will not have any effect on plan computations.
2. Add the Type column to the Entry Table
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I've heard from several industry experts that many new project managers do not know how to effectively create and manage schedules. Here are 5 tips for better control of schedules:

1. It is essential to start with a well-constructed schedule.
2. Track all time on a daily basis. On Friday, most people won't remember how many hours they worked on specific tasks and projects on Monday. Be sure to inclu
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Having a good schedule is critical for project success.  Time is money because every day worked means resources are paid.  Here are five tips to improve your project schedules:

1. Include project critical success factors and other key messages at the top of the schedule (and all project plans).
2. Get the right level of detail. The WBS work package level becomes a summary task with action verbs as s
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As a project leader, it's critically important to be earnest - have an intense conviction and confidence in the plan. Staying calm and confident is reassuring to the team, sponsor,  and stakeholders alike.  The team will take their cues from you, follow your lead, and rise to meet any challenges or setbacks positively.  Whether you are looking at the Inc. list, the Forbes list, or anyone's list of...

Back in the early 80s, when corporations like IBM and Univac were mainframe giants, it took the typical systems team 3-5 years to produce a new compiler. It was during that time I took on a project to finish where some R&D left off. The goal: produce a compiler, assembler, and linkage editor for a family of computers in use in the world’s largest private computer network. This was critical because...