Using Rewards to Motivate Staff

By On December 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Best Practice, Lessons Learned, Personal Effectiveness, Project Management

Over the last few months I have been dealing with issues on how to motivate staff and found this really interesting talk from TED by Dan Pink (who happens to be Al Gore’s speech writer). He touches on practices such as Result only Work Environments definitely food for thought.

Starting with a fact [...]

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Timothy Brown – Innovation Through Design Thinking

By On November 22, 2009 · 1 Comment · In Best Practice, Lifecycle & Methodology

Tim Brown is the current CEO of IDEO and the author of the book Change By Design which has helped deepen my understanding of the process of innovation. My Introduction to his thinking came from this presentation from MIT-World.

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Theory of Constraints – Basic Principles

By On November 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Best Practice, Theory of Constraints

The three basic principles of Theory of Constraints (as outlined by Goldratt in The Goal), like may axioms they are really self evident although they are not backed up by reference-able evidence, this being said they are widely accepted.

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Why Critical Chain Project Management

By On October 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Best Practice, Project Management, Software Development

Why would I use Critical Chain Project Management?

If you are currently experiencing projects having problems with schedule, budget and scope along with the common event of people over committing through their own acceptance or by the plans of the project manager. If so then it is definitely worth looking at adopting Critical Chain Project [...]

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TOC Theory of Constraints

By On October 11, 2009 · 4 Comments · In Best Practice, Cost Management, Project Management, Theory of Constraints

Having read “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt some time ago after an introduction to the book by Andrew Byers. I have used the theory to look at process, projects and companies with results that have shown the validity of the theory.

The system also has parallels with the concept of flow expressed [...]

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Basics of Risk Management

By On September 21, 2009 · 1 Comment · In Best Practice, Project Management, Risk Managment

Basic Risk Management is about understanding and managing the risks which exist in the project or operations you are monitoring and is outlined well in the quotation below.

“Risk management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or [...]

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Using User Stories

By On September 15, 2009 · 1 Comment · In Agile, Best Practice, Project Management, Software Development

I have used user stories for some time to develop products and am currently using this process in developing several products it is good to be able to outline the process quickly. To do this I use a simple construct and process to help to in-bed this practice. I will quickly go through this proces

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James R. de Piante The Project Manager as a Coach – Leadership in Projects

By On September 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Best Practice, Personal Effectiveness, Project Management

One of the most discussed presentations at the IPMA World Congress 2008, this looks at the role of leadership in project management and the effect of the project manager on the morale of the project team. this video is courtesy of YoungCrew.de.

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Feasibility Study TELOS

By On August 15, 2009 · 5 Comments · In Best Practice, Project Management, Risk Managment

The Feasibility Study will help in the company understanding the projects viability by looking at several factors to gain a full picture of the project in the current environment. With this information an informed decision can be made on whether the project will go ahead or change in scope and time frame or be left until the situation changes.

Many [...]

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Software Demos – Bringing the user on Board

By On August 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Best Practice, Software Development

Something I have been working on with people over the last few months is to begin to explain systems during software demos from the perspective of users, as opposed to just demonstrating functionality.

The problem with most software demos is that it shows functionality without showing the user the relevance of the system. The user [...]

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