Payson Hall is a consulting project manager for Catalysis Group, Inc. in Sacramento, California. Payson consults on project management issues and teaches project management. Email Payson at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter at @paysonhall.
As I start my fifth decade working on projects, primarily in the IT and software development space, I wanted to share some patterns I have observed that suggest a project is in trouble, Jeff Foxworthy style.
If you’ve never managed an IT project for your organization that had significant work outsourced to a vendor, what’s learned on the job can be VERY painful and VERY expensive. Here are some things to watch out for.
These days teams are compensating as best they can, but some aspects of project life are difficult with remote teams and social distancing. Celebrating milestone achievement is hard but necessary in our current circumstances.
Absent an effective requirements baseline it is difficult to distinguish clarifications and error correction from enhancements and changes to the original ask.
Building schedules for complex projects is challenging. While the results are never perfect, credible schedules are a useful communication and coordination device. Incredible schedules are a dangerous waste of time and energy that damage a project manager’s credibility and cost an enterprise a fortune.
