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- Use prototyping to visualize project requirements
- A prototype represents the shell of an actual production application. Prototypes are built early in the development lifecycle, and they're used to provide valuable insight into the look, feel, and general workflow of an application. (Sometimes people call the first production implementation a prototype, but that's not correct. If you...
- Tags: Prototype, Requirement, Prototypes, Process Improvement, Team Management, Microsoft Office, Quality, Business Operations, Management, Office Suites, Software, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-04-01
- Don't wait to address performance problems on a project
- Most project managers have had to deal with performance problems on a project at one point in their careers. Such issues are usually uncomfortable adventures for the project manager. This uncomfortable feeling usually has two causes: The project manager is usually not the functional manager of the...
- Tags: Team, Performance, Project Manager, Performance Problem, Team Member, Team Management, Performance Management, Management, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-03-25
- Go green with quality management
- Tom Mochal, PMP, winner of the 2005 PMI Distinguished Contribution Award, has been TechRepublic's resident project management mentor for the past five years. He is president of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, training, and consulting company. This column was co-authored with Andrea Krasnoff, PMP, Director of Consulting Services at TenStep,...
- Tags: Project, Quality Management, Environment, Quality, Six Sigma, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, Business Operations, It Operations, It service Management, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-03-18
- Master these 10 processes to sharpen your project management skills
- Small projects don't necessarily require much knowledge of project management or much project management discipline. But as a project gets larger, formal processes and techniques become essential. Different project management methodologies organize and structure these processes in various ways, but we're going to focus on 10 basic areas: ...
- Tags: Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-03-13
- Don't fall prey to these false project requirements
- In project management, requirements describe how a product or service should act, appear, or perform. These details explain the features and functions of the products or deliverables the project needs to have. If you could ask your clients about requirements and know they were responding with exactly...
- Tags: Requirement, Project Management, Corporate Communications, Printers, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Marketing, Hardware, Peripherals, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-03-11
- Supervise larger projects with a schedule management plan
- As your project grows larger, your project management processes need to become more rigorous and structured. (The reverse is also true: Processes should be simpler for smaller projects.) Normally, the process used to update and manage a project schedule is pretty clear. For example, you might receive...
- Tags: Project, Team, Project Manager, Schedule, Schedule Management Plan, Management Plan, Team Management, Project Management, Productivity, Tools & Techniques, Management, It Operations, It service Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-03-04
- Use these interviewing techniques to gather project requirements
- There are many ways to gather requirements. Interviewing--where you talk to the people who will define the new solution to determine what they need-- is probably the default technique for most projects. Interviewing can be an easy process if the person you're talking to is organized and logical...
- Tags: Technique, Interviewee, Question, Interviewing Technique, Productivity, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-02-25
- Align green project management with ISO 14000
- Tom Mochal, PMP, winner of the 2005 PMI Distinguished Contribution Award, has been TechRepublic's resident project management mentor for the past five years. He is President of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, training and consulting company. This column was co-authored with Andrea Krasnoff, PMP, Director of Consulting Services at TenStep,...
- Tags: ISO 14000, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Iso standards, Process Improvement, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management, Quality, Business Operations, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-02-19
- Consider green project management for your projects
- Tom Mochal, PMP, winner of the 2005 PMI Distinguished Contribution Award, has been TechRepublic's resident project management mentor for the past five years. He is President of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, training and consulting company. This column was co-authored with Andrea Krasnoff, PMP, Director of Consulting Services at TenStep,...
- Tags: Project, Decision, Green Project Management, Project Management, Tools & Techniques, Strategy, It Operations, It service Management, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-02-11
- Ensure requirements are tracked throughout a project
- Requirements tracking refers to the process of tracking or tracing requirements from the beginning of the project through implementation. It's a good practice for many projects – especially if you're building something from scratch. Requirements tracking is a good practice for two reasons. ...
- Tags: Requirement, Traceability Matrix, Productivity, Team Management, Benefits, Management, Human Resources, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-02-04
- Look at four ways to set precedence relationships in your schedule
- Part of the process of building a project schedule involves breaking down the work into smaller activities the Work Breakdown Structure and then sequencing the activities. When you sequence the activities you should make sure that every activity is related to at least one other activity. In many cases, the...
- Tags: Relationship, Activity, Productivity, Construction, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-29
- Use gate reviews to validate that you're ready for the next phase of your project
- In the past, it wasn't uncommon to gain a commitment to start a project and then never look back again. Over the past ten years, however, it has become more common to set up specific points in the schedule where the project could be evaluated to ensure things are on...
- Tags: Project, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-22
- Check these six areas when managing your budget
- Many project managers need to estimate the total cost of a project and then track the project expenditures to ensure they stay within the budget. They usually have automated reports from accounting that help them determine the total money spent to date. If he doesn't have that,...
- Tags: Expense, Change Management, Leadership, Financial Services, Tools & Techniques, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-14
- Take positive risks to gain project benefits
- Risks are future events or conditions that have some probability of occurring and that will some impact on your project. We usually think of risks as being bad and we try to put a plan in place to make sure the risk goes away. But are all...
- Tags: Project, Risk, Benefit, Technology, Strategy, Security, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-07
- 10 techniques for gathering requirements
- It's difficult to build a solution if you don't know the requirements in spite of the fact that many teams still try to do it today. The "elicitation" step is where the requirements are first gathered from the client. Many techniques are available for gathering requirements. Each has value in...
- Tags: Technique, Requirement, Productivity, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-02
- Apply work breakdown structure techniques to organize a program
- Most of have you have used a work breakdown structure WBS to break large units of work into the smaller activities. These smaller activities end up being used as the basis for your project schedule. This technique is also called "decomposition" - that is, breaking down larger entities into more...
- Tags: Technique, Project, Deliverable, Work Breakdown Structure, Project Management, Productivity, It Operations, It service Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2008-01-01
- 10 techniques for gathering requirements
- It's difficult to build a solution if you don't know the requirements. The "elicitation" step is where the requirements are first gathered from the client, and there are lots of ways to go about it. Each technique has value in certain circumstances, and you'll often need multiple techniques to gain...
- Tags: Technique, Requirement, Tom Mochal, Productivity
- Download resources 2008-01-02
- Use JAD sessions to reduce the duration of group consensus
- Project managers are always looking for ways to deliver results in a shorter timeframe. It's critical if you want to achieve the biggest business benefits on your projects. One way to do this is with Joint Application Development, or JAD. Although the name sounds like it applies...
- Tags: Consensus, Session, JAD, Quality, Productivity, Strategy, Business Operations, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2007-12-17
- Four tips for using metrics on your project
- Identifying, gathering, and leveraging the right mix of metrics is a way to gain better control of your large project. The value can be quantified in a number of areas including: Improved performance of the overall project fulfillment and delivery process Improved estimating for...
- Tags: Project, Metrics, Team Management, Management, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2007-12-10
- Full configuration management requires a five-step model
- There are two meanings for the project management process of configuration management. It can be used for the process of identification, tracking, and management of all the physical assets of a project. The items that you track under configuration management are called "configuration items" in the Capability...
- Tags: Asset, Auditing, Configuration Management, Configuration Item, Asset Management, Operational Planning, Business Operations, Tom Mochal
- Blog posts 2007-12-03
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