Burning Questions

Communication is the glue that holds an organization together. Without clear, timely, unambiguous communication, even a small team collocated together will have serious problems. And if the team is distributed geographically, poor communication will render an already challenging situation nearly impossible to control. This section addresses these typical questions:

What is "project communications?" How do I make effective communication a structural part of my project? What about effective communication in virtual teams? How do you make the precious time spent on meetings, presentations, and reviews more effective? How do I develop my own personal communicating skills? Where can I find out more on Communicating?

Conflict is inevitable in a project setting, and conflict resolution is part of a project manager's core responsibilities. But conflict resolution is more than just refereeing disputes. The root causes of conflict in a project setting are largely due to flaws in the project plan, process, or organization. These project "issues" need to be recognized, captured, remembered, prioritized, and resolved in a systematic manner in order to minimize conflict in your project. This section addresses these typical questions:

What is Conflict and Issue Management? Why Both? How can I prepare for managing conflict? What are some of the root causes of conflict and how do I resolve them? How do I manage project issues and priorities? There's a serious conflict in my project - what should I do right now? My design reviews always get emotional - what can I do? Two team members are fighting, no matter what; now what do I do?

The (Project) Documentation subject focuses on documents created during and for the project itself. Some of these documents are related to the actual deliverable(s) of the project; others are needed for managing the project. This section answers these typical questions:

What is project documentation, and why do it? What is the appropriate level of documentation for my project? Where can I learn more about documenting my project?

Project management is often implemented in an ad hoc way, in an uneasy marriage with deeply entrenched corporate command and control structures. These outmoded corporate structures are no longer able to effectively accomplish the organization's mission, yet they are extremely hard to change. How can we establish a project management beachhead in an organization, or improve our existing project management methodology? This section addresses these typical questions:

If my company currently has no consistent project management processes or tools, how do we start improving our ability to manage projects? Once we've decided to get started, what sequence of activities would we follow to make it really happen? What is executive management's role in these efforts to improve our project management? What kinds of obstacles can I expect to hit as we work on improving project management, and how can I overcome them?

As your organization becomes more project oriented, are you experiencing problems of allocating people and resources across multiple projects? Are new projects created without a unifying vision or theme? Do you know exactly how many projects your organization is currently undertaking? And do you know why? Do project team members complain of being "whipped around" by multiple responsibilities and unclear priorities? This section addresses these typical questions:

Why do I need to manage multiple projects? What is portfolio management and how does it help? How do I get started on building a portfolio management system? What problems can I expect, and what can I do about them? What tools are available for Portfolio Management? Where can I learn more about portfolio management?

The Project Scope specifies the goals and deliverables of the project -- what is being developed -- and the major activities that will be performed to achieve those goals. It includes the assumptions and tradeoff decisions that were made and identifies major risks. This section addresses these typical questions:

What is "Planning and Scope?" Why have a project plan? What are the elements of a project plan? How do I get started on creating a project plan? How does project planning fit into a product development process? How do I balance features with time to market (scope planning)? How detailed should my project plan be? Should I spend a lot of time developing a detailed schedule? How do I plan to handle project risk? How and when do I start forming a cross-functional team? I want to outsource part of the development; how should I plan this? Is my organization's planning behavior on the "fail" list? I don't want to commit to a plan because it limits my flexibility and documents my poor estimates and incorrect assumptions. When and how do I "freeze" the project plan?

Scheduling and Estimating is the process of turning a well-formed project vision into a completeand integrated statement of the work and its duration and resource needs over time. Estimating work and managing schedules is a project management core competency. It is also a primary source of conflict in project management. This section addresses these typical questions:

What is Scheduling and Estimating and why do them? What do I do first? What are the steps in creating a good schedule? What scheduling techniques and tools are available? What is a work breakdown structure and should I create one before scheduling? How do I create a work breakdown structure? What estimating techniques and tools are available? How can I create schedules that don't slip? What is critical chain scheduling and where can I find out more about it?

Tracking and Control is the dual process of detecting when a project is drifting off-plan and taking corrective action to bring the project back on track. It also encompasses detecting when the plan itself becomes faulty and re-planning the project and its goals. This section addresses these typical questions:

What is Tracking and Control? What should I do first to track and control my project? What comes after getting "set up" to track? What tools are available and how are people using them? My project is nearing the end and things are coming apart- how can I keep it together? My project is in deep trouble! What can I do about it now?