We always hear that “50% of all projects either fail or are ridiculously over budget” Here is where I share information as to how to avoid these outcomes.
It is very easy to get so caught up in analysis paralysis that you never get around to actually responding to your identified risks. Estimating them instead provides a quick, low-cost way to figure out how big each of your risks are relative to each other. Risk estimation is easy when you remember that...
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Tags: Analysis, Business Analysis, Cost, Estimation, FMEA, Freakanomics, PFMEA, Revenue, Risk, Sensitivity Analysis
Posted in Program Management, Risk Management | No Comments »
To actively manage risk across your enterprise, you will need develop an organization-wide consistent method to seeking out and identify risk. This requires two critical steps: 1) develop a clear definition of risk enterprise-wide and 2) teach your staff to seek out and plan for all types of risk: positive, negative, internal and external....
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Tags: Active Risk Management, Freakanomics, Risk
Posted in Program Management, Risk Management | 3 Comments »
Before any organization can begin to actively manage risk, it must first change its culture to one that openly and freely discusses risk at all levels. This is not easy. It requires commitments from management and staff at all levels. However, it will pay off in many ways: higher trust, increased respect and better...
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Tags: Change Management, Force Field Analysis, Lewin, Risk, Roger Bacon, Veterans Affairs
Posted in Change Management, Leadership, Motivation, Program Management, Risk Management, Status & Reporting | No Comments »
Today is the first day of 2010. This year, as we exit a global recession our hopes for success are much larger than before—while our margins for success are tighter than they have been for many years. Use of Active Risk Management (ARM) can be vital helping us navigate these challenges…
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Tags: Active Risk Management, Goals, Initiatives, Risk
Posted in Program Management, Risk Management | 2 Comments »
Even the greatest Program Dashboard will not help if you do not use it to manage your portfolio more effectively. Here are 10 critical success factors I have learned in the process of using dashboards to drive successful outcomes on over 3,300 projects and programs…
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Tags: Critical Success Factors, Dashboard, Metrics
Posted in Decision-making, Governance, Portfolio Management, Program Management, Status & Reporting | 1 Comment »
Setting up metrics to manage and track a small project effectively is easy. Doing this for a large program or portfolio initially looks harder. However, it becomes easy once realize a program is simply a series of aggregated projects all working together to achieve a single objective. Once you do this, creating and using...
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Tags: A9, Amazon, BMM, Business Motivational Model, Cost, Dashboard, Execution, Gmail, Google, Metrics, NASA, OMG, Resourcing, Schedule, Shea, Zachman
Posted in Portfolio Management, Program Management, Risk Management, Scope Management, Status & Reporting | 1 Comment »
I have heard metrics that indicate that anywhere from 50% to 75% of all projects and programs are late or fail to meet their business objectives. However, I repeatedly see Program Dashboards that indicate that everything is “Green.” They key to avoiding this is picking Dashboard Metrics that create incentives for forward-looking behaviors that...
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Tags: Cost, Dashboard, Metrics, Resourcing, Schedule, Six Sigma
Posted in Due Diligence, Governance, Motivation, Portfolio Management, Program Management, Risk Management, Scope Management, Status & Reporting | No Comments »
So you have decided to create a Program Dashboard. The first thing you do is build a spreadsheet and start using it to collecting data. At the end of the month you brief your results to your executive team – and it falls flat. Why? Because you did not first look at your stakeholders...
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Tags: Dashboard, Stakeholder Analysis
Posted in Decision-making, Due Diligence, Governance, Motivation, Portfolio Management, Program Management | No Comments »