ProjectManagement

"What is systems thinking?" - Robert Higgins from Bookmarklet

"In my experience, I have discovered that 75% of the risk exposure within projects actually comes from scope uncertainty and not discrete risk events captured in a risk register. While this is a huge percentage, it is actually good news from a planning perspective as scope definition is typically easier to handle and reduce than external risk events." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

"Agile is a business process, not a software development process. In other words, if the business does not understand what it means to go to market with something that is already accepted as “wrong” and that we will “adjust” as we go, you are in for a very rude set of status meetings." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

"If I have to sit through another meeting with some little "agile" toe-rag defending their train wreck of a project then I may end up forcibly ramming a kanban where the scrum does not shine. It is not that I have anything particularly against agile, quite the contrary, but at the end of the day I have a product to ship and no patience for the quixotic." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

An otherwise insightful article mangled by this bit of non-English: "The PMP designation does evidence a differentiating level of commitment to the profession,". - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

"Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is typically associated with operational activities, but there is no reason that the practices that make this tool so effective in getting at the root cause of operational problems can’t be used to determine the cause of a project problem." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

"I’m not entirely sure project management is something you should do on your iPhone, or any portable device for that matter, but if you’re stuck and you need something to help keep track of things while you’re on the go, you could do much worse than using Projects for the iPhone" - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

"The very concept of a maturity model remains invisible in many companies. So nothing changes until things go wrong and pain is felt and someone at director level is facing an exposure as a result of a significant project failure. So the simple rationale for having and using a project management maturity model is quite simply that projects fail." - Andrew Terry

"Many thinkers are coming to the conclusion that we simply can’t prevent bad things from happening, so let’s focus on making sure that when (not if) they happen, our work can go on." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

Tom's Planner enables you to work directly in the Gantt Chart instead of only being a viewing option like in most project planning software - Robert Higgins from Bookmarklet

"Successful PMOs don't start by dictating and/or reporting and/or controlling and/or tracking standards. They don't issue orders, and they never say: "you need to do this 'cause management wants it." If you're in the PMO, and you force/cajole/bully the teams into filling out paperwork, your IT colleagues will avoid you in the halls, they'll disparage you behind your back and they won't like you much either." - Andrew Terry from Bookmarklet

I saw an interesting Presentation on PMO's by Doctor Hobbs he has been researching PMO's for about 10 years. The only thing he could conclude is that all PMO's are changing all the time. - Robert Higgins

Although aimed at a software development audience, there's a ton of info in here that I think is relevant for the Project Manager, too. - Andrew Terry

These guide the "management of risk" in ways that are the source of failure described in the book. - Robert Higgins from Bookmarklet

"We have delusions of success. We take on more than we should, routinely exaggerating the benefits and discounting the costs. We over-scope, over-scale, and over-sell. At the same time, we under-estimate, under-resource, and under-plan." - Andrew Terry

"ccording to the World Technology and Services Alliance, countries spend, on average, 6.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on Information Communications Technology, with 43% of this spent on hardware, software, and services. This means that, on average, 6.4 X .43 = 2.75 % of GDP is spent on hardware, software, and services. I will lump hardware, software, and services together under the banner of IT." - Andrew Terry