November 2024: How to select as Assessment Sample? Random sampling is a technique used in studying a certain population. It's used for purposes like market research and trend analysis. In the context of maturity assessments of processes in business operations, like project management maturity assessment, a sample of staff are selected for interviews, and a sample of projects is selected for document reviews for evidence of compliance. While the size of the sample is usually a proportional ratio to the size of the overall population in the scope of the assessment, and usually the ratio is recommended according to the assessment model adopted, the individual items in a sample should be selected so that the overall sample is as representative as possible for the population under study. The larger the sample, the more representative it would be, and more realistic the resulting findings will be. For project and process maturity assessment purposes, a representative sample should cover all departments and all business lines within scope with weights proportional to staff size of each.
October 2024: How to capitalize on Quick Wins? Quick Wins are opportunities that are considered low hanging fruits, with low overhead in terms of cost, risk, and effort, but with high impact and high return. In a bubble chart of potential endeavors an individual or an entity can pursue, quick wins can be easily spotted, depending on the representation of each axis and the bubble size and color. In project portfolio management, those endeavors are ranked at highest priority, considering their high score in all evaluation aspects. Keeping an eye on potential quick wins can help in seizing them as they are identified, and not to miss opportunities. This can be achieved by continual scanning and review of market trends, research and development proposals, customer demand, technological shifts, etc. Criteria should be defined in advance to help in identifying quick wins and acting upon them in proper time.
September 2024: What are Schedule Optimization Techniques? Project schedule optimization is done by analyzing the relationships and durations of the project activities, using techniques like critical path method, with the ultimate goal of compressing the project duration as possible, with optimum allocation of costs and resources. Most commonly used schedule optimization techniques are schedule crashing and fast tracking. Crashing refers to adding more resources to an activity so that it completes in shorter time. When applying this technique pay attention to the concept of diminishing return, when the expected gain from allocating additional resources is reducing as more resources are allocated, and activity duration can't be reduced with the amount that justifies the additional cost of resources. Fast tracking refers to reengineering the relationships, dependencies, and sequencing of activities, so that the overall network of activities is optimized, and the project critical path length is shortened.
August 2024: Why Continuous Education is Important? Education is not limited to school years, it's a life-time journey that goes through stages. This journey doesn't end by graduation from school or university, in fact a new type of education is waiting throughout work years. Continual professional and personal development is essential in order to sustain and increase your value and viability in the job market, and to keep growing in positions. Continuous education can be self-paced by keeping your knowledge up to date and learning new skills and innovations in your field, or it can be formal education by attending educational and training programs and obtaining advanced certifications. Rising up to leadership and managerial levels puts on you responsibility for continual development not only of yourself, but also of your team and subordinates.
July 2024: How to create work - life balance? Achieving balance between work duties and personal life duties is easier said than done. There are opposite tensile forces gripping your attention and consuming your time and resources, which are limited and can't fulfill everything at the same time. Tending excessively towards work responsibilities will cause you personally burnout and suffering from psychological and social consequences, in addition to failure of other duties towards family and social circle. On the other hand, leaning more towards personal life will impact performance in work and may lead to poor progress in your career. To achieve this desired balance, you need to apply tools and skills for time management, relationship management, people management, career planning, and other relevant skills. Above that, you need to keep an eye on not losing balance, and take corrective action immediately before matters escalate if you are not keeping balance.
June 2024: What is Project Funneling? A project funnel is a tool used in the practice of project portfolio management. It's a filtration technique for project evaluation and selection, where the funnel is divided into stages, and a certain filtration action is taken at each stage. The wide end of the funnel receives proposed project ideas unfiltered, coming from several sources inside and outside the organization. Evaluation criteria are decided in advance by the project portfolio management team, so that the total population of proposals under consideration is reduced at each stage of the funnel, when those proposals not meeting evaluation criteria are eliminated. Such criteria will include assessment of the project estimated cost, time, risk, ROI, and how fit is it to the organization's strategic goals. Selection at the final stage of the funnel will include scoring and prioritization step, so that the finally approved set of projects are allocated resources within the available resource limitations in the organization by priority, in terms of budget, materials, staff, etc.
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