Perspective Project Management - Interactive Business Solutions — on time, on budget, on the mark.

Your entire staff complains that they are overworked. And yet, deadlines are being missed. Tasks keep slipping through the cracks, and it seems the whole department, maybe even the whole organization, is struggling to keep up. You need more people to help, right? Not necessarily. Allegories are all the rage these days, and so I submit the following: An elderly couple hosted Thanksgiving dinner for their 12 children and grandchildren over the holidays. Well-raised kids that they were,...

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If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This is one of those annoying questions that philosophy professors like to pose as thought experiments to students pondering the nature of reality. A true student of philosophy may launch into a heavy discussion of metaphysics. Those who prefer their questions to be answerable would do well to respond: It depends. Define "sound." The American Heritage Dictionary...

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Alternate title: "In Defense of Hacks"

Competition breeds innovation, and there is perhaps no better example than the space race between the United States and Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s.  The desire to demonstrate the superiority of one model of government over the other manifested in a fierce competition for supremacy in space exploration, out of which came such indispensable inventions as CAT scans, bar codes, fire-resistant fabrics, dialysis machines, and Tempurpedic mattresses. The question...

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How do you determine whether a project is "successful?" That it was on time? Partially. That it was within budget? Certainly helps. That the end product meets business objectives and performs to specification? Bingo. "Quality Assurance" is sometimes (incorrectly) thought of as being synonymous with "Testing." And, many designers & developers treat Quality Assurance, or QA, as an afterthought--a task to be done after a product is developed. But quality assurance is an integral part of the development process, not...

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According to the press release, the Microsoft/Yahoo! search deal is expected to take approximately 24 months to implement following regulatory approval. This estimate has some people wondering why it should take so long and others doubting it will happen that quickly. To get a sense of what’s likely to be happening during those 24 months, note that this is not just one big technology integration project. The deal is comprised of multiple points, each of which...

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For all the effort we put into preparing a product for the users, oftentimes too little is spent preparing the users for the product. Training materials, demos, user guides—by whatever name you call them, well-designed, appropriate learning resources are critical to the success of any technology project. They can make the introduction of complex systems less intimidating, such as SAP’s overview videos. Even software companies that pride themselves on simplicity and ease of...

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The title of “Business Analyst” is one of the fastest growing in the IT industry. In fact, the United States Department of Labor projected a 29-percent increase in computer systems analyst employment by 2016. There are many resources available that explain what a business analyst is, often in terms of comparing the responsibilities of an analyst to those of other team members we’re more familiar with, like project managers, software testers and...

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George Bernard Shaw once said, “America and Britain are two countries separated by a common language.” As an American married to a Brit, I can personally attest to the truth of this statement. Minor differences in culture can create a language barrier even when we think we’re speaking the same language. While our countries of origin create a bit of a cultural gap, an even bigger one is created by the fact that I am a...

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Now. I recently overheard this comment regarding a project that was initiated four months ago and has a deadline of July 30. "We're still sort of in the planning stages right now, but once the work begins we'll need to hire a PM to see it through." This was said by a non-technical staff member of a very technical project. While textbooks may not define it as such, Planning IS work. It is perhaps the most undervalued,...

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"Gee I'd love to help, but can you be more specific about what you want? Please tell me the exact time of day you need this done, how much detail you need, and the color of the shoes you were wearing when you first made the request." Have you ever sent a relatively simple request to someone and gotten a delayed response requesting more information? Was the request for more info justified, or did it just...

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