Maja Ferle

How to segment customers

27 June, 201124 May, 2015 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Customer segmentation is becoming a popular topic. As with anything new there are many misconceptions, misunderstandings and too little clarity. Each stakeholder has their own definition of segmentation and each understands it in a different way. The basics are actually always the same and the required tools are known and established. -- Article published in MonitorPro summer 2011, p. 24-26...

Social media for project managers

1 June, 201126 July, 2014 by Maja FerleNo Comments

PMI introduced the »New Media Council« in 2009 whose members were tasked with writing blogs, delivering web presentations and do anything related with modern social media technologies. Their goal is on one hand to promote PMI in the web environment and on the other hand to understand how new trends in social media affect project managers. Elizabeth Harrin, a member of this council and author of the popular blog A Girl's Guide to Project Management, authored a book on the topic of how to successfully utilize social media in project management. According to her, social media is »Collaboration and Communication with Purpose«. Since the work of a project manager is mostly communication, this fits together well. In her book the author first describes different media that are available to project managers, such as messaging systems, videoconferencing systems, podcasts and webcasts, blogs, microblogs, social networks, Wikis and more. She indicates how each technology could be incorporated into project management. She then discusses implementing social media...

Eastern European project management

3 May, 20115 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

As a member of the PMI Slovenia Chapter I was given the opportunity to attend the Project Zone 2011 project management conference in Budapest. It was organized for attendees from the Eastern European region and was attended mostly by project practitioners from Hungary, Romania and Slovakia with a few people from neighboring countries as well. The keynote speaker was Gregory Balestrero, former president of Project Management Institute (PMI). Although he clarified that due to his retired status his speech is not officially from PMI, the spirit of the organization which he led for many years with tremendous success was nevertheless not far away. He spoke about sustainability, for example, how we humans influence the environment, how we drain its resources and what we can do today to ensure that future generations can still have a world to live in. Gregory Balestrero also spoke about his personal life during retirement. He bought a motorcycle to ride across the USA and raise awareness about environmental issues and money...

5 X 5 About project management

27 April, 20115 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

We have asked 5 questions to 5 Organizational Department Heads from different companies about project management. I was interviewed in the SAS AR Newsletter about project management. The last question was on a less serious note and asked what profession is most closely related to project management. My answer was what I always say in such situations: managing a project is often like parenting teenage children. You can't make them do anything, you can only motivate them. SAS AR Newsletter, April 2011 ...

Business processes and business intelligence

24 April, 20115 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Business intelligence is evolving from a reactive ("What has happened?") into a more proactive ("What will happen?") role. In order to maximize benefits it would make sense to more tightly combine business intelligence (BI) with business process management (BPM) rather than implement each solution individually. - Article published in MonitorPro, spring 2011, p. 28-29....

Using social media in project management

27 March, 20115 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Project managers spend most of our time communicating. This takes place within our project teams as well as outside of the project environment. Traditional communication methods, such as meetings, telephone calls and email are supplemented with more modern forms that include chat rooms, blogs, social media and similar. - International Conference on Organizational Science Development, March 23 – 25, 2011...

It happened again! How do we estimate projects?

1 February, 20113 October, 2013 by Maja FerleNo Comments

I participated in a meeting to prepare the proposal for a solution for a customer. They insist that the the proposal must contain a fixed price. Before the proposal can be prepared, the developers would like to know the exact scope of the solution so that all stakeholders would agree what will be delivered for the quoted price. But the customer is very vague because they are still not sure what exactly the want except that they want a fixed price proposal. These discussions have actually been going on for months without an ending in sight. An impasse? Probably. We don't know how it will finally end up. It could go in various directions, such as: the developer defines the scope and hopes that it is the same as the customer understands it; the developer estimates the cost of the project based on his understanding of the scope and adds a reserve amount hoping it will cover the unknowns; the developer estimates the cost...

Dark clouds ahead for data governance

26 January, 20115 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Among the myriad of year-end analyses and forecasts I was very much amused by reading Jill Dyché's forecasts. I like her style because unlike other analysts who generally forecast what will happen she chose to forecast what will not happen in 2011. I always sympathize with her when I read her blog posts as she seems to come across similar data quality issues as I do. In her forecasts she comes to the conclusion that in 2011 management won't want to invest in data governance and business users won't help to define business rules. All this despite the slowly dawning realization that data is valuable. My experiences are similar. I believe that developers will continue to spend countless hours to wrangle data: to cleanse, transform and load into the data warehouse, to resolve ambiguities, to join incompatible data sources and so on. In order to avoid all this work, the company should implement data governance on a corporate level. This should include...

The right data at the right time

12 November, 20105 December, 2018 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Recently I heard the frequently used phrase again: we have to provide "the right data to the right people at the right time". The phrase is related to business intelligence and hints that we should provide business users with the right data at the right time to enable them to make business decisions. Have we ever really asked ourselves what does this mean? The data warehouse should be the source for all data on which to base business decisions, so let's start here. Do we really have all data that is needed to make business decisions in our data warehouses? The answer is generally NO. Data warehouses usually don't encompass all data sources in a company and there is always a little something that is still missing. There are many reasons for this, such as that a data source hasn't been loaded into the data warehouse yet because of a development backlog, or that a data source is not available in digital format,...

Managing projects without formal authority

12 November, 20107 October, 2016 by Maja FerleNo Comments

Project managers often work in matrix organizations where they don't have formal authority over their project team members. They have to discuss and negotiate their resources with the functional managers or other stakeholders who are involved with the project. In addition, project managers typically don't authorize their own project budgets and other project constraints, their only job is to get the project done within the defined constraints. Although it might seem that it is extremely difficult to successfully complete a project under such circumstances, Tom Kendrick's book Results without Authority enlightens us that there is another side to this story. Project managers actually do have many levers and methods at their disposal that they can utilize to succeed in their projects even without formal authority. The book focuses on the three most important aspects of project management in matrix organizations: communication, business processes and measuring results. As with any other project, not just limited to matrix organizations, project managers must be strong in communication....