With the current wave of Generative AI opportunities permeating all aspects of work and personal life, I grabbed the chance to enroll in PMI's Generative AI Overview for Project Managers course.
According to the course introduction, Generative AI will impact project management in various ways, including in improving project delivery success rates, benefits realization, societal impact of projects with global influence, and career advancements for project managers. The World Economic Forum predicts that 75% of companies might adopt some form of AI technologies by 2027. Time for project managers to get ready.
The course illustrates many practical ways that Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Bard, and other emerging tools can help project managers in various scenarios, such as:
cost-benefit analysis
developing a business case justification
creating a project charter
calculating earned value
creating agile user stories
prepare talking points to communicate with difficult stakeholders
give advice on how to communicate more empathically
It can also help project managers with repetitive tasks which...
A widespread reason why projects don’t meet expectations is that they fulfill specifications to the dot but neglect to consider what the users really wanted. IT professionals typically argue that the application that they delivered does exactly what the requirements say. Unfortunately, requirements are sometimes ambiguous, incomplete, or just plain wrong. Sure, it is not IT’s job to correct wrong requirements, but a little more flexibility on both sides, business and IT, could avoid many misunderstandings and unmet expectations.
Getting data in is disconnected from getting data out
In my data warehousing experience, I frequently come across the understanding that data integration or getting data into the data warehouse is completely unrelated to business intelligence or getting data out of the data warehouse in the form of querying or reports. This is similar to implementing projects according to specifications (getting data in) but neglecting a deep understanding of what the users actually wanted (getting data out).
Technically, we might use different tools and...
I recently completed a project where we modeled business processes for the Surveying and Mapping Authority in Slovenia and I co-authored and presented a paper about it at the Slovenian Society Informatika annual conference in April 2019. Some of the main benefits of this project that we outlined in the paper were:
Business process modeling was performed for future business processes which coerced us to think in detail about how we want to perform activities in a more streamlined, consistent and fully automated way in the future.
The completed business process models were used as input to derive specifications for a new information system that will be built to support the new processes.
Business process modeling included identifying activities and assigning actors to these activities as well as estimations of expected time spent performing each activity. This in turn was used as input for defining a new leaner and more efficient organizational structure of the Surveying and Mapping Authority.
Key...
If you are involved with project management, chances are you have heard of the Chaos report published by the Standish group. The Chaos report delivers shocking results about the overwhelming failure of most projects. In the initial report that was published in 1994, just 16 percent of all projects were considered successful and this number has varied over the years, sometimes going as high as close to 40 percent successful projects, which is still disappointing considering the maturity of the project management profession.
In my experience, I don’t see such low rates of project success. On the contrary, I hardly ever come across a failed project. While I have encountered many troubled projects, these are still eventually completed to stakeholder satisfaction.
I have seen that project sponsors are reluctant to admit that a project has failed, considering how invested they are in its success. Projects that run massively over budget or significantly over schedule are still considered successful once they are completed....
When it comes to choosing either an agile or a traditional project management methodology, we don’t necessarily have to pick either one. Hybrid project management is a better answer, because it combines the best of both worlds and it allows a smoother transition from traditional to agile as compared to making the transition in one leap.
Many organizations that use waterfall methods do want to transition to agile but organizational change does not happen overnight. There is always a warming-up period during which stakeholders adapt to the agile mindset. They may start new projects in the agile way while existing projects still continue in waterfall or in a combination of waterfall and agile.
In my experience, waterfall continues to be used for high level planning, budgeting, defining milestones and setting expectations. It is the safe and known way of doing business as compared to agile which is new and less known to the organization. Using the waterfall approach is fine when requirements are...
The new general EU Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will become a binding law at end of May this year. The aim of the regulation is to establish greater control over the handling of personal data.
As project managers, we must be aware that personal data may also be handled within projects, especially with respect to project communication and documentation as well as other areas that may be impacted. To comply with GDPR, we must be more conscious of personal data handling in project management via a more strategic and systematic approach to collecting and storing data. Informing and collecting consent from individuals about the collection and processing of their personal data may also be required where applicable by the regulation.
I co-authored the paper Project management and GDPR that was presented at the Slovenian Society Informatika annual conference in April 2018. In the paper, we state that in addition to process and awareness, project managers must also ensure that the project management software...
Whenever I hear that someone refers to PMP or PMI as a methodology, I want to tell them that neither of these is a project management methodology (PMP is a certification and PMI is the name of the organization that issues the certification). The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is also not a methodology but a standard. In addition to misusing these abbreviations it is even more disturbing that they are used as synonyms for waterfall project management. True, PMBOK was historically all about waterfall project management. But PMI has been adding agile to the PMBOK for many years now and the most recent 6th edition is more agile than ever.
To explain how waterfall and agile can be combined, PMBOK now has an appendix about the continuum of project life cycles. PMBOK has always stated that it is the nature of projects to evolve as more detailed and specific information becomes available and that the project life cycle needs...
Project contingency planning is among the least understood topics related to project management. This is probably due to the fact that contingency deals with the unknown. How do we plan for something that might happen but we don't even know what that might be? And how much will it cost us if it does happen?
While risk management is a related area that deals with the unknown, at least in risk management we start by making a list of all the possible scenarios that can go wrong that we can think of. And if we can imagine a negative scenario, then we can estimate what it would cost if it manifested. On the other hand, contingency planning is to cover everything else that we haven't thought of as a risk but that still might happen.
The June 2016 issue of PM Network magazine has an article about contingency planning and once again they reached out to project management practitioners for their input. I was...
The findings of PMI's 8th annual Global Project Management Survey as published in The High cost of Low Performance are disturbing. They report declines in many of the project success factors that they track. Furthermore, the percentage of projects meeting their goals is lower than it has been over the past four years. According to the study, the reason for these findings is that leaders in organizations still don't trust that projects deliver strategy.
It has been several years since PMI conducted the first formal research study which confirmed that project management brings value to organizations. Sadly, project management is still not embraced as strategic in real life. According to the High cost of Low Performance report, money continues to be wasted when projects aren't managed well. Still, we continue to read reports in various media about projects that failed massively (examples here and here). Will we truly never learn?
I ask myself this question whenever I am involved in delivering a...
A large number of companies are starting to implement at least a few of their projects using agile approaches. They do so because it is becoming known that agile projects are more successful and their stakeholders more satisfied. It is risky if a company starts implementing agile before they understand exactly what it means in terms of changing their way of thinking about projects and they expect automatic success as if by magic. -- Article published in MonitorPro magazine, 05/14, p. 26-27...
