Partial Listing of Upcoming Project Management Events
For a complete listing of events, please visit the Online Calendar at allPM.com

Microsoft Project 2002 Overview -FREE 1-hour webinar
January 7, 27, 2003 3-4pm ET
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/free_webinars.asp

Planning for PMP® Certification FREE 1-hour webinar
January 9, 2003 3-4am PM ET
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/free_webinars.asp


Project Management Maturity Assessment FREE 1-hour webinar
January 24, 2003 10-11am ET
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/free_webinars.asp

ASTD Techknowledge 2003 Conference
Jan. 27-23, 2003
http://www1.astd.org/tk03/

November Poll Results

November's poll question: What is the most significant benefit of creating and maintaining a Project Management Office?

Standards for PM are developed for the entire organization 35.29 % (6)
PMs have a support mechanism in place 41.18 % (7)
PM value is communicated to executive management 23.53 % (4)
The PM position is more clearly understood 0.00 % (0)
PM lessons learned can be documented 0.00 % (0)

As shown by the responses, majority of respondents said that the most significant benefit of a PMO is that it is a support mechanism for Project Managers.

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December/January poll question: The greatest challenge facing the PMO is:

1. Maintaining management support
2. Establishing a measurement process to report improvement in project performance
3. Obtaining buy-in from functional organizations
4. Developing an enterprise wide methodology

If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add
your opinion today.

Feature: "Ask the Expert"—Question of the Month, answered by George Pitagorsky, PMP

Featured Question

Question:
I am in the Project Office of the IS Department of a $4B retailer. Our current Software Development Process contains both a Business Requirements Document (BRD) and a Statement of Work (SOW). There is a proposal to embed the SOW as a section of the BRD. My research indicates that the SOW is generally a stand-alone document. Your thoughts?

Answer:
Statement of work is a description of requirements. PMI's PMBOK® Guide defines it: "describes the procurement item in sufficient detail to allow prospective sellers if they are capable of providing the item." The level of detail varies depending on the nature of the situation. In general the statement of work is a relatively high level statement of requirements (including conditions for how the work is to be done, key roles and responsibilities, etc.) Logically it is a part of the overall business requirements definition but could be viewed as a separate document that precedes a more detailed description of Business requirements. Note that the two may have the same set of subjects but cover them at different levels of detail.

Whether the two documents should be merged depends on how you use the SOW and BRD. Are they developed at different times (say the SOW early in the requirements definition process for use as a high level statement that when verified becomes the foundation for the BRD)? Do they serve different purposes in your methodology? Would your group be able to grasp the idea that the BRD is really made up of at least two parts, each of which is a document?

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George Pitagorsky (PMP) is Senior Vice President of Program Development at IIL. He is listed in Who's Who as an expert in Quality Operations & Quality Improvement.

allPM Today Tips Feature

Top Ten Time-Savers in MS Project 2000, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

Tip #2:
Use right clicks to perform menu-functions faster. All areas of your screen have a context-specific right-click pop-up menu. You can often save yourself clicks if you use these. If you make five thousand clicks every day you can save yourself at least one thousand clicks.  

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Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration; PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certificaton, International Institute for Learning, Inc and author of "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Project ® 2000." This tip appeared in the 10/2000 MPUG eZine. 

Microsoft Excel Tips and Tricks, By Bob Umlas, MS Excel MVP

Question:
Is it possible to have a product name enter automatically whenever I enter a product number?

Answer:
Yes. You can use the VLOOKUP function to do this. Suppose the product number is on Sheet2, cells D2:D50, and the product name appears in E2:E50. Assuming the cell where you've entered the product number is A25, enter this: =VLOOKUP(A25,Sheet2!$D$2:$E$50,2,FALSE). The function searches the cell range D2:E50 in the first column. The "2" in the formula means the function will return the value from the second column. "FALSE" specifies that the function return the value only if it finds an exact match of whatever is in cell A25.

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Bob Umlas is an Excel expert, author of more than 300 articles about EXCEL, and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1995.

Column: Project Management Six Best Practices, a series by Dr. Harold Kerzner. This month -- Best Practice #4 -"When to Bring the Project Manager On Board," by Dr. Harold Kerzner

Best Practice Makes Perfect

In this series World-renowned project management expert Harold Kerzner discusses six of the best practices in project management that are now being implemented. This month we are featuring the third best practice "Strategic Planning for Project Management." All of the best practices are related either directly or indirectly to the process of educating project personnel. Best practices are like pieces of a puzzle, when assembled, the picture can be a thing of beauty. And often, the greater the number of pieces in the puzzle, the more beautiful the final assembled picture.

Best Practice #4- When to bring the Project Manager Onboard

Right from its inception, people believed that project management was simply a scheduling tool to be used to plan and schedule a project that someone else had approved and initiated. Project managers were brought on board after the business case was developed. Even today this mentality persists. Management in many organizations today fails to recognize that project managers can contribute to the development of the business case.

Historically, project managers came out of the technical ranks. The project manager selection process mandated that the project manager possess a command of technology, mainly for the benefit of the customer. Project managers seemed to focus on technical objectives with little regard for the business objectives, partially because the business objectives were never explained to the project manager or the team.

Today the selection process for project managers is changing. Project managers are now paid to manage deliverables rather than people. Because of the size and complexity of projects today, project managers need to possess an understanding of technology rather than a command of technology. However, some exceptions still exist. Industry wants the project manager to come on board early, and that requires a good understanding of the business. Companies are looking for courses on how to perform a feasibility study and cost/benefit analyses. Yet these types of courses are non-existent in the marketplace. (Look at the project management course offerings in magazines and journals and see how many offerings exist for feasibility studies and cost/benefit analyses courses.) most of these courses are currently being developed internally within organizations using company-proprietary information. Project managers are finally being brought on board early enough to contribute to the development of the business case. Project management presently is viewed as a profession rather than a part-time job.

Stay tuned for next month's featured best practice "The Project Office/Center of Excellence"

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Article reprinted with permission from PM Review Magazine, November 2001. For information about PM Review magazine, please email: info@richardlangrish.com or call +44 (0) 20 7434 1159

Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. and Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College. He is an expert in the areas of project management, total quality management, and strategic planning. Dr. Kerzner is the author of the best-selling textbooks: Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, now in its seventh edition, In Search of Excellence in Project Management, and Applied Project Management: Best Pratices on Implementation.

Column: Upgrading Your Arsenal to Project 2002?
by Patrick O'Brien Courtesy of Project Management Review, September, 2002 edition

PMR visits ABRO, a Trading Agency of the Ministry of Defence, to see how the first installation of Microsoft Project 2002 in Europe is helping it to defend itself from invading competitors.

For nearly all companies, the drive to find increased efficiencies is eternal. But at ABRO, which provides land-based systems equipment support for the UK Armed Forces, this has only recently become a truly critical factor. It became a Trading Fund on April 1st this year and assumed accountability for generating its own revenue through open competition and partnering with industry.

ABRO's move to Trading Fund came about as a result of the Strategic Defence Review back in 1998. The risk element, which historically sat within central MoD, was transferred to ABRO and the need for cost provisions to deliver value for money has increased the importance of project management methodology and software at ABRO.

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Patrick O'Brien is the editor of PM Review Magazine. For more information or to subscribe to PM Review, please visit their website at www.pmreviewmagazine.com

Column: Why Do Projects Fail? A Lean Examination
by Mark Opausky

What you expect from your project is often very different from what actually happens. Most project work is not conducted in any form of controlled framework that ensures that people's time and efforts are not wasted. Imagine if your manufacturing plants had no organized 'cells' or lines, just a random ordering of tables and a collection of expensive and complicated machines that certain people were aware of and allowed to use. Imagine if the production schedule and work instructions were spread by word of mouth. Finally, imagine that a squad of highly paid and educated managers constantly permeated through the chaos, stopping workers and asking them what they are doing or directing them to go work on something else.

This is almost precisely how project work is run! Despite quality planning, reporting, meetings and e-mails, the end result is that the project plan or schedule has very little to do with what is actually going on. This means waste, mistakes and disappointed stakeholders.

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Mark Opausky is president of BPS Corporation. He has been involved with the manufacturing industry for over 12 years in engineering program management and marketing executive roles. Mr. Opausky is a recognized contributor to the project management community and a regular speaker on the topic of "Lean Software". Mr. Opausky has a degree in Engineering from McMaster University in Ontario and studied his MBA at Oakland University in Michigan.

Column: Modernizing Risk
by Larry Cooke, PMP

Risk is one of the four-letter words in the Guide to the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). Risk Management is also one of the least-used components in the regular practice of project management. The 2000 upgrade of the PMBOK was mainly done to accentuate this project component, over the 1996 version.

In order to understand these changes better, some colleagues and I participated in a Web Seminar presented by Dr. David Hulett through International Institute for Learning (IIL). This four-session on-line course encapsulated the modernization of our assessment of risk in PM practice. Dr. Hulett was well qualified to teach this course, since he led the international team which upgraded the risk segment of the PMBOK. Many of us in the course marveled at both the hidden implications of risk to our projects, and even more so, by how accessible software tools have become which mitigate risk. I will touch on both aspects below.

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Larry Cooke is currently an independent Project Manager and Management Consultant with over 25 years' experience, having worked with IBM, Citibank, Federal Reserve and other major clients, specializing in Financial and IT projects.

Column: Keeping Your PMO Alive
by Frank Saladis, PMP

Not very long ago, the PMO (Project Management Office) could be found in many organizations and across many industries. For a while, it was the "hot topic" in project management trends. The people involved in the development and implementation of the PMO saw it as a solution to a number of project management related issues such as: project selection methods, portfolio management, prioritization of projects, overall project tracking and reporting, development of standards and guidelines, creating a project management culture, and developing practices that would improve project performance and overall success. PMOs seemed to be more prevalent in larger organizations and especially in the telecommunications and IT business community. The PMO made sense to executives and upper management because it showed potential to untangle the many issues associated with managing multiple projects. The PMO could offer support to projects in progress, develop standard tools, and provide a more organized process that could eventually be implemented enterprise wide.

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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the former President of the NYC PMI Chapter