Category Archives: method

Build better templates and improve your life

A bold statement? Perhaps. But if you use effective templates in your projects and operational activities, you can save hours of work each week.  And who couldn’t use a few free hours each week? Most templates are set up with … Continue reading

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How to measure software quality – Starting out

Process quality has been very popular over the past two decades.  From CMM and ISO9001 to 6 sigma, Lean, BPM & beyond we have seen a large body of work produced on the premise that “the quality of the process … Continue reading

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A Federated Process Model

A common problem experienced by companies with diverse operations is that of standardizing processes. Finding a balance is a complex activity that involves: a)      having enough processes definition to drive end to end processes and hence results for the company … Continue reading

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Manage Your Portfolio of Problems Part 1

Does your team and organization suffer from numerous problems and issues?  Do more issues crop up each time you try to solve something? Managing your problems as a portfolio may help you. One of the keys to improving your team … Continue reading

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Managing Suppliers Effectively to Deliver Your Project Objectives – Quality and Assessment

I was recently asked about an effective method to manage multiple suppliers on a project.  The client had a number of potential suppliers to engage and wanted to know the best approach to ensure the suppliers deliver what was required. … Continue reading

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Improve your business with Methodologies, procedures and frameworks

Do you have a methodology in your business? A framework? Procedures? Does it matter? When methodologies are first deployed there is a flurry of activity where everyone is trained and then set loose upon an unsuspecting world with binders under … Continue reading

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Improve project efficiency and effectiveness by dealing with quality – Part 1

Despite industry efforts over decades of work, many projects and project managers have difficulties in managing quality. Quality management as a discipline has been with us for a long time.  The two best known project management methods – PMBOK and … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, audits, checklist, CMMI, defects, Effectiveness & Efficiency, improvement, ISO9001, ISO9126, KPI, manager, method, metrics, peer reviews, people, PMO, process improvement, product quality, productivity, project management, quality, software quality, structure, templates

How to raise your company from failure to success

If your company is in dire straights and you’re headed to oblivion, below are some of the basic things we can do to extend our competitive company life – our ‘runway’ as it’s often called. The most important activities are … Continue reading

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How to improve your productivity by using structure in your process

Once an organization reaches a certain size (say more then 30 people) it makes sense to set up a little bit of structure behind the way things are done. You often hear the objection “but we don’t need procedures or … Continue reading

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Compliance versus Support – The Chicken and the Egg

To bring some structure and consistency to projects (and business processes in general), audits or QA checks/gates are often performed to assess current practices and to enforce consistency.  But in one of the great ironies, it is often necessary to … Continue reading

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Filed under agile, appraisals, attitude, audits, checklist, CMMI, Effectiveness & Efficiency, executive, improvement, ISO9001, KPI, leadership, manager, method, metrics, organization change, people, PMO, process improvement, project management, software quality, templates