Information Systems Project Management

"Five characteristics make project management unique: responsibility without authority, the source of power, project transience, the observation that you get what you get, and the need for specialized tools and techniques"

"A successful project is one that delivers expected results. These traditionally include a budget, a schedule, and a scope."

"Managing projects requires that you make decisions, which, in turn, requires that you understand the project environment, background, and people."

"To define a project, you must define, document, and gain client approval for two things: the deliverables and the scope."

"Planning divorced from the reality of the project is worse than no planning because it gives the illusion of control."

"There are four steps to managing risk: identify them, categorize them, mitigate them, and manage them."

"All responsibility for a given technology type?on-line, batch, or interfaces?reside within a single team that contains all the skills needed to develop that aspect of the system. "

"Dependencies are based on activities, not resources."

"The estimate is not the budget. The estimate tells management, including you, how much effort will be needed to complete the project."

"You may find that although the client's date is absolute, the entire project does not need to be finished at the same time."

"Budget contingency should be overt rather than hidden in the various expense and cost items."

"The project manager who is thrown into the melee of a project must make planning a priority."

"Project managers do not build systems, teams do."

"You need to manage risks; they must be in the forefront of your concerns."

"Slippages require two types of action: corrective, to reduce the impact of the slippage, and preventative, to avoid similar kinds of slippages in the future."

"You can send team members on their way with a sense of failure, or you can, while acknowledging the problems, recognize and make sure they understand the real achievements they made."

"One of your goals as a project manager should be to conduct meetings that your people will await with expectation, join with enthusiasm, and leave with satisfaction."