Project Management archive

The recent blog post, "A MOET and POET Curve-Fitting Approach to Project Management & Meeting Time Estimation" details my investigation into historical data to see what sorts of projects tended to have increased project management and meeting time. Our guess was that project timeline relative to project scope could heavily influence the overhead in terms of meetings and PM required. I was able to verify the hypothesis with our own project data and came up with two new theories that need some outside validation before I'd consider them laws by any stretch of the imagination, MOET and POET. Read More…

Find the curves to estimate meeting and project management time (almost) perfectly for your projects! We call it Meeting Overhead Efficiency Theory and Project Overhead Efficiency Theory, or MOET and POET for all of you acronym lovers. Read More…

Imagine this scenario at your favorite popular and busy eatery: A diner informs the server that their order has been undercooked and that their side is not what they ordered; the overachieving, overburdened and busy server returns to the kitchen with the dish and requests a re-fire of the dish to more than one of a number of cooks in the kitchen; all of which are told or hear different interpretations of the diner’s original wishes. Confusion ensues amongst the cooks as to who’s cooking the dish, what temperature it should be cooked to, and what side dish the diner actually wanted, etc. All ultimately leading to a frustrated kitchen staff, wasted time & product, and, likely, an unsatisfied diner. Read More…

This session led by Amy Scavarda discussed how to use simple checklists to manage complex projects and tasks. Read on for some key takeaways. Read More…

This session led by Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio covered how to ask the right questions to build stronger relationships with your clients. Read on for some key takeaways. Read More…

Project Management in an agency is a difficult role to prepare for. You need to balance keeping customers happy while making sure that you aren't overpraising, potentially compromising the budget and timeline of a project. Over the years of working with great project managers I have taken note of the following skills and practices that are critical to success as a PM: Read More…