Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 0 Comments

Have you ever sat down to work, looked at your list and opted to do the handful of easy tasks rather than tackle the most important item?Yeah, me too. In the same way that individuals mis-focus their energies at work, companies sometimes get bogged down in minutiae rather than addressing their biggest issues.A… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 0 Comments

We had a well-attended webinar at the end of January during which Kent Crawford and Bruce Miller laid out some of the compelling findings of our 2017 research study, (View the recording here.)At the end, there were a handful of submitted questions left unanswered; many of them were about the demographics of the study: how… Read More »

Posted by Johanna Mickel | 0 Comments

Now that I have time to catch my breath after the whirlwind of information that is the PMO Symposium, I wanted to skip back to Monday and share a few insights from a panel of C-Suite luminaries convened by PMI for the occasion:Bruce Rogers, Forbes Chief Insights Officer, noted that we are in an… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 1 Comment

Although we have not released the formal research report yet, and the numbers are still being crunched, there are a couple things I found in reading through the raw data collected by our Strategy Execution Process Benchmark that I couldn't wait to share.Like the majority of companies out there, those that participated in… Read More »

Posted by Gary Alvord | 2 Comments

Say you're a busy business owner with an urgent problem.  You are also blessed with some talented and high-performing people, and maybe access to some expert consultants, that you can throw together in a conference room on Tuesday and work until the problem is fixed — as long as it is fixed… Read More »

Posted by Pam Toth | 0 Comments

Editor's Note: We continue our Expert Series with another column from Owens Corning project management guru Pam Toth. Her sponsor's-eye view of project chartering shares her personal experience with this key aspect of project sucess.For me, leading a project without a charter is like driving in a new town without a map… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 0 Comments

Last week we launched our newest research initiative The Strategic Execution Process Benchmark: Integrating Projects, Programs, and Portfolios for Strategic Success, and we are very excited about it. Over the 20 years that PM Solutions Research has been collecting data about project management processes, we have seen an increasing confluence of strategic planning and management with… Read More »

Posted by Pam Toth | 0 Comments

Editor's Note: We welcome back Pam Toth as one of our "expert" guest bloggers this week, treading the sensitive area between steering and being steered. For a boost on executive roles and responsibilities in project management, check out the PM College course, Project Management for Sponsors.When a project manager is assigned to any… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 0 Comments

If you've been following PM Solutions for any portion of our 20+ year history, you'll know that we call ourselves "the project management experts." We continue to wear this tag proudly, despite the unfortunate trend towards dismissing expertise that seems to be part of the zeigeist right now. In putting up the first of… Read More »

Posted by Carrie Capili | 0 Comments

We are delighted to announce that our president and founder, J. Kent Crawford, is the recipient of the 2017 PMI Southwest Ohio Chapter Lifetime Achievement Award. The award honors those who have made significant and continuous contributions over the entirety of their career to the field of project management. That is certainly true of Kent!With… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin | 1 Comment

Getting ready to send out our Q1 newsletter, we have all been looking at trends in the marketplace for this year. In a study cited by Debbie Crawford in her recent blog, the strategic role of project management is predicted to be heightened by the participation of portfolio managers in the strategy formulation and management… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Project & Program Management, Governance, Strategy Execution | 1 Comment

A month ago today, President Obama signed the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act (PMIAA) into law after it completed a long slog through Congress. The profession could not have received a more timely holiday gift. On the Project Management Institute website, CEO Mark Langley cited PMI’s 2015 Pulse of the Profession report findings… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Culture & Change Management, Project & Program Management, Project Management Office (PMO), Project Management Research | 1 Comment

Although is is not a major theme in our biennial research study, The State of the PMO, there's one data point that I always keep a close eye on, and that is the use of outside contractors to manage the PMO or to manage specific projects and programs for the PMO. Over the years… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Project & Program Management, Performance Measurement, Project Management Maturity, Project Management Office (PMO), Project Management Research | 0 Comments

This week saw the release of the latest iteration of our biennial research study, The State of the PMO 2016. After nearly a decade of collecting information on PMO trends and functions, PM Solutions Research had a clear view of how the PMO is developing as an organizational entity. Not only that, but our unique formula… Read More »

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Reading the business press and networking with the diverse community of project management leaders at events like the PMO Symposium, one can't help but be struck by the changing dynamics of the workforce. In the developed nations, we have an aging workforce that possesses critical expertise and stories, tacit knowledge and insitutional memory that… Read More »

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This week I attended the PMO Symposium for the first time and it was one of those events where you experience so many new ideas that you can’t keep them to yourself. I’m relatively new to Twitter, but I found it to be the perfect tool to record “Aha!”… Read More »

Posted by Deborah Bigelow Crawford in Culture & Change Management, Project & Program Management, Governance, Performance Measurement, Project Management Research, Strategy Execution | 0 Comments

Companies are demanding to know the long-range benefits of building and implementing a project management culture. Simple financial measurements are not enough; a balanced family of measures is needed to get an overall picture of the health of your organization and its project management practices. A balanced family of measures can evolve into a powerful… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Culture & Change Management, Project & Program Management, Governance, Human Capital, Site News, Strategy Execution | 1 Comment

If you’ve been following PM Solutions this past month, you already know that we’ve gained a new President. Al Zeitoun, PhD, PMP has taken on one of the roles previously carried out by our founder and CEO J. Kent Crawford.  We’ve welcomed him with a fresh round of… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Culture & Change Management, Demand Management, Portfolio Management, Project Management Events, Project Management Research | 0 Comments

In our third interview in this series, we asked PM Solutions senior consultant John Casey to address webinar participants’ questions about resource management. (Missed the webinar? Click here.) We weren’t surprised that this was an area that drew many questions; in all our research studies over the years, resource management has loomed… Read More »

Posted by Johanna Mickel in Project & Program Management, Project Management Events, Project Management Office (PMO) | 0 Comments

We're at the Gartner Summit today and it is exhausting and stimulating, as usual! Well, perhaps more than usual. This is the 10th iteration of this event, and it just keeps getting better. With 1100 attendees, representing firms from (in order of abundance) financial services, government, healthcare and manufacturing, the intensity of the crowd is… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Culture & Change Management, Governance, Performance Measurement, Portfolio Management, Strategy Execution | 0 Comments

There are some companies that apply several times for the PMO of the Year Award without ever making it to semifinalist status. The competition is steep, and the pool of competitors changes from year to year, bringing in each year larger and more noteworthy companies, making it harder to rise through the rounds of judging.… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Project Management Office (PMO) | 1 Comment

Just got done crunching some stats on the entries to the PMO of the Year Award competition, and thought I'd share them with our readers. Of the 40 PMOS (a new record number of applicants) in the running this year, 12 are outside the United States ... and 10 of those are outside North America. While we have… Read More »

Posted by J. Kent Crawford in Portfolio Management, Project Management Office (PMO), Resource Optimization | 0 Comments

It's gratifying when a trend you've been predicting ... and in some ways, leading and guiding ... becomes the norm. That's what has happened recently with the organizational clout and position of the PMO. Back in 2000, when I wrote The Strategic Project Office, the enterprise-level PMO that was actively involved with strategic projects, and… Read More »

Posted by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin in Governance, Portfolio Management, Project Management Office (PMO) | 1 Comment

I'd like to tie those last two posts together with a couple of thoughts engendered by listening to Kent's keynote, and by some of the conversations I shared with PMO directors at the Summit."Governance" is in danger of becoming a buzzword. It's one of those ideas that many corporate leaders accept… Read More »