Alan Zucker

Every project should begin by asking two fundamental questions: What are we doing? and Why are we doing it? While the “what” tends to be clearly stated, the deeper purpose or motivation behind these actions (“why”) is often vague or overlooked. Without…

Agile planning should be simple. Agile embraces flexibility, adaptability, and incremental delivery. Therefore, planning processes are designed to be lightweight and time-efficient.  Many organizations struggle with Agile planning.  Remnants …

At the beginning of my project management classes, I ask participants if they have any big, burning questions.  Accountability always tops the list.  Project managers face challenges when team members do not complete assignments on time or wh…

Agile is an idea. Ideas don’t die—people do. An idea’s popularity may wax and wane; however, until it is completely forgotten, ideas continue to exist.  Its concepts predate the creation of the Manifesto (2001).  Its principles have evolved and will co…

The project management training and certification market is multi-layered, complex, and dynamic. Project management training is not a standardized product. This article aims to provide data-supported context and analysis.
The post The Economics of Pro…

Sometimes, great leadership appears effortless.  The leader’s actions seem intuitive and simple, yet the impact is powerful. 
The post The Cookie Post…Great Leadership appeared first on PMP Certification Exam Prep & Training – Velociteach.

Earned Work Management is a lightweight, approach-agnostic project performance measurement system that supports Waterfall, Scrum, and Kanban. This allows organizations employing different project approaches to measure project portfolio performance cons…

Meteorologists are better at predicting the weather than project managers are at delivering projects.  About a third of projects are delivered on time, on budget, and with the desired scope.  By contrast, a seven-day forecast is accurate about 80% of t…

Project managers ascend the career ladder based on accumulated experience-derived wisdom and managing progressively larger and more complicated efforts.  A typical trajectory involves moving from managing projects to programs, portfolios, and proj…

Stakeholder alignment—or lack thereof—can be the difference between project success and failure. In today’s dynamic business environment, projects face multiple stakeholders and constituencies. Often, these groups have competing or divergent interests….

Hybrid projects are not constrained by a single methodology or well-defined framework.  By definition, they are a melding of practices.  A huge responsibility accompanies this unbounded freedom of choice.  Project managers must clearly describe how the…

A project manager’s first major decision is selecting the approach and lifecycle.  Historically, this was a non-issue.  The default option was preordained based on the project type, organizational preferences, and inertia.  Construction …

I authored my first project management article 10 years ago.  A mentor recommended I start writing to launch my transition from managing project organizations to teaching. Writing those early articles was challenging.  Reducing complex ideas …

We should view project management approaches as a palette of options.  Predictive, Agile, and Lean/Kanban form the boundaries.  Hybrid is the vast interior space.  The first article in this series described the boundaries and color-mix of approaches: T…

Hybrid project management just had its breakout moment!       The Project Management Institute’s Pulse of the Profession® 2024 reported that hybrid (32%) is now the second most commonly used approach.  Predictive (44%) still ho…

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Projects can generate a lot of data. Large, mature organizations generally have the tools to capture, store, and analyze this information effectively. However, small and less mature organizations and those lea…

Making good decisions is a critical project management skill. The challenge is to create a fair, efficient, effective, and transparent process for our teams and stakeholders. In a McKinsey survey, only 20% of respondents stated their companies excelled in decision-making.  The path to the answer is often as important as the solution.  Making better decisions […]

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Shift-left is an Agile/DevOps call to action.  It signaled the need to address quality sooner.  As we adapt to the current dynamics, we should challenge standard paradigms and reevaluate when to execute project processes. Timing is crucial fo…

“Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.”  Peter Drucker Time is our only finite resource.  We cannot buy it or create it.  Therefore, we must spend it wisely.  Effective time management…