Project Management

Opportunity: Training, Process, Consulting

When was the last time you participated in a project where it was on-budget and on-time? For me, it was years and year ago when I didn’t work for the MIS department. What makes these projects go so wrong? It isn’t that our intentions are bad, no. It’s worse than that. It’s because we’re not good at our jobs.

Too many people think that owning a copy of Microsoft Project makes them a fully-fledged project manager without understanding the core concepts outlined by organizations like the Project Management Institute (PMI). It’s inevitable that not all people are familiar with those concepts, that we have our own flavors and tailored versions of methodologies for our individual departments, markets, and organization styles. There’s no perfect methodology that covers everything. If it were, it’d be a book called the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Seriously, 99% of people can not follow that. It’s a 300 page flowchart!

The opportunity here is to create a web-based system that allows for the full process and guides the user through each phase, reminds them of key points, and helps schedule with resources. Simple? No! But, in the words of a talented colleague: We have to make things idiot-proof so we can keep hiring idiots.