SidesWays Blog

Joel Spolsky  has one of the higher rated programming blogs and goes into the thought behind StackOverflow.com . It's a site designed to share programming information efficiently. Some interesting timecodes: 01:00 he worked on FogBugz 05:00 some interesting discussion about competing information exchange approaches 16:00 he worked on Excel VBA (a source of consulting work for me for years) 25:00 discussion about .NET stack and performance of C# being great 37:40 Things You Should Never Do (don't rewrite a software product from scratch) 44:00 stackoverflow.com is #1 resource for new programming technologies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ

Regardless of your thoughts about Agile and Waterfall and the amount of process overhead that is appropriate for a project, the PMBOK Guide is an invaluable resource for project management practices that can be adapted to your project. Note that many practices and artifacts fall outside of the areas covered by Agile development processes. For example, project initiation tasks include creation of a project charter and methods for gathering requirements are all covered in the PMBOK Guide. Besides the Project Management Institute, which is the keeper of all things PMBOK, there are many great examples on the web including one from the state of Oregon at: http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/admin/pmo/publications/pmo_templates.shtml With a concise Word document summary of the various templates with links at: http:// www.oregon . gov /DHS/admin/bpm/pmo /docs/PCoE_PMBOK_4TH_EDITION_TEMPLATES. doc

Another useful tool -- see the PMBOK Guide for more information. The Risk Register is used to help identify and plan for risks on a project. Some tips: If you have a PMO there is probably has a template or system you should use. Columns may need to be customized with each project. It needs to be kept updated over the life of the project. Much of the value comes from thinking through the risks to the project and incorporating that understanding into the day-to-day management of the project. It's a useful onboarding tool for other project members. Keep that in mind when creating/updating.

The Project Management Body of Knowledge Guide (PMBOK Guide) defines stakeholders as "persons or organizations who are actively involved in the project or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected by the performance or completion of the project." Stakeholders may include customers/users, the project sponsor, portfolio/program managers, PMO, project manager, project team members, functional managers, operations manager, vendors or other business partners. An important tool for stakeholder analysis is the Stakeholder's Register. Here's an example: Some tips: If you have a PMO there is probably has a template or system you should use. Columns may need to be customized with each project. It needs to be kept updated over the life of the project. Much of the value comes from thinking of the project from each stakeholder's perspective and incorporating that understanding into the management of the project. It's a useful onboarding tool for ot