Planning for, taking, and passing the Project Management Professional (PMP®) exam can be a long and stressful journey. What better way is there to take a little stress off and help yourself prepare than to learn from those who have gone before you? Here we will look at seven of the most common mistakes identified…

  A client wants a Microsoft Project Server system built, including a security configuration based on the Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS). When the consultant arrives at the client site, the key stakeholder in charge of the deployment has abruptly left the company. When the consultant asks the remaining staff for a copy of the org…

An organization had asked us to undertake a Project Server deployment initiative. The user base was gigantic. The deployment timeframe was tight, and on the agreed-upon budget we could just scrape by. The initial kick-off meeting took place in an eerie room where there was a creepy pale white elephant — existing data and its…

  At one organization where I worked, the CIO had seen something on the value of earned value. They brought me in to teach a two-day Microsoft Project class to their engineers without mentioning that this was now part of their goals. Every engineer on that team within a few months of the class was…

  Early in my career, I was teaching an “Intro to Microsoft Project” class for a large corporate client in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had been there to teach classes for them a number of times previously. During my welcome and introduction, I intended to say, “It’s good to be back in the Twin Cities…

  Whether it’s a crazed client, scary supervisor, lunatic schedule or something else, these MPUG tales are guaranteed to get your skin crawling in time for Halloween. We invite you to share your own tale of terror in comments below — if you dare…       You’re Fired — Or, Um, Unscheduled! By Collin…

  Many years ago in a long lost time there was a Fortune 500 company hiring project managers. The U.S. economy had tanked and not many companies were hiring at all, so it was exciting to get hired by anyone. I wasn’t a project manager but provided the technical support for Microsoft Project, Project Server…

Agile transformations do not take place overnight, which is the stark reality. They require discipline and consistent inspecting, adapting and follow-through. Any well-intended transformation is at risk of slipping back to old ways if certain challenges and pitfalls are not addressed and avoided. Here are five major pitfalls organizations face in their agile transitions: 1….

The following is an excerpt from Eric Uyttewaal’s new book, Forecast Scheduling with Microsoft Project 2010. The “Schedule” Most people understand the schedule as a list of deliverables and their due dates. To a professional scheduler that list of deliverables and their due dates is not the schedule, but the baseline schedule. The baseline schedule…