On March 11 2010, the new Tokyo-Ibaraki Airport (IBR) opened. The first flight to arrive was an Asiana Airlines‘ Airbus A321 from Incheon International Airport in South Korea. This was the first and the last flight for that day.

Let us examine this case study from the very “beginning”.  The airfield was first developed in 1937, under the orders of Emperor Hirohito. and for the next several decades served as a Japanese Air Force base. Several years after the start of the 21^st century the local government decided to convert the military installation into a civil airport.

According to different sources the cost of the construction project was somewhere between $220 and $230 million.  Also, according to multiple publications, the project was completed on time and on budget with all the requested features delivered. Therefore one could come to a conclusion that from a project management point of view this project was a complete success.

However, at the time of the project inception both of the two major Japanese airlines – All Nippon Airways and Japanese Airlines – notified the local government that they did not intend to use the airport after its completion. These airlines’  decision implied that 90% of the air traffic in Japan would be absent from the airport.

Another issue that was known right from the beginning of the venture is the problematic location of the airport. It was located 96 miles (155km) from the Shinjuku district of Tokyo.  Another problem at the time the airport opened was there were no plans to offer any type of public transportation from or to the airport. It was estimated that the passengers trying to get to the center of Tokyo would have to spend more than three and a half hours to reach their intended destination.

Furthermore, the facilities at Ibaraki Airport were minimal. While the provincial government marketed the airport as a low cost airline hub, the facilities at the airport were totally insufficient to meet the needed requirements.

In these two-part video series Jamal will talk about how to prioritize the projects in your portfolio. Topics include:

• Straightforward simple method without strategic alignment
• A more complicated methodology that includes strategic alignment

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

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Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

By Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, CSM

Learning the lessons of past projects is important if you want to improve as a project manager. Understanding what worked and what didn’t is essential for your professional development when managing projects and for getting better outcomes each time.

This article contains everything you need to know about lessons learned management techniques to help achieve exactly that. Lessons learned management techniques for PMPs are the knowledge and skills that a project manager needs to be able to use lessons learned to improve their projects.

They are different from the lessons learned about passing your PMP Exam. Those lessons are about exam practice and how other people prepared for and passed the PMP Exam. If you are in fact looking for lessons learned on how to pass the PMP Exam then you’ll find lots of tips and advice at https://www.project-management-prepcast.com/ll.

Back to lessons learned management techniques: they form part of your PMP Exam so this article will both help you prepare for questions on the topic and give you the tools you need to learn from your experiences on projects.

PMP Lessons Learned Management Techniques: 3 Things To Know For Your Exam

‘Management techniques’ are just effective ways of working. They are how we capture, record, analyze and use lessons learned for continuous improvement in our projects.

Now we’ve got that cleared up, here are three essential things to know about them for your PMP Exam.

First, the PMP Exam Content Outline specifically mentions lessons learned management techniques as an area of cross-cutting knowledge and skill. You should expect to get asked about them.

Second, lessons learned processes are useful across the whole project management life cycle from Initiating to Closing. However, lessons learned management techniques relate specifically to how you manage the process of gathering and sharing lessons learned on your project. This is more relevant to the Monitoring & Controlling and Closing stages of your project.

In the this two-part video series Jamal will talk about the definition and the potential impacts of optimism bias as well as three theories attempting to explain this phenomenon: Topics include:

• Definition and potential impacts of the optimism bias phenomenon
• The Standard Economic Theory, the "Mass Delusion" Theory and the "Machiavelli Factor" Theory

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

• Please follow me on Twitter: 
• Like our page on Facebook: 
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: 
• Subscribe to my RSS feed: 

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Introduction

Recently the Canadian media reported that the government of British Columbia has launched a "thoughtful reset" (whatever the heck that means) of its Information Technology projects due to major delays, cost overruns and failure to deliver the scope promised.

According to the Vancouver Sun newspaper:

• Of eight high-profile IT projects recently undertaken by government — with a total price tag of $2.5 billion — several have faced serious difficulties and collectively they’ve overshot their budgets by a combined $350 million and counting.
• The two large-scale health projects that have faltered are a national infectious disease system that has cost B.C. 420 per cent of the budgeted amount, and a massive computer transformation project in Vancouver Coastal Health that’s beset by firings and delays while still in the design phase.
• Panorama, the error-prone infectious disease outbreak software, was budgeted at $27 million in B.C., but cost $113 million. To add insult to injury it was riddled with more than 11,000 defects and errors.

As a result of that, the Deputy Health Minister Stephen Brown, Health Minister Terry Lake, Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan, and an NDP critic Adrian Dix (please, please tag them in this post if you are connected with them!) had asked a whole bunch of very interesting and thoughtful questions (see below) that I intend to answer in my today's article:

Questions and "Oh, So Inconvenient" Answers

Question# 1:

How to get realistic about budgets, timelines and expectations? How do you make sure the aspirations at the beginning are grounded enough you’ve got some assurance you are going to deliver?

Answer #1:

Here are some of the usual suspects you may want to look at:

In this video Jamal will talk about the definition of the project success. What constitutes a successful project? Does it have to be on-time? On-budget? Deliver the full scope? Provide business value? 

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

• Please follow me on Twitter: 
• Like our page on Facebook: 
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: 
• Subscribe to my RSS feed: 

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

A couple of years ago I was commissioned by a product company to run a crucial project of theirs, the delivery of the next version of their flagship product. The project has been hindered by problems from the very inception: too much scope to deliver ("customers demand ALL of these features!), not enough time ("we absolutely MUST deliver this by the start of the Christmas season!") and lack of resources ("you need HOW many people?!").

I started this endeavor by sitting together with the product managers and a couple of senior architects in order to prioritize the features and to determine the proverbial "low hanging fruits" that were of utmost importance but could be delivered relatively easy. At the end of the day we were able to cut or postpone some of the "nice to have" but cumbersome scope items. However we still only had a 50% chance of hitting the required deadline. So, I gathered my documents and walked into the office of the CEO ...

Me: Listen, our chances of finishing project on-time are still pretty slim. We are hovering somewhere around 30% probability of hitting the deadline. We need to look for some additional degrees of freedom ...

CEO: And what are you proposing?

Me: Well, we went through the list of potential options to obtain additional degrees of freedom: adding more people, replacing inexperienced experts with the experienced ones, cutting some additional scope, etc., but received an unequivocal "no" to each one of our requests ...

CEO: Well, I guess you guys will just have to roll up your sleeves and work harder!

Me: Actually, there is another option that can give us some wiggle room. You know how we conduct company-wide meetings every Tuesday? (Note: The company had a long-standing tradition of running "all hands on deck" meetings on a weekly base. The gatherings lasted for 2-2.5 hours each time and largely consisted of  employees passing on teddy bears as prizes and thanking each other for being especially helpful last week. The management was convinced that such gatherings improved communications and employee morale, thus treating these events as sacred cows.)

CEO: Yes ...

Me: Would you mind exempting my team from these meetings? We think it can free up ...

In the this video Jamal will talk about the importance of including your company resources in project portfolio management calculations. 

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

• Please follow me on Twitter: 
• Like our page on Facebook: 
• Connect with me on LinkedIn: 
• Subscribe to my RSS feed: 

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Introduction

In my consulting and training practice whenever I get to talk to project managers, both experienced and new, the question of whether it pays off to be honest when interacting with your clients always comes up. I usually say that it is much easier to weather the storm at the beginning of the project than to suffer the death of the thousand cuts through the entire duration of the venture.

However, one time an experienced project manager approached me after the session and, with a "wink wink, nudge nudge" look on his face, said the following:

"Oh, c'mon, man like you never lied to your customer in order to get the project off the ground! You know perfectly well, once they get a little bit pregnant, there is no way back for them!"

Once I got over the painful image of "getting my customers slightly pregnant", I remembered the following dialogue I had with my former boss, the director of the IT department at a global bank.

The Story

Director: Hey, I am going to assign you to this new regulatory project. Keep in mind, this is a high-profile endeavour; our main client is the Senior VP of our company. By the way, you should not, he is a very difficult individual. As a matter of fact his nickname in our department is "El Diablo"!

PM: Yes, I have heard about this project. I have spoken to some of our technical people and they have estimated the project to take about nine months ...

Director: Yup, that is another problem. I have personally promised that we would deliver the product in three months

PM: “What?! Three months? But now that he finds out the truth he will be mad!”

Director: “Don’t worry about that. I have a plan. We will proceed by breaking the news to him gradually!”