Project Management

I apologise for being off line for a few days - work and circumstances have conspired to leave me no time to get the things done that I really wanted to do.

Which brings me very neatly to the topic of the day - namely project management.

I thought that after some 30 odd years of managing things within a 50+ year life span I could safely say that I had some idea about project management. After all life is a giant series of projects that we all seem to manage to some degree or other, more or less usefully.

However in recent times I am afraid that I have to admit that such a lot has been written about the subject that I am actually starting from scratch catching up with the new verbiage.

For example:

Do people know about Portfolio Management? Program Management? A portfolio of projects? A Departmental Portfolio? Benefits realization? Value Chain Management? Gateway reviews?

I thought I was doing OK when I understood what was meant by a Gantt and PERT charts and has some notion of the project management life cycle that was a part of the PMBOK (Project Management Book of Knowledge) processes as well as an understanding of Earned Value Management, matrix management and formative and summative evaluations.

Just to prove me wrong, some interesting stuff has appeared on the OGC site in the UK. Have a look at the Office of Government Commerce where you two can read about PRINCE2 and sundry related terminology, including the aforementioned portfolio and programme management, gateway reviews, benefits realisation etc..

In addition I have located some really interesting places like the PMI web site and of course the Project Management forum

This site I can also recommend to people.

I would like to be able to discuss with people some of the stuff I am finding out about from these sites and would welcome an interchange of views with like minded people.

Have a look at the stuff that is available and then send me a comment as to whether this is something you would be interested in discussing on this forum.