Tips for Managing Change Requests in Your Project

How to manage change requests in your project

By definition change request is a procedure to edit the scope of a project.

Sounds simple but by experience its one of the most challenging tasks for a project manager.  Change request could be due to a variety of reasons its not just because of the lack of clarity in scope or someone missing our a requirement in the scope document. It could be well due to market conditions, change in technology etc.  A change request could have a deep impact on your project in terms of scope, time, cost etc and could lead it to a failure.

Continue reading…


Managing Multiple Projects At Same Time – MISTAKES AND SOLUTIONS

managing multiple projects

Being a Project management consultant for years I have heard several questions from project managers regarding managing multiple projects, So I thought it would be a good idea to post it on my blog.

Following are some of the actual questions I have heard.

“How to manage multiple projects at same time”

“What is the standard in the industry for managing multiple projects”

“How do I find that I am not overwhelmed by multiple projects”

 

To me management is a trait and everyone could not be as good as someone born with this trait. It is same like, some are born musician and someone else could learn it but its hard to beat one who are born with it. Its hard to say how much projects you could manage at same time or whats the threshold. Its totally upto you. You could increase your productivity by avoiding these mistakes for sure.

Continue reading…


Lessons Learnt / Best Practices for a Business Analyst- BA’s

There is an old saying, which I guess everyone must have heard it before. The saying is “Learn from your mistakes”. Never knew that this saying which I heard from my grandma will be an important part of my project management and business analyst career. On the other side PMBOK actually clearly specifies it as a best practice. PMBOK says to document the lessons learnt for each project and make it accessible to other project managers as well for future use. So I am following the code of PMBOK and  writing all the things that I have learnt in my career as a business analyst, developer and a project manager. You can call them as lessons learnt or best practices, but I prefer to call them lessons learnt as these things I have learnt on my own as I am not as smart as CHUCK NORRIS.

Lessons learnt as a business analyst

Continue reading…


Best UML / Sequence diagram creator for your app, website or anything thats has a flow

If you would have served as a business analyst or a project manager you know the importance of workflows. Coffee/wine loaded client meetings (if you are not using cisco webex or skype) you jot down each and every point of discussion, record the session but in the end when you try to do the knowledge transfer to your team errrrrrrrr.. That is a situation every analyst faces or has faced in the past.
Continue reading…


RACI MATRIX and How It is Useful

In last 4 years I have worked in different roles, I have moved from being the database guy, then the core I.T. / Programmer to a management person. That core experience has given me a lot of insight and an upper hand in my role as an analyst and a project manager when compared to managers who just came out of school with their MBAs. I find myself better with understanding the requirements of the clients, creating the charter with team, creating the Work breakdown structure and assigning the team/resource to those tasks.

As we all work in an environment where we are responsible for tasks that we perform, we might also be accountable for those task/s. We might be consulted in for a task or two or might just kept in loop for some tasks. This when tabulated in a sheet is called the RACI matrix pronounced as RACEY or it is also called the resource allocation matrix (R.A.M.)

RACI MATRIX

RACI MATRIX

Continue reading…