Stop That Project!

There are some projects that once they begin continue on like a snowball rolling down a hill. The project builds momentum, increasing in terms of the time, effort and money that are continuously absorbed by it. The greater the spend; the harder it is for the project to stop or change direction.
This may be fine if the project is of value and if the work is being done effectively so as to achieve the desired value. But if the project is not adding value, or it is headed in a wrong direction, or it does not comply with regulations and best practices then the project should be stopped.
The question is who can, or should, stop the project?
Read more in this article by George Pitagorsky

5 Tips for Managing Project Communications in a Crisis

A new video from Elizabeth Harrin of A Girl’s Guide to Project Management
There are always things that go wrong on projects – sometimes those issues are small; sometimes they are significant. In this video Elizabeth offers 5 tips to help you deal with project communications during a crisis.

Top 5 open source project management tools for 2015

Robin Muilwijk has recently printed his Top 5 open source project management tools for 2015 based on the following criteria:

• Is the software provided under an open source license?
• Does it have an active community?
• Does it have up-to-date documentation available?
• Is the source code available?
• Are there new or recent releases?

The tools he reviews are:

1. Tuleap Open ALM
2. OrangeScrum
3. Taiga
4. Odoo
5. MyCollab

He also gives updates on several of the tools he reviewed last year.
See the full article here.

How to Prevent Scope Creep: A Business Analyst Perspective

Written by Kiranmayi Satnarayan
Many years ago a few of my colleagues started working on a project, which was not so complex. It went well for the first few months. The problem started when the team travelled to the client location to give a demo on a module and seek the client’s feedback. The client suggested certain changes that were accepted by the team. The team built the module with the new suggestions incorporated, however, the client suggested a few more changes. After a couple of similar back and forth interactions, the project was ultimately shelved as it was no longer delivering a good ROI.

Project Management Career Q&A – Stress!

Work and life are two of the things that many practitioners working in the field of project management struggle to get into a happy balance. With increased pressures to deliver, expectations of doing more with less, project managers are no strangers to feeling overworked and at the point of burn out.
Lyndsay Scott of Arras People suggests four initial areas in your approach to work to start thinking about changing.
Read more here