Tag Archives: tips

PMO Basics: Building Your Lessons Learned File

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Chris Niccolls

Ask different project managers and get different reasons why project management and the PMO is important. For me, communication provides PM’s greatest value, and building a lessons learned file is one of the most valuable (and overlooked) communications practices. Project … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Project Management Office, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

PMO Genius: How To Negotiate like a PAWN Star

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Chris Niccolls

Project management is all around us. We see it all the time, but it doesn’t necessarily register as project management. One of the most common elements of project management…. Or just plain old management… is negotiation. Very few of us have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Project Management Office, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Genius PMO: Five Steps to An Honest Project Team!

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Every profession has unspoken agreements and dark little secrets. In the world of project management and PMO’s our objective is to make projects more “transparent” and measurable, so that projects can be more successful. You might say that one of … Continue reading →

Posted in Decision Making, Expectations and Rewards, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Project Management Office, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Genius PMO: Make Every Project Manager A Genius (Part I)

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

If your Project Management Office (PMO) was staffed only by geniuses, you might get more work done. In the real world, we work with a staff that has limitations… limits on what they know, how much they can figure out … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Project Management Office, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

4th Sigma: Project Charters, Part 3 – Building Consensus

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

A Project Charter is a document that describes a project, names the people who will perform the project, what their roles will be and the name of the project sponsor (the individual that requested the project). Any book on Six … Continue reading →

Posted in 4th Sigma, Best Practices, Decision Making, Expectations and Rewards, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Learning and Development, Self Sorting, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The 4th Sigma: Is It Time to Rethink Six Sigma?

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Over the past few months, I have been using this blog to collect information from different operational managers, especially IT managers because of the wide range of services they run. The subject has been, “How are you dealing with the … Continue reading →

Posted in 4th Sigma, Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Build vs. Buy: Transparent Operations Build Better Products!

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Yesterday we looked at the old “Build vs. Buy” question, “When does it make sense to have an internal department develop a product/service, and when does it make sense to use an outside product/service?” We left off saying that a … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Common Sense Contracting, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Unique Ideas | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Not All Numbers Are Equal!

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

Managers that have moved away from management by instinct to management by metrics are often frustrated by the strange quirks and illogical results they get from their management reports. This can be terribly frustrating, because it takes a lot of … Continue reading →

Posted in Best Practices, Decision Making, Delivering Services, Improvement, Continuous or Not, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Starting up “niccollsanddimes”

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Chris Niccolls

This is my first post on “niccollsanddimes”… or is it?  Truthfully, it’s more of an extended introduction. I thought that before I jumped into things, I owed everyone an explanation as to why I’m setting off on this path. After all, some of you … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment