41 articles in this category
Change requests are inevitable in project management, proposing alterations to agreed deliverables. Managing them effectively requires documenting the request, assessing scope impact, prioritizing with your team, approving or rejecting based on merit, and communicating the decision to all stakeholders.
Peter Drucker, the Father of Modern Management, believed management is a liberal art requiring psychology, science, and ethics. He coined key terms like knowledge worker and management by objectives, and taught that organizations should develop people intellectually and morally.
Design thinking follows 6 distinct phases - Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test, and Implement - to match user needs with feasible technology. Companies like Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola use this methodology to solve real problems based on data rather than assumptions, minimizing innovation risk while leveraging collective team expertise.
Change control follows four steps: formal change request submission, team review and discussion, final definition of options with response documentation, and decision-making with proper approval from authorized client stakeholders. Documentation must answer five critical questions: what change is needed, why it's necessary and what happens without it, expected outcomes and prerequisites, deadlines, and how the change adds value to customer experience or precision.
Management by exception means competent employees handle day-to-day work without micromanagement, while managers focus on strategic goals and step in only when operational or financial performance drifts significantly from planned outcomes. Four steps require careful setup: set realistic benchmarks from historical records, monitor performance frequently with automated systems, analyze deviations for significance, then investigate and resolve exceptions freeing management time for decision-making in problem areas.
Project management involves planning and monitoring finite activities with specific goals, start dates, and end dates. Discover the five phases of project management and how effective project managers integrate teams, resources, and budgets to deliver successful outcomes.