APM Blogs

It’s acceptable to pull the plug on a project when you’ve done everything right – and still it goes wrong.

Too often in the construction industry, all-important client outcomes are lost in a sea of contractual wrangling that can be conflict-ridden, overwhelmed by complex jargon or disregarded due to the approach of ‘well, it’s always been done this way’.

New frontiers in programme management The world today is rapidly changing, and it is the programmes of the future that will both help deliver and mitigate against these changes.

How do behaviours impact on assurance processes and how do the ‘right’ behaviours support successful assurance mechanisms and ultimately project success?  These and other questions we will try to answer as part of a future research project, led by the APM Assurance Specific Interest Group.

“The way that the consultation process has worked with feedback and what they're planning to do in the future, shows that the APM is taking this topic very seriously, wants to engage with the membership and the community generally and is listening.

Christmas Day: a transient endeavour with fixed start and end dates, clearly defined objectives and deliverables, perhaps no business case as such, but very real costs (tangible) and expected benefits (mostly intangible) and a stakeholder community with risks to be managed and issues to be addressed.

The last year has been a period of great change for APM but that change has allowed our organisation to go from strength to strength with the adoption of a new ambitious strategy helping to grow our membership and revenues.

Hang the cost – it's the benefits that really matter When you're at that stage of deciding whether to give a project the green light – or you are assessing a project's progress to decide whether to continue with it – then it's easy to become totally focused on how much the whole thing is costing to the exclusion of other factors.

Ever had one of those projects where it becomes fairly obvious that you are the wrong side of the coin with the customer and it isn't likely going to improve? You will get a few things right down the line as the project unfolds and heads toward implementation.

The APM People SIG recently undertook a short ‘pulse’ survey to ask APM members for their views on people-related aspects of project management.