More Scientists Treat Experiments as a Team Sport

The Wall Street Journal reports that around the world, scientists are cutting across boundaries of place, organization and technical specialty to conduct ever more ambitious experiments. Inspired by such cooperative enterprises as Linux and Wikipedia, they are encouraging creative collaborations through networks of blogs, wikis, shared databases and crowd-sourcing...To gauge the rise of team science, management experts at Northwestern University recently analyzed 2.1 million U.S. patents filed since 1975 and all of the 19.9 million research papers archived in the Institute for Scientific Information database. "We looked at the recorded universe of all published papers across all fields, and we found that all fields were moving heavily toward teamwork," says Northwestern business sociologist Brian Uzzi.

What do you think of this new collaborative environment?

Live from ProjectWorld 2009!

The ProjectWorld event team had a chance to take some pictures Live from the conference. Take a look through as we will be adding more photos from the event. Enjoy!

Free Web Seminar: Managing Risk Using Better Requirements

Date/Time: Wed, Dec 9, 2009 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/613727752
Mention priority code MWS0027BLOG

Incomplete or inaccurate requirements are often cited as one of the main causes of project failure. Whether you are 10 feet away from the user or an ocean away, it is imperative that you accurately elicit and document requirements in order to mitigate your project risk. Presenting a complete requirements picture early on and staying on course throughout the project life cycle is crucial to success. Managing your project risk through the use of business analysis best practices is a best practice in itself.

During this presentation, we will discuss the vital link between business analysis best practices and improvements in risk management and will present a tool to assess your project risks and opportunities early in the project life cycle.
This presentation provides a framework to discuss five best practices in business analysis.

Key Learning Points:
• Key components of managing risk on projects
• Proven techniques to define better user requirements
• How to leverage business analysis best practices to mitigate project risk

Featured Speaker
Glenn R. Brûlé, CSM, Executive Director of Client Solutions, ESI International

How do you make project management work at your company?

Brad Egeland of Project Management Tips recently outlined several things that can help you make project management work for your company.

A few are:

- Get top management involved in the process and the projects. They should be asking questions about how projects are doing. In other words, show an interest in the subject.
- Build into performance appraisals items that evaluate a project manager’s use of the tools of effective project management. Reward people for practicing the methods. But be careful. Be sure upper management is not keeping managers from practicing good methodology.
- It helps to have the entire team trained in project management basics.
- Senior management need to understand the company’s PM process and methodology to effectively set their expectations. One of the ten most common causes of project failures is unrealistic expectations on the part of senior managers.

Read the full list here. What would you add?

Tips on Project Definition Documents

Dimitri Ivanenko recently posted on the PMI blog that even though document management holds a small chunk or the project management process, it is still necessary and important. The process detailed by Dimitri starts off with the project definition documents which are created in the planning phase.

A project definition document should include the following:

Basic project data: Goals, objectives and any business issues to be resolved

Project execution parameters: Definitions of project boundaries, key policies and procedures that are specific to the organization and that must be followed to integrate the project work and its result into the organization during and after the product delivery

Required project management methodology: Governs how the project is planned, how each phase is executed and what's required to move from one phase to another

What are some other tips that are not on this list on putting together project definition documents.

Less than 2 Weeks Away: ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts

PW & WCBA is right around the corner, November 16-18 in Anaheim, CA, and we’d like for you to take a look at the keynotes speaking at our upcoming West Coast Conference. Our featured keynotes include Vincent Cirel, SVP / CIO of Norwegian Cruise Line, David King, CIO of WellDyne, Inc., James A. DiMarzio, CIO of Mazda North American Operations, and Richard Baily, VP of Go To Market for Xerox just to name a few – over 40+ industry experts will be presenting. Make sure to check out the rest of the keynotes.

Also, take some time to view our complete lineup of speakers below, as well as a special priority code we’ve set up for our blog readers for 20% off the registration rate: PWWLINKEDIN. Hope to see you in Anaheim in less than 2 weeks!

Visit the ProjectWorld Homepage

View the ProjectWorld Brochure

View the ProjectWorld 2009 Speaker Roster

Register
Save 20% off the registration rate when you mention code PWWLINKEDIN