To survive a security incident, your organization needs to get back to doing business as soon as possible – back to serving customers, cutting paychecks, and running production lines.

If your organization were hit by a major incident, how badly would your operations be interrupted and how many customers would you lose for good?

In this webinar, learn how to prepare today, to make your business more resilient to cyber attacks tomorrow.​

Attend and you'll learn:

• Where regulatory compliance requirements can help – or harm – your cyber resilience efforts
• How better IT asset visibility will help you survive cyber attacks and manage change
• What tools and processes will help you stay operational during and after an attack

REGISTER NOW

What if you never dropped the ball as a team or project leader?

What if you could have every base covered? Wouldn't that be amazing? You have all the information you need to make great decisions. All information and status updates you need to have the best and most accurate status reports and the most interesting and productive meetings possible?
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Even though this seems to sound like it is focused on project managers, it is not. I am going to direct this at business analysts. One - because it's my article and I often handle both roles and can do what I want AND Two - because business analysts in certain projects actually perform the more communicative and facilitator role than the more figurehead project manager. It depends on the project. But there are always those pitfalls. Those behaviors that can be detrimental to the project and we may not even know we are doing things wrong. Consider these five and then let me know what you think...

The healthcare industry is laden with risks. While businesses regularly announce forecasts and projections, managers understand that the ability to manage existing and potential risks can mean the difference between success or failure.

To survive in today’s volatile economy, your medical-based startup should have a risk management plan. Typically, a team of stakeholders will identify potential risks that your business is likely to face and provide strategies for dealing with them.

Moreover, while pursuing new projects to grow your business, you should have a proper project management plan in place. Project management is the organizing and managing of existing resources to help in achieving the end goal. It also involves dealing with potential risks to ensure the success of projects and, consequently, business growth.

How to Use Project and Risk Management Business Success

1. Comply with HIPAA and Hitrust requirements to protect your data

Healthcare organizations need to comply with HIPAA and Hitrust requirements to protect patient data from unauthorized access. Theft or unauthorized access of confidential data leads to litigations and penalties.

The Health Insurance Portability and Availability Act (HIPAA) provides a set of requirements meant to safeguard and improve patient data security. On the other hand, the Health Information Trust Alliance (Hitrust) is a framework that puts together controls of several standards, including ISO/IEC 27000-series information security standards and the HIPAA, to make it easy for organizations to comply with all the data security requirements.

The best way to deal with data risks is to prioritize them. You can prioritize your firm’s data security efforts based on expected risks. To identify which risks to tackle first, determine two things:

• How much money your business will lose if a specific risk occurs
• The likelihood of a particular risk occurring

Create a table detailing the various risks and their probability of occurring. From there, focus on high-value, high-probability risks first, as they are the ones likely to cause severe damage.

2. Create a project management strategy to steer your progress

Project management involves five stages:

• Initiation phase This is the first stage of project management, and it involves coming up with a business case that justifies the need for the project. At this stage, consider the project costs, project timeline, and potential financial benefits.

• Project planning At the planning stage, you determine the resources that the project will require, assign tasks, establish clear goals, milestones, and Key Performance Indicators, and identify potential risks and how to deal with them. You need to communicate project objectives with all project participants to ensure that everybody works towards the end goal.

• Executing the project Project execution involves the actual carrying out of the project. There should be clear milestones of what needs to be achieved within a specific period to ensure progress.

• Monitoring and control This stage involves monitoring the project progress. You can use project management tools to monitor and control your projects effectively. The tools enable smooth communication between the various stakeholders. Some good examples of project management tools available on the market include Asana, Trello, and Podio.  Project monitoring helps you to identify unattained milestones and why they have not been attained. You can then come up with control measures to correct deviations. You also need to measure projects against set Key Performance Indices.

• Project closure This involves project completion. At project completion, you can note down the challenges you faced in the previous projects and come up with ways to avoid them in the next projects.

3. Identify risks and plan on how to manage them

At the project planning stage, you identify potential risks and decide on how you will handle them. Depending on the frequency and severity of potential risks, below are some ways of dealing with them:

• Accepting them – If a risk has a small and insignificant effect on your medical-based startup, you can accept it. Accepting means that you allow the risk to happen without doing anything about it. If dealing with a risk is more expensive than allowing it to happen, it makes sense to accept it.
• Avoiding the risk – If a risk has a substantial negative impact on a project’s success and is too costly to mitigate, you should avoid it. You may have to change the project plan or do away with the project entirely.
• Transferring the risk – You can transfer a risk by insuring yourself or outsourcing a particular product or service.
• Mitigate the risk – Risk mitigation involves preparing for the risk and coming up with ways to lessen its effects. Diversifying products or services is one way of mitigating risks.

Project and risk management are crucial to business growth. Project management will help you to identify and plan for potential risks and carry out projects successfully.

To succeed in the healthcare industry, you need a robust risk management plan. In the current highly-dynamic economy, inability to predict and adequately prepare for risks leads to business failure.

As businesses grow, so does the level of complexity between departments. When issues arise in one department or project, the effects are likely to cause cascading issues throughout the company, meaning that swift solutions are required to address the problem. Technology is often a key factor and a cause in such issues – but it can also be a remedy to many problems.

IT professionals know all too well how delicate the balance of day-to-day operations within a business is, and how fundamental technology is in holding everything together. With continued growth, businesses often must move beyond the standard IT department model that works in the shadows and instead embrace a more comprehensive solution – which usually manifests in the form of an IT service desk.

To explain why this is often a good move, let’s outline four ways that an IT service desk can help and add value to your business.

IT Service Desks Can Unite Multiple Business Functions​

Ticket service, asset management, and analytics: these are often fundamental components of any growing business. Smaller organizations may have specific employees and departments dedicated to handling these functions, but one major role of an IT service desk is performing all of these functions and more.

Integrating these functions is easier than you might think. Take SysAid, for example. Designed to integrate numerous roles under one roof, SysAid helps businesses unite troubleshooting, data, reporting, and automation initiatives with one dedicated solution. Those who are curious about its functionality need not make a lofty commitment, as the IT service management solution offers a free demo for businesses to try.

IT Service Desks Can Improve Communication

How many times have you contacted a business seeking answers about a product or service, only to encounter somebody who doesn’t know what’s going on? Now think about how employees and customers alike feel when they experience that during an interaction with your business.

One of the great benefits of IT service desks is that information and communication can be streamlined; by investing everything under one set of tools and software, functions like recording and fetching information becomes easy and consistent. No longer will one department lack information or communication on a particular ticket or task, due to the fact that every action taken is logged and every interaction is recorded. Those classic inter-departmental miscommunications will be a thing of the past!

IT Service Desks Can Automate Complex Functions

Think of all the time your employees, customer service agents, and IT professionals spend grinding through mundane yet necessary tasks. From tracking ticket statuses to helping service request authorizations, there are likely hours of work each week per employee that can be freed up with the use of an IT service desk.

By investing these tasks under the umbrella of one dedicated department, inter-departmental tasks can be made more efficient, customer service outcomes can be enhanced, and employee morale can be improved through the elimination of tedious and repetitious tasks.

IT Service Desks Can Monitor Trends in Performance

Analytics and metrics are often considered the holy grail of the business world when understanding performance. While it can be easy to focus on sales and profits trends, understanding how your business is performing internally can improve its performance with the broader public.

IT service desks with the proper software and suites available to them can monitor their own performance and that of other departments. From identifying recurring problems with particular software to analyzing the speed at which tickets are being handled, service desks can fetch this information on-demand and subsequently use it to determine how best to improve both internal and external company performance.
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While some businesses have fears about the costs and complexity associated with forming their very own IT service desks, the improvements in company efficiency and productivity often more than pay for the on-paper costs associated with it. Given that these service desks can improve communication, monitor performance trends, automate various tasks and integrate multiple departments and functions effectively, there’s little to no reason to not consider pursuing this endeavor immediately.

The PMO can't make projects succeed, but it can certainly have a hand in project successes by building the right foundation for projects and the right infra​structure of support and tools for the project managers within it. How? How do we get the PMO into supercharge mode and make our project outcomes more successful for our project customers? Here are my thoughts on 4 key ways we can start supercharging our PMOs right now...

Get the best PPM possible. PPM seems to be the tool of the hour, day and year. Project Portfolio Management – or PPM - is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics. Do we really need a PPM tool to do the PMO right? Yes. And not just a PPM tool, you need the right PPM tool for your organization, your types of projects, and your overall PM infrastructure needs. You may even want to really supercharge your whole organization with a hybrid PPM tool. One that allows you to combine the best of Scaled Agile with all major features of common PM standards including PMI, IPMA and PRINCE2. With a hybrid PPM you can work smarter by taking advantage of fully integrated agile methodologies such as Kanban boards complementing proven, traditional tools like WBS and Gantt charts.

Hire experience over certification. I may not be popular on this topic so let me have it. But seriously, in many cases the most experienced available project managers will likely be certified as well. I'm just saying I would not weed out any applicants over lack of certification. Rather, I will often weed out applicants over less than 'x' amount of experience - possibly 5-10 years experience minimum depending on the current project landscape for the organization.

Present the PMO's accomplishments to senior management. If project management office has had a successful and profitable run so far - and that's the only way you would want to present this (failure would just be... well... sad) - then formally present such info and metrics so as to sufficiently impress the higher-ups. Doing this positions the PMO strategically for funding, new resources and big dollar challenges as your c-levels see capabilities in the organization they might not otherwise realize they have.

Get leadership involved in the projects. This one is key. If you are executive management, get involved with the PMO. Look at the portfolio of projects. Help with funding. Show support of the director and the project managers. If you’re the PMO director or a project manager in the organization, invite a member of senior management to several customer project status meetings as a show of interest in the customers and the projects you’re leading for them. Get them to attend several project kickoff meetings if they don’t already do that. If your CEO is in attendance at a formal project kickoff meeting, I guarantee that you’re customer will feel important from Day One. And that’s a very good thing.

Summary / call for input

The functionality and performance of the PMO isn't often a direct factor in the success of many projects. Indeed, it is more of an enabler of success – helping to create a roadmap to success for projects overall and greater profitability, customer retention, and project manager development for the organization and the PM infrastructure. By planning, innovating and structuring our PMO to better serve our project managers and by positioning it and the organization to better understand what projects to take on with a solid PPM tool, we can help strengthen the revenue flow for the organization through a growing portfolio of projects. If you build it, they (customers) will come.

Readers – how do you feel about this list? What are your experiences in the good and the bad of PMOs? What would you change or add here? Please share and discuss.

What exactly is hybrid PPM? First let's consider what PPM is and should do and then let's explore what happens with a hybrid PPM tool.

Project Portfolio Management – or PPM - is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics.

What a PPM should be

The right PPM will help you analyze and choose the right projects. What technologies is your company equipped to handle this next quarter? What are your revenue goals and do the current projects in the pipeline matchup with those two and other criteria you've setup to help determine what projects to start next or even chase next? Your PPM should be able to help you with those decisions.

Knowing your resource requirements and allocations is a key to proper project staffing. The right PPM knows how extended your resource pool is and what skill sets are available. If that next project isn't a match for the organization then the PPM will flag it as a concern and show you why it's not a match. If you can't take it on with the resource availability you have right now, then you won't and that means saving you from an embarrassing customer situation. I've been there – I've helped organizations figure out which projects they can take on and which ones they should set aside for now even though the CEO has made promises. It's hard – but the PPM makes it easier.

The PPM will help you fund what is needed now. Allocating financial resources to the proper projects is often a painful selection process for the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), General Manager, PMO Director or whoever makes those decisions in your organization. Not everything can be started when you want to and jumping the gun on projects you aren't ready to fund can cause failures from the outset. The PPM will help you put the right projects on the overall project landscape today for greater success for the company.

The hybrid PPM approach

A new hybrid approach to project management allows you to combine the best of Scaled Agile with all major features of common PM standards including PMI, IPMA and PRINCE2. With a hybrid PPM you can work smarter by taking advantage of fully integrated agile methodologies such as Kanban boards complementing proven, traditional tools like WBS and Gantt charts.

One tool does this better than any of the others on the PPM landscape... ONEPOINT Projects is a modern, flexible, standards-based PPM web application that is available both on cloud and on premise and is trusted by hundreds of customers across industries. By covering the whole project life cycle and integrating with leading enterprise applications such as Jira, Confluence, Slack and SAP, ONEPOINT enables a new way of integrated project work.

Every once in awhile we find that product or process or program that can help us out immensely in the project management and project portfolio management world. I think I've just found it in a latest connection with some great individuals standing behind a stellar product. The product is ONEPOINT Projects.

ONEPOINT Projects is a modern, flexible, standards-based PPM web application that is available both on cloud and on premise and is trusted by hundreds of customers across industries. By covering the whole project life cycle and integrating with leading enterprise applications such as Jira, Confluence, Slack and SAP, ONEPOINT enables a new way of integrated project work.

Here are some key features and focuses that really set them apart from other PM and PPM tools offered today...

• ONEPOINT has very good interactive work breakdown structure (WBS) with drag & drop that is automatically kept in sync with other planning tools such as activity list and schedule (GANTT). Users of ONEPOINT have found this to be a great advantage and it helps make ONEPOINT standout in the filed of PM related tools.
  
  
• ONEPOINT has probably the best two-way synchronization with the very popular Jira offering.
  
  
• The individuals behind ONEPOINT's design have done a great job of balancing good usability with standards conformance. This is a very important consideration as the user base masses are highly concerned with user interface and usability as part of the overall strategic adoption and execution in the enterprise software world.
  
  
• ONEPOINT is a hybrid PPM tool – offering the best of agile and traditional PM in one solution. Plus, according to their product roadmap that I've discussed with them, they will be strengthening this even more in their upcoming 2nd gen agile planning and controlling component in their next major release 19 due later in 2019.

There you have it... several reasons you should check this tool out as I have. Make your job easier, make project management and PPM more interactive and complete, and help bridge any agile and waterfall gaps you may have in the organization – with one tool. Oh – and collaboration? The best. Go to ONEPOINT Projects and read about this product and all of these features and more and be sure to get access to your free 30-day trial and give it a test run.

Would you like to be an independent consultant? Do you have a marketable expertise? Do you have the other skills necessary for running a successful business?  Consider these questions before launching your consultancy.

​Independent consulting is not for everyone. If you're a company man – or woman – and you've been with the same organization for 20 years and the thought of change scares the hell out of you, then it's not for you. Change may be the best thing in the world for you, but success probably won't come easily – or even ever. You'll likely be too stymied by what just happened to you (getting laid off) or what you just did (quit outright) to think on your feet and react quickly. Don't do it – unless layoffs are imminent. If that's the case, or if you think it may be an option for you, then start thinking about your next move now and consider whether or not independent consulting is for you.