Guest Post by Daniel Burrus (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Corporations that create in this world facilitate so many integral pieces to contemporary life by way of manufacturing. Manufacturing is quite literally a backbone to so many other industries, generating components for medical devices, automobiles, electronics, and machinery that keeps everything progressing forward. All of these components frequently need to be replaced, or more often upgraded thanks to new innovations that create new capabilities and in turn create new needs. [Read more…]

Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article focuses on the task level of a project which is the key to merging the different methodologies. There is a lot of articles on line that explain what the merger will look like and the pros and cons of it but I found nothing to explain HOW TO DO IT?  This article goes into quite a bit of detail but I felt I had no choice to convey to the reader how to merge the two methodologies with examples.

Agile was created for software development projects. Some of the key benefits of this methodology are flexibility, speed, high quality, and continuous improvement. These features are implemented at the Scrum level. One major problem with Agile is that it does not scale up to large projects due to lack of structure, changing requirements and scope, and lack of a baseline to measure project performance.  In my opinion, it works well for small software and IT projects that are less than a year in duration and less than $1M in value

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Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Projects go wrong.  Despite some people’s best efforts, hopes to the contrary, or helpless denials, that’s a fact.  ‘Best effort’ is sometimes not good enough to help a failing project recover, ‘hope’ can merely be unfounded optimism and denial in the light of facts is just part of the grief cycle.

Nobody really wants to fail, very few like it, and even fewer will enjoy it.  Those that planned a project did not purposely plan to fail.  Perhaps there may have been a bit of a gamble with a tendency towards optimism rather than applying the caution of pessimism.  Projects are about risk as well as opportunity and as the idiom goes, “Nothing ventured…nothing gained” but not every cloud has a silver lining.

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Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Businesses exist because they are formed by entrepreneurs. They exist to earn a return for the business owners and shareholders.

Organizations exist to fulfill a specific social purpose and to satisfy a specific need of society. The potential for creating value for their customers and stakeholders is a key motive for all types of organizations, including the public sector and not-for-profits.

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