Knowledge Areas – Page 2

Leveraging Root Cause Analysis to Prevent Recurring Quality Issues

Quality / October 17, 2023 / Samuel Weiss

In high-stakes projects—whether in government infrastructure, defense systems, or national data platforms—quality issues are more than temporary setbacks. If they recur, they erode trust, inflate costs, and threaten mission readiness. The most effective way to break this cycle is Root Cause Analysis (RCA)—a disciplined method for identifying the true source of a problem, not just its […]

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Lessons Learned and Knowledge Transfer

Integration / September 1, 2023 / Belinda White

Turning Project Experience into Organizational Wisdom Projects end. But the learning shouldn’t. One of the most underleveraged assets in any organization is the knowledge gained through experience—what went right, what went wrong, and why. Unfortunately, in the rush to move on to the next initiative, too many teams close a project without closing the loop. As

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The Role of Quality Metrics in Predicting Project Success

Quality / February 28, 2023 / Clark Gable

If you want to know whether a project is on track, don’t just look at the Gantt chart or the budget spreadsheet—look at the quality metrics. Over my years leading distributed teams across tech, finance, and digital media, I’ve learned that quality metrics are more than a way to measure deliverables—they’re leading indicators of whether a

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Cross-Functional Collaboration and Integration

Integration / October 10, 2022 / Samuel Weiss

Breaking Silos to Build Unified Project Success In today’s fast-paced, multidimensional project environments, no team can afford to operate in isolation. Whether you’re building a digital product, launching a marketing campaign, or transforming enterprise systems, the success of your project depends not only on great planning—but on great collaboration across functions. Yet, too often, teams are

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7 Conversations Every PM Must Have with Their Sponsor—Before the First Dollar Is Spent

Stakeholders / July 16, 2022 / Belinda White

Before timelines tighten and invoices land, a project manager must pause. Not to gather requirements or build the WBS—but to talk. With their sponsor. Too many projects begin with vague alignment, soft assumptions, and a shared enthusiasm that fizzles under pressure. The remedy? Honest, strategic conversations before the first dollar is committed. Here are seven

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Using Cost of Quality (CoQ) Analysis to Drive Better Project Decisions

Quality / June 17, 2022 / Samuel Weiss

In government and mission-critical projects, we can’t afford to treat quality as an abstract ideal. Every deviation from requirements has measurable impacts—on budget, on schedule, on public trust. The Cost of Quality (CoQ) framework allows project leaders to translate quality into hard numbers, making it easier to justify investments, evaluate trade-offs, and prioritize actions. In my own

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Change Management and Integrated Change Control

Integration / March 20, 2022 / Clark Gable

Bringing Stability to Movement and Structure to Flexibility Change is inevitable. In project environments, it’s expected. But managing it? That’s where the real work begins. Whether it’s a scope adjustment, a stakeholder shift, or a regulatory update, change affects every aspect of a project—cost, schedule, quality, risk, communication, and beyond. Left unmanaged, change breeds chaos.

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Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA): A Project Manager’s Tool for Predicting and Preventing Quality Issues

Quality / February 10, 2022 / Samuel Weiss

In mission-critical projects—whether in national infrastructure, defense systems, or government IT platforms—the cost of a quality failure can be measured not just in money, but in operational disruption, public safety risks, and loss of trust. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is one of the most effective tools for anticipating where and how a process, product,

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Seven Common Pitfalls in Quality Assurance—and How to Avoid Them

Quality / November 4, 2021 / Don Sutherland

Quality Assurance (QA) is one of those areas where theory and practice often part ways. On paper, QA is clean, procedural, and predictable. In the field, it’s messy—full of shortcuts, misunderstandings, and the occasional “we’ll fix it later” that never gets fixed. Over my years running PMOs and watching projects stumble, I’ve seen the same

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Drum-Buffer-Rope Scheduling in Hybrid Agile-Waterfall Projects

Schedule / July 3, 2021 / Don Sutherland

A Tale of Two Speeds Back in 2019, I was managing a data integration initiative for our upstream systems. The field hardware team ran on waterfall — rigid specs, fixed milestones. Meanwhile, the software team back in Houston was using Agile — sprints, demos, and standups. Between them? Weeks of misalignment, idle time, and a

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