R
Ronald B. Smith, MBA, PMP
Master of Project91Articles published
About Ronald B. Smith, MBA, PMP
Ronald Smith has over four decades of experience as Senior PM/Program Manager. He retired from IBM having written four books and over one hundred articles on project management, and the systems development life cycle (SDLC). He’s been a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) since 1998, which has a membership of about 3 million professionals worldwide. From 2011 - 2017, Ronald had been an Adjunct Professor for a Master of Science in Technology and taught PM courses at the University of Houston’s College of Technology. Teaching from his own book, Project Management Tools and Techniques – A Practical Guide, Ronald offers a unique perspective on project management that reflects his many years of experience. Besides writing, he swims five times a week to keep in shape. Lastly in the Houston area, he has started up two Toastmasters clubs and does voluntary work at various food banks to help people facing hunger.
Articles by Ronald B. Smith, MBA, PMP
91 posts
LatestRed Flags, Blue Lessons
Watch for these warning signs, so you don’t end up twisting in the wind! As a project manager (PM) for an international consulting firm, I was once assigned to a […]
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Why Impartial Testing is a Non-Negotiable
Reducing the Risk of Project Shortcomings Project teams usually do their own (early) Partial Testing, which consists of unit and function testing. Unfortunately when the early phase is completed, the […]
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A Short History of Project Management
Have you ever wondered about the history of project management, or how it evolved into its’ present day usage? This article will cover most of the major project management happenings […]
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The Shape of Performance Reporting
An Outline that Can Be Used for Tracking Progress It could be said that communication is the oil that keeps a project running smoothly. Project managers (PMs) can spend up […]
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Don’t Turn your Critical Path into a Slippery Path
In my last article, I covered four misconceptions about critical path. Now, I’ll be going through some of the mechanics of finding the critical path in a project, so that […]
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Four Misconceptions about the Critical Path
Most non-technical people don’t know what the critical path is; whereas, those that work on IT projects know what it means at a high level, but have few insights into […]
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Split It Out (Part 2)
More Ways to Separate your Project into Manageable Chunks In Part 1 of my article “Split It Out,” we looked at ways to separate projects task into smaller parts or […]
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Split It Out (Part 1)
How to Separate your Project into Manageable Chunks Splitting your project into smaller parts or pieces that are more controllable helps you to move closer to your ultimate goal of […]
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No Pain, No Gain?
Turning Project Financial Analyses into a Painless Exercise Introduction “No Pain, No Gain” is a popular exercise slogan that promises greater rewards for the price of hard work to achieve […]
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Integrated Change Control
Very few projects run exactly to plan. This happens for a number of reasons (one example is scope creep). The bottom line is that you should expect changes to happen! […]
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Outsourcing Done Wrong
Some of the Worst Practices that Guarantee your Time and Money Won’t Be Well Spent An outsourcing project, especially in Information Technology (IT), can be a long and winding road […]
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Power, Politics, and Providing for a Project: Part 2
Trust Building between Stakeholders and the Project Team Is a Powerful Asset In Part One of my article on power, politics, and providing for a project, we looked at two […]
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