Jigs Gaton

ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for project planning, offering faster research, refined text, and improved resource management. However, it’s important to be aware of potential drawbacks, such as the need for verification and potential downtime. Explore the pros and cons of using ChatGPT for project planning.

Discover how ChatGPT can revolutionize your project planning process with productivity enhancements and quality improvements.

The black swan* has landed, and is honking up a storm, as I am sure you have all noticed. In my 30+ years of planning, I’ve never seen anything like […]

It was Rudyard Kipling who popularized the idiom “law of the jungle” back in 1894, and ever since I was a kid falling asleep to passages of Jungle Book, I’ve […]

Sure, “The Accidental” this and the “The Accidental” that is such a cliché, yet when you google “Accidental Project Manager,” you get 24 million results. Results like 4 Ways to […]

Wheels up! Even though I’ve logged many more hours in Microsoft’s flight simulator than on anything that flies, I have come to appreciate a pilot’s habits and routines in my […]

  The Day I Knew I Was One… Ironically, it was while managing a program to provide upgraded yurts to nomadic people in Southwest China. I realized that after almost […]

In parts 1 and 2 of my All About…for Project Managers series, we’ve explored novel relationships between time and work, in both a historical and a futuristic context. This article […]

  The True Nature (and Math) of Work Sometime around the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, Nikola Tesla famously declared, “If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, […]

  An even briefer history of time… After the turn of 20th century, Albert Einstein famously published his Theory of General Relativity, where the general notion of time became space-time! […]

You can tell an aging project manager by the metaphors they use to explain things, and such is the case today, as I’ll be using the rather antique notion of […]

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at differences between private-sector PM work and public-sector PM work. Basically, we explored some common issues and challenges that arise […]

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at a few high-level differences between private sector and public sector project management work. Basically, we considered the differences between projects geared […]

Project manager demographics are hard to come by, but we all know that project managers are as varied as species of bees found within the family of Apidae. We come […]

Over the past decade or so, the concept of ‘cloud’ has become synonymous with a place where we store all things work-related (such as documents and data). In many cases, […]

As a new project manager, you will eventually have to write a project report. There is just no away around it! As an experienced PM, you may have already done […]

Users of Project Online (or SharePoint w/ Project Server) are long accustomed to publishing their plan on the web for others to view, change, or otherwise manipulate project plan data. […]

The recent and massive data breach at Equifax shows us just how vulnerable we are in many critical ways: from attacks on our personal information to attacks on the very companies […]

Some of the largest and most expensive projects completed of late have been fraught with huge time & cost overruns. These unexpected delays and expenses cause partial or full project […]

To understand scrum and the scrum methodology employed by many agile project managers, you can look to the sport of rugby for the origins of this strange nomenclature. In the […]

A work breakdown structure or WBS is a common term in project management. The concept is used each time a new project is designed — and is created before entering […]

It seems like every other day we read something new about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ultimate demise of post-industrial work as we know it. It used […]

A baseline, as traditionally defined, is a value or condition against which future measurements can be compared. Within the context of project management, these values and conditions are the project’s […]

A few months ago I wrote about the structure of the project management office or PMO. In that article I referenced the concept of the ad hoc PMO — one […]

In this article about resource pools, you’ll learn about a potential danger while swimming around in resource pools and hear about all the known gotchas I have run across in […]

In part 2 of this series, we follow a step-by-step process for creating a resource pool in Microsoft Project. Use this tutorial to create a new resource pool, and then […]

Adding a resource pool into your Microsoft Project workflow is like adding a cherry to the top of an ice cream sundae (or more specifically in this case on top […]

What is a PMO? A project management office (PMO) is the formal designation for a group of professionals within your organization who are tasked with defining and maintaining project management […]

As a busy international project planner, if I were to write an advert on Lonely Planet or Craigslist today for a traveling companion, it might read something like this: “Looking […]

“Mind-mapping” (or, as it is also known, “concept mapping”) is a proven method and technology for organizing your thinking, no matter what you’re thinking about. Students now learn this technique […]

Over the years many folks in client sites have noticed the glowing apple on the lid of my laptop and knowing that I’m running Microsoft Project have asked me: “How […]

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, we covered why projects fail and how to investigate these catastrophes, all under the guise of being an air crash investigator. In […]

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced the notion that project managers can learn a lot from airline industry professionals and their great safety systems and also apply those […]

As a long-time fan of all things aviation, I’m enamored with all 16 seasons (to date) of the TV series Mayday: Air Crash Investigation, where air disasters are dramatized and […]