November 2023: What is the WBS in project management? The WBS stands for the Word Breakdown Structure, and it's used in planning the scope of projects as a step leading to developing the project schedule. The purpose of the WBS is to decompose the project scope of work into smaller packages that are more manageable, and easier to plan and decompose further into lists of activities to create the time schedule. The value of the WBS is more visible in larger projects, where the scope is extended, while in smaller projects the WBS creation step is sometimes skipped and the time schedule with activity list is created directly. Usually the WBS is depicted in the form of a multi-layer tree shape, with the root being the project name, and subsequent levels are step-wise breaking of the scope into sub-categories, so that the leaf nodes in the lowest level are the final work packages from which the lists of activities are created. Number of levels and depth of decomposition should be proportional to the project size and not overly complicating.
October 2023: What is the purpose of ISO standards? ISO is the most popular international strandardization body, it's based in Swizerland, and involves in its membership national standardization bodies in several countries around the world. ISO standards are developed by committees that are formed by the head office, with representatives from other member countries. These standards are issued in almost all industrial fields, and are adopted, and possibly adapted, by national bodies to be used as local standards. ISO standards are not to be considered a source of knowledge in case you want to learn how to implement a framework or a methodology for some discipline. These standards are in the first place reference checklists, presenting requirements for an entity to be considered conformant with the standard, and are the basis for audit so that a conformance certificate is issued to an entity. ISO certificates are mainly targeted to organizations, but individuals can be certified as consultants or auditors based on a certain ISO standard.
September 2023: What is IT Service Continuity? IT Service Continuity refers to sustaining uniterrupted IT service, available for the intended users, and fulfilling its purpose. Continuity of IT services is underpinning Business Continuity for the business sector dependent on the IT services in question. IT is the backbone supporting most businesses nowadays, and interruption to IT services will ineveitably propagate to impacting the whole business operations. Management of IT Service Continuity would include adoption of techniques of risk management and crisis management, and development of IT Service Continuity Management Plan, which should be in turn aligned to the overall Business Continuity Management Plan. Scenarios of possible interruptions should be considered, and recovery and backup plans are put in place, so that the continuity management plan is invoked whenever a need arises.
August 2023: How to track progress in a project? Work progress in a project should be monitored to be controlled throughout the lifetime of the project. Monitoring and controlling will include benchmarking the current status of the project as opposed to the original plan baseline, or another more recent modified baseline. Opposing actual measures to planned measures will reveal how deviated is the progress of the project work from the expected or desired track. This tracking and measurement is done periodically and reported in a project status report, and it will cover at minimum scope, time, and cost tracking, to avoid project scope creep, or schedule slippage, or running over the allocated budget. When a deviation is noticed and need to be corrected, a change request may be required to modify the project plan with new targets, and a new baseline is created for future tracking. Software tools make this task less time consuming and more accurate, as long as you have the correct measures data fed into the tool.
July 2023: What is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a technological term that represents an umbrella of several advanced computer science technologies, including Machine Learning, Robotics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, etc. Compared to classical computing technologies, AI is characterized by dynamic and adaptive computing that enhances algorithms based on data collected from the environment of operation, so that produced results are smarter and more realistic and guide insightful decision making. Applications of AI are uncountable and continually increasing and spreading, in all industrial fields, like agriculture, manufacturing, education, health care, data science, social and psychological sciences, and even gaming. It's crucial to understand that reliance on data fed into the system and provided databases makes the system only as good as the quality of the data. Data cleansing is critical.
June 2023: What is SAP system? SAP is a popular system used in many organizations, and the word is so popular that it's considered a type of systems by its own, while it's in fact just one sort of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, being propably the most well known ERP system. SAP is a company name, and they develop and release various packages of ERP system, hosted and on-site installed, fitting different purposes for different organization types and sizes. You can also hear the word SAP in training course catalogues, as there are many certifications that qualify users for different roles in the SAP system, and these training courses are provided by partners of the SAP company. In addition to SAP, there are other ERP systems that are worth mentioning, including those developed by large enterprises like Oracle and Microsoft and others.
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