Source: www.ExecutiveCentre.com
Lessons Learned
The purpose of lessons learned is to bring together any insights gained during a project that can be usefully applied on future projects.
How Lessons Learned Can Improve Project Processes
Everything learned from previous projects, whether they were successes or failures can teach a project manager important lessons. And individual project managers usually do learn from their own previous experiences, but are these "lessons learned" shared with others within the project team or within the same organisation? If they are shared, do other project managers apply the lessons to their own projects?
Capturing Those Lessons Learned
Capturing lessons learned from projects is key for any organisation. Unfortunately, project teams are usually moved quickly from project to project and capturing lessons learned is never a priority. To ensure efficiencies over time and development of best practices, it is essential to capture lessons learned on your projects.
Why is 'Reflection' so Important to Project Lessons Learned?
Those of you who have seen the movie "The Ron Clark Story" already know about the remarkable efforts of a dedicated teacher in inner city New York who developed a learning atmosphere for his elementary students, which contributed to them excelling in the classroom at the highest level in every subject. Subsequent to Ron Clark's success in the New York schools, he visited every state to talk with students, teachers and school administrators about what he had learned and how his students performed.
Undertaking a Successful Project Audit
A project audit provides an opportunity to uncover issues, concerns and challenges encountered during the project lifecycle. Conducted midway through the project, an audit affords the project manager, project sponsor and project team an interim view of what has gone well, as well as what needs to be improved to successfully complete the project. If done at the close of a project, the audit can be used to develop success criteria for future projects by providing a forensic review. This review identifies which elements of the project were successfully managed and which ones presented challenges. As a result, the review will help the organisation identify what it needs to do to avoid repeating the same mistakes on future projects.
Tips for Turning Lessons Learned into Best Practices
By incrementally capturing 20-20 hindsight (lessons learned) and turning that hindsight into 20-20 foresight (best practices), you will achieve far greater long-term success than if you simply ignore or forget what occurred once a project ends. This approach can greatly reduce the negative effects of attrition on a company's intellectual assets when people leave because they quit, retire, are laid off, or were temporary workers to begin with.
Avoid the Same Old Mistakes by Focussing on Lessons Learned
It's said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It's also said that we don't learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes?
Lessons Learned: Why Don't we Learn From Them?
In looking at lessons learned, many times we find things like - should have had a better schedule, or better budgeting, or more communications, spent more time on requirements, etc. All of these things relate to how we do the work, not what we work on. Talking about how things get done or working on how things get done does not, in and of itself, get anything done. This is one of the reasons so many people hate planning - planning is not doing and we all like doing.
Project Management: Lessons From The Perfect Science - Hindsight
This article captures a number of common, "We should have - " as lessons for all managers to learn before their project fails to meet expectations. Prevention is much cheaper than cure.
Why Are My Projects Struggling? Six Basics You Must Never Forget
Lately, I've noticed that my projects are getting more complicated and status review meetings are focusing mostly on issues and complaints. In fact, all projects on the dashboard are struggling, which made me ask myself, "What is going wrong in an otherwise well-oiled project management machine?"
Lessons Learned
The purpose of lessons learned is to bring together any insights gained during a project that can be usefully applied on future projects.
How Lessons Learned Can Improve Project Processes
Everything learned from previous projects, whether they were successes or failures can teach a project manager important lessons. And individual project managers usually do learn from their own previous experiences, but are these "lessons learned" shared with others within the project team or within the same organisation? If they are shared, do other project managers apply the lessons to their own projects?
Capturing Those Lessons Learned
Capturing lessons learned from projects is key for any organisation. Unfortunately, project teams are usually moved quickly from project to project and capturing lessons learned is never a priority. To ensure efficiencies over time and development of best practices, it is essential to capture lessons learned on your projects.
Why is 'Reflection' so Important to Project Lessons Learned?
Those of you who have seen the movie "The Ron Clark Story" already know about the remarkable efforts of a dedicated teacher in inner city New York who developed a learning atmosphere for his elementary students, which contributed to them excelling in the classroom at the highest level in every subject. Subsequent to Ron Clark's success in the New York schools, he visited every state to talk with students, teachers and school administrators about what he had learned and how his students performed.
Undertaking a Successful Project Audit
A project audit provides an opportunity to uncover issues, concerns and challenges encountered during the project lifecycle. Conducted midway through the project, an audit affords the project manager, project sponsor and project team an interim view of what has gone well, as well as what needs to be improved to successfully complete the project. If done at the close of a project, the audit can be used to develop success criteria for future projects by providing a forensic review. This review identifies which elements of the project were successfully managed and which ones presented challenges. As a result, the review will help the organisation identify what it needs to do to avoid repeating the same mistakes on future projects.
Tips for Turning Lessons Learned into Best Practices
By incrementally capturing 20-20 hindsight (lessons learned) and turning that hindsight into 20-20 foresight (best practices), you will achieve far greater long-term success than if you simply ignore or forget what occurred once a project ends. This approach can greatly reduce the negative effects of attrition on a company's intellectual assets when people leave because they quit, retire, are laid off, or were temporary workers to begin with.
Avoid the Same Old Mistakes by Focussing on Lessons Learned
It's said there are no new project management sins, just old ones repeated. It's also said that we don't learn the lessons from past projects and this must be true, otherwise why would we keep making the same old mistakes?
Lessons Learned: Why Don't we Learn From Them?
In looking at lessons learned, many times we find things like - should have had a better schedule, or better budgeting, or more communications, spent more time on requirements, etc. All of these things relate to how we do the work, not what we work on. Talking about how things get done or working on how things get done does not, in and of itself, get anything done. This is one of the reasons so many people hate planning - planning is not doing and we all like doing.
Project Management: Lessons From The Perfect Science - Hindsight
This article captures a number of common, "We should have - " as lessons for all managers to learn before their project fails to meet expectations. Prevention is much cheaper than cure.
Why Are My Projects Struggling? Six Basics You Must Never Forget
Lately, I've noticed that my projects are getting more complicated and status review meetings are focusing mostly on issues and complaints. In fact, all projects on the dashboard are struggling, which made me ask myself, "What is going wrong in an otherwise well-oiled project management machine?"
Training
The first step in the selection of a good training course for project managers is to clearly understand the role of the project manager as it is understood today.
Is Project Management Certification Worth It?
What usually makes someone a "good" project manager is their experience, the fact that they have made mistakes and learnt from them in a real project environment and that they have achieved success in a real project environment. Experience on a range of projects and, most particularly, on complex projects can never be underestimated. But neither can the right sort of academic qualifications and relevant training. A project manager with the right credentials, such as one with a PMP Certification, is not necessarily better at leading and directing projects, but the qualification itself is an indication of how serious that person is to be recognised as a professional.
12 Competencies: Which Ones Should Your People Have?
The concept of competency as a factor in recruitment, selection, hiring and employee performance evaluation has become very popular not only among HR practitioners but to the management echelons as well. Yet, in the more than three decades since it became a buzzword, still many are really unfamiliar with the details of the concept. More so with its appropriate application and utility.
How to Become a Project Manager
If you are new to project management don't be bamboozled by all the jargon. Managing a project is just another branch of business management. There are well understood methodologies, tools, guidelines, and procedures to help you on your way to developing the important life-skill of project management. This article sets out the key skills needed to become a competent project manager.
Top 10 Benefits to Earning a Certification
Is it worth it for you to put in all of the work? Consider these 10 benefits of earning a certification, and if you see the benefits for your situation, go for it!
Project Management Training
Project management is a very specialised and often complex task, and requires more training than the average programmer or executive might expect in very specific organisational tasks. To meet this demand, professional groups such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) were organised to set standards for the training of project managers.
Project Management Courses for Project Team Members
Today, public and private organisations around the world are adopting project management approaches. In the developed countries organisations of all sizes see this as a new discipline that is replacing many traditional management tools and techniques, in order to effectively manage the increasingly complex and fast-changing activities that they operate.
How to Choose Project Management Training Courses for IT Professionals
The first step in the selection of a good training course for Project Managers is to clearly understand the role of the Project Manager as it is understood today. Project Management is essentially concerned with a one time operation as opposed to an ongoing operation. The distinction is seen by many as being insignificant and this misconception leads to not only poor selection of Project Managers, but also for poor selection of training courses.
How to Choose the Best Course to Improve Your Leadership Skills
How can you make sure you invest your training money, time and effort wisely and get the long term results you want? Find out with this guide distilled from personal experience and best practice from The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organisations.
Careers in Project Management: Learn to Get the Job Done
A career in project management requires people skills, and the competence to handle projects efficiently. Many large corporations such as banks and insurance companies have started hiring project managers in order to accomplish their work more effectively. You could have a bright career in project management if you have the ability to initiate work on your own, or delegate it to others.
Project Management an Undervalued Skill
Many skills are admired and sought by individuals who want to progress in an organisation. But one which would make them more effective in an organisation is usually treated indifferently, by the individual and the organisation. People studying for their MBA and aspiring executives concentrate their learning on marketing, strategy, finance, e-commerce and organisational behaviour but rarely show an interest in project management.
PRINCE2 Training Courses for Structured Project Management
If you are new to project management, or want to improve your project management skills, PRINCE2 training courses is for you. PRINCE2 is a project management method that covers the organisation and management of projects.
PRINCE2 Training Myths & Misconceptions
As more and more people undertake PRINCE2 training so the myths and misconceptions around it seem to grow. This article looks at five aspects of PRINCE2 to give you the clear, concise information you need if you're considering investing in this valuable training.
PMP Exam Application
The PMI (Project Management Institute) has three levels of certification, starting with the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) which is the basic level and is intended as certification for project team members. The PMP (Project Management Professional) is the second highest level and regarded as one of the most valued credentials in project management. Anybody who has passed the PMP certification exam successfully and met the PMI's requirements for documenting their professional experience is entitled to use the abbreviation PMP after their name. A new certification, PgMP (Programme Management Professional) has been introduced by the PMI in late 2007 for Programme Managers.
PMP Exam Day Tips
You have devoted at least 4,500 hours to project work, you have sat through at least 35 hours worth of classroom training on project management, you have studied for hours and answered hundreds of practice questions, you have completed PMI's application for the PMP exam, you have paid the fee, you have received your acceptance letter, you have even scheduled your exam date. In short, you have a lot invested in this exam. Are you nervous?
Team Building
Team building is a project focused process that builds and develops shared goals, interdependence, trust, commitment and accountability among team members.
Hiring for a Competitive Advantage
Successful hiring is one of the key factors to operational success for large and small businesses alike. Executives should approach the hiring process as a means to both improve their existing workforce and to secure a candidate who will add long-term value to the organisation. If approached merely as a step toward replacing a lost asset, the hiring process will squander considerable resources and forfeit significant opportunity value from a potential personnel improvement. The mission is obvious, yet, according to business owners, finding the right employees can be an elusive aspiration in a drawn-out process.
Authority Earned, Not Given
For project managers, the support of their team is critical for completing projects successfully. Yet, a team's respect cannot simply be assigned like a task. Acquiring and executing project authority with the support of a full project team demands careful and skilled execution.
Managing Team Conflict
When teams come together, conflict is almost inevitable. Not all conflict is unhealthy though. Conflict has the potential of bringing out the best from individuals and teams and building rapport when it is directed towards the goal at hand. Only when it starts damaging the team spirit and jeopardising the common goals that it becomes a cause for concern. Therefore conflict needs to be properly identified, analysed and managed.
Building Sustainable Relationships in Project Teams
Building sustainable and flexible working relationships to create an effective working environment starts with the project team, but does not end there. They will also need to be built with others such as the sponsor, steering group, suppliers and of course internal colleagues. A project manager will need to influence a variety of people, sometimes without the necessary authority, to obtain information, input and commitment from them.
Handling Difficult Conversations
As Project Managers we often find ourselves needing to handle difficult conversations in order to make progress on a project. These meetings will happen with direct reports on a project team, but also with other stakeholders who we have no direct authority over, but are critical to the project success. How often do we plan effectively for any of these meetings, not just data and information, but around how we are going to handle the meeting and the people attending it?
Resolving Project Team Conflicts
Resolving conflicts on project teams isn't easy; but left unchecked can affect the project's outcome and team morale. It is the project manager's responsibility to manage conflicts to keep the team moving in the right direction. The best way to manage a conflict is to ensure that the parties involved in the conflict are the ones developing the solution. You can't resolve it for them; they have to come to agreement on how to resolve the conflict themselves.
How Do You Help the Group Reach Consensus When They Simply Don't Agree?
Do you ever feel that you're herding a group of feisty cats instead of leading a meeting because your team members simply can't agree? Well, take comfort in knowing that this common problem plagues most meeting facilitators at one point or another. Indeed, if your group is disagreeing vehemently (but respectfully), that's a sign of healthy conflict, congratulations, you're likely on your way to some great ideas and solutions! Unfortunately as meeting facilitators, we often need to guide the group towards a consensus decision and oftentimes that just doesn't seem possible.
How Do You Get Team Members to Come Prepared to the Meeting?
We've all attended meetings where participants were asked to read a document, do some research, or conduct some other "homework" prior to the meeting, but very few people actually did it. Obviously, the intent of assigning the pre-work is to ensure that all attendees are prepared, which should result in a quick, efficient meeting, right??? Wrong!!! Too often some attendees don't complete the assignment as requested, which drags down the entire group. Before you lead your next meeting, consider these tips about assigning pre-work.
Don't Just Manage the Plan, Engage Your Team Members!
As project managers, it's tempting to focus entirely on our project plan. But successful execution of your project plan is entirely dependent on your project team. And your project team is dependent on each team member! For example, if your team is all working well together except one person, who is lacking motivation and missing deadlines, than the whole team will start having trouble, and your project success may be in jeopardy.
The Five Stages of Team Development: A Case Study
Every team progresses through the five stages of team development; forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. An understanding of those five stages enables a manager to better understand team dynamics and assist his/her team through the five stages in order to reach a high performing team as quickly as possible.
Post Project Resource Evaluation: a Forgotten Contributor to Project Success
In the course of assessing project management capabilities for clients, a practice that I've found absent across most non-projectized organisations is the evaluation of team members at the end of a project by the project's leadership. Usually, the rationale provided for this gap is that the functional managers do not consistently solicit this feedback from project managers, or when this feedback has been offered in the past, it has been ignored.
How Can I Have Responsibility Without Authority?
By far, the question I am most often asked during "Project Management . . . by the Numbers" has always been, "How can I get my project team to actually accomplish their tasks on time, if even at all?" After a short discussion, the question translates to, "I don't have the authority to delegate, but I am responsible for their work, both the quality and the timeliness."
Managing the "Meeting from Hell!"
Project Manager Sherry Martin couldn't stop thinking about her last team meeting as she walked down the hall towards her office. Slamming her office door behind her, she let out an exasperated scream and looked for something to punch! Her team was driving her absolutely crazy and she channelled Scarlett O'Hara as she proclaimed, "I will never run a meeting like that again!" Her problem in a nutshell boiled down to three really difficult personalities that continually recurred on her team. These personalities were indeed a cancer not just infecting the team and its results but also spreading throughout the group and impacting the other team members as well.
Identifying Performance Issues With Your Project Team
The phrase "project manager" is a bit of a misnomer; while project managers do manage projects, they deliver them by managing a project team that does the work of the project. How successful they are at managing that team will go a long way to determining the success or failure of the project. Perhaps the most difficult (and certainly the most unpleasant) aspect of managing the high performance team is dealing with issues of poor performance.
Why is People Capability Maturity Model Necessary?
The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute developed the People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) to help businesses manage knowledge workers across global borders, as well as between greying and millennial generations. Similar to CMMI, P-CMM has five maturity levels, but the model is focused on the need to improve the capabilities of a workforce as a differentiating factor from the competition.
Has Your Project Team Considered all the Key Dimensions of the Problem?
Many readers have mentioned to me that they feel that a lot of the projects they sponsor (even the successful ones) are often on "automatic pilot." This typically happens once the project teams feel that they understand the problem and have decided on what they believe to be the most appropriate direction for solving the key issues facing the project.
Putting People Management Back into Project Management
No one will ever be able to convince me that the most challenging component of project management is the science behind it. The way in which we need to pull people together to be a high performance team over a relatively short period of time is the most challenging part of project management. This article will focus on the communication issues within the project team, in particular, the people management aspect.
Recipe for Great Virtual Teamwork: The Right Communications Tools at the Right Time
You've just finished the project kick-off meeting with your new virtual team. Everyone seems clear about roles, responsibilities, deliverables and deadlines. So far, so good. But, as you think about the magnitude and velocity of the work that lies ahead, you realise how critical a well-orchestrated team communications plan will be to getting the work done. This article offers some simple guidelines to keep in mind as you assemble a communications plan to make it easy for virtual team members to communicate and collaborate.
Building the High-Performance Global Workforce
Companies that can work cheaper, faster, and better are well-positioned to develop and market products and services that give higher value to their customers. But how do project managers and business leaders effectively manage geographically dispersed workforces?
10 Steps to Finding a Project Manager
Project managers, when you hire well, can become your most favourite person on the planet. Hiring a good project manager means you can sit back and relax knowing that the project tasks are being taken care of in a professional, productive, and profitable manner. It frees up your time, reduces or even eliminates stress, and increases your bottom line. However a bad hire can affect profits, increase stress which can kick your blood pressure up to dangerous levels and waste a tremendous amount of time and money. Here's how to hire a qualified project manager.
Discovering Future Performers in Your Team
Browse up on your organisation's competency requirements and set more informed business directions concerning your people. Management needs a checkpoint to determine if performance meets organisational requirements, given the knowledge and skills set of the employees. This is the birth of competency analysis.
Exploiting Feedback to Improve Bottom-Line Performance
While feedback is vital to the growth and sustained success of any business, regardless of industry, employees or customer base, it may often be met with some level of resistance or uncertainty. For some, feedback seems to equate to, and therefore is received or delivered as, (negative) criticism, when in reality, this belief or response is unwarranted.
Use Your Whole Brain: Leveraging Right-Brained Thinking in a Left-Brained World
For organisations, flexing the right side of the brain can dramatically improve decision making, team building and innovation, and ultimately drive greater organisational performance. In fact, whole brain thinking is a secret weapon that successful organisations are using to evolve their business to the next level, and stay ahead of the competition. When you combine left-brained data-driven decision making skills with non-linear right-brained thinking, the result is greater insight and more well-rounded experience that will ultimately help you arrive at better solutions to complex problems.
Getting Work Done: The Human Side of Project Management
Project management is defined as the art and science of getting work done with the active co-operation of individuals and organisations who are directly or indirectly involved with the project. This includes Senior Management, Project Sponsors(s), Customers, End-users, Stakeholders, Team Members, Sub-contractors, Vendors and Consultants. Given the reality of minimal authority and total responsibility for the outcome of the project, the Project Manager's biggest challenge consists of "Getting Work Done."
Why Project Managers Should Coach
Coaching is a highly effective management tool and yet, I have met only a small number of project managers who adopt a coaching style when supporting their staff. The unfortunate truth is that many project managers do not understand coaching and have received little or no formal training.
Resourcing Project Managers
Ironically, although resourcing production team members is a significant part of a project manager's role, very little focus is placed on resourcing the project managers themselves. Because of this, I've encountered many project managers that are overwhelmed, worn out, and in many ways, ineffective. Over time, I've developed some generic strategies to help directors allocate an appropriate amount of work to project managers. In this article, I'll discuss some simple ideas to help get started.
The Importance of Working Together With Your Team
The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn't just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed.
Project Management: What Type of Organisation is Best?
Consider a company that is about to embark upon a project for the first time. A competent project manager is available, but this firm has never had to handle a complex project before, and now has to set up the most suitable organisation. If asked to advise, the project manager might immediately be faced with the question that often causes much controversy, should the company take all the key people destined to work on the project and place them under his/her direct control. Or, at the other extreme would it be better to have a weak or balanced functional matrix?
10 Ways to Inspire Your Team
Inspire. Just the word itself causes us to pause and think. We may remember our own personal heroes like Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa or a teacher or mentor who brought out the best in us and showed us the power of one person.
Project Management Goes Live With Virtual Team Collaboration
Web collaboration technologies enable project management teams to meet virtually with full audio-visual interaction, irrespective of their multiple locations. These solutions work by allowing one team member to securely share their desktop and its content in ad-hoc or scheduled meetings with their colleagues, and allow anyone to access and contribute to the information in real time.
5 Essentials To Project Team Success
To maximise the contribution of project teams, a number of essentials need to be recognised. The good news is that the essentials to team success aren't expensive, don't require the expenditure of large amounts of capital or expense money, and don't require new bricks and mortar. The further news and biggest challenge is that the only change needed to be made to implement the essentials to project team success is behaviour.
Five Steps to a Winning Project Team
As healthcare executives work to increase efficiency and decrease costs in a dynamic healthcare environment, they often undertake projects such as technology implementation, operational and process improvements and facility planning. These projects typically require the formation of collaborative teams comprising hospital leadership and staff as well as project managers and support staff from vendors and outside consulting firms. Executives must be prepared to establish efficient project teams that focus on communication and collaboration to achieve success.
Nine Ways to Contribute to Project Team Success
The world of work has changed. It used to be that most of us worked as a part of a process, whether on an assembly line, managing interactions with customers, or any one of a thousand other processes. Processes are ongoing, repeatable and never have an ending. If the nature of our work has changed, it is important to think about some of the skills that will help us succeed in this different world.
Building Your Project Team
Suppose that you as a manager have been asked to form a team for the life of a particular project. How should you set about choosing your people and forming them into a well functioning group?
Stealth Team Building
The thought of "team building" often creates very diverse reactions from project team members. Many people enjoy the potential for increased camaraderie and getting to know more about their peers; others have a very negative reaction. This article looks at an alternative "stealth" approach to team building.
Helping Project Teams Succeed
How often do we hear project managers complaining that they have been set-up to fail? If you're like me then quite often. I am sure that most organisations want their project managers to succeed. If this is true where does the "set-up to fail" idea come from. Could it be that the organisation doesn't have an environment that supports success?
Developing a High Performance Project Team
Much is written in Project Management journals about every conceivable facet of project teams. Topics about their organisation, culture, communication with clients, problem solving skills, etc. are virtually endless. There are lots of rules, tips, and suggestions about what they should do but not as much on how to do it. If you aren't sure how, this article will get you started in the right direction.
Managing Virtual Project Teams
These are interesting times for managing systems development projects. In the old days (as late as the 1980s), whenever a development project was initiated, it was necessary to form a project team at a centralised geographical location in order to expedite communications between project members. But now we live in an age of electronic communications that provides greater flexibility in terms of allowing workers to work just about anywhere.
Virtual Teaming Soft Skills Relevant to all Projects
One of the most critical aspects of project management leadership is the effective use of communication to facilitate the team process. Effective communication is one of the key enablers of building cohesive teams and is critical to the successful management of key stakeholders. The probability of communication breakdown is intensified in a virtual environment. Since virtual teams are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception, we will all be required to use these skills at some point in our project leadership careers.
People, Process, and Predicting Project Success
Great people, people with sufficient functional skills and domain expertise can trump process, good or bad. Good process, process appropriate for the context, will help those people. But great people can overcome bad process to deliver a good product.
Six Ways to Give Proper Project Leadership
Many things influence project management today. When we look at projects today compared to fifteen or twenty years ago, we notice a big change. In the old traditional setting, the boss might not even ask for any input, but today team involvement is critical. In a team setting, people are encouraged to give ideas and make decisions. This change governs how projects today are run.
Choosing the Best Team for Your Project
Human Resource Management is needed everywhere. At home, at the office, and especially when working on a project with a group of people. Using human resources during a project requires getting the most effective use of the people involved with the project. This includes everyone associated with the project: sponsors, customers, partners, and individual contributors. There are three major aspects of project human resource management: organisational planning, staff acquisition, and team development.
Risk Management
Nobody likes to think about what may go wrong on a project, but to overlook risk management means that you chance an unnecessary project failure.
Project Risks and How to Identify Them
Plenty of information is available about the best ways for a project manager to manage risk within a complex project. Much is written about how to communicate risks to stakeholders and how to mitigate and avoid risks. But what are the best ways of identifying those risks in the first place?
The Seven Deadly Sins of Risk Management
Risk management is the heart and soul of project management. Failing to practice it right can have fatal consequences on projects and programmes. Doing real effort in the planning stage can save the entire investment and will increase the likelihood of project success. However, planning alone is not enough if monitoring risks is not handled seriously. These are seven deadly sins of risk management and how to take preventive actions to avoid them.
Project Risk: Is It All Bad?
No one would disagree that managing risk within a project is not a good idea. Risk Management is an essential part of any programme or project and can vastly contribute to successful delivery. Where it can and does go wrong is when there is an over-reliance on the risk aspects of the project and they in themselves start driving the way the project moves forward. The management of risk is part and parcel of project management, but is not the be all and end all of it as it sometimes becomes in more risk averse organisational cultures.
The Principles of Risk Management
Every project manager and business leader needs to be aware of the practices and principles of effective risk management. Understanding how to identify and treat risks to an organisation, a programme or a project can save unnecessary difficulties later on, and will prepare managers and team members for any unavoidable incidences or issues.
Is Software Development Risk Costing You Money?
Poor software project management often means missed deadlines, cost overruns or even outright failure of the project. How can your company avoid this industry-wide problem? In our brief you'll learn best practices for successfully completing software projects.
Ranking Risks: Rare to Certain, Negligible to Catastrophic
Risk is a concept that denotes a potential negative impact to an asset or some characteristic of value that may arise from some present process or future event. In everyday usage, risk is often used synonymously with the probability of a known loss. Risk is measured in terms of impact and likelihood. Since risk is directly correlated to loss, it is important to be able to assess risks in one's business and to address them. Needless to say, inattention to risks can definitely affect a company's bottom line.
10 Golden Rules of Project Risk Management
The benefits of risk management in projects are huge. You can gain a lot of money if you deal with uncertain project events in a proactive manner. Experience shows that 10 golden rules exist for implementing risk management successfully in your project.
Project Management: Stakeholder Risk Management
Is it really true that on time, on budget, and fulfilling all requirements means project success? Whose requirements are we really trying to meet anyway? And who decides if the original due date can be changed when the scope grows? In this article we'll address the people swirling around your project, stakeholders. You'll find some useful tips and other resources for optimising stakeholder involvement in your project.
Risk Management Options
Risk management is an ongoing process to identify potential problems that could arise when new projects occur within a business. There are various tasks that need to be completed so the overall goals of a project can be fulfilled.
Your Risk Management Process: A Practical and Effective Approach
A solid risk management process can help to make a project run smoothly. By identifying and addressing a list of project risks as part of a larger project management system, many surprises and roadblocks can be eliminated. Learn more about the definition of a risk as well as the steps that should be a part of your business's risk management process and how you can incorporate such a process into all projects going forward.
Project Risk Management: It's Either Contingency Planning Now or Emergency Relief Later
Proper project risk management entails more than simply identification and analysis at the beginning of a project. Risk management must be integrated into the project plan, consistently applied, and clearly communicated throughout the life cycle of the project.
The Risky Business of Project Management
Undertaking any project, whether in-house or in partnership with a professional services firm, entails risk. Project risk is defined as any area of concern that could prevent a project from achieving all of its benefits. Project risk requires careful management and involves identification, assessment, and mitigation.
The Top Five Software Project Risks
I recently posted an entry on a risk assessment tool you can download and use. Risk management (or more precisely risk avoidance) is a critical topic, but one that is often dull to read about and therefore neglected. One of the few useful and entertaining books on the subject is "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects" by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister, authors of the ever popular "Peopleware." This post provides a useful summary of their top 5 software project risks.
Project Management: Risk Management
In many projects, risks are identified and analysed in a random, brainstorming, fashion. This is often fatal to the success of the project, as unexpected risks arise, which have not been assessed or planned for and have to be dealt with on an emergency basis, rather than be prepared for and defended against in a planned, measured, manner.
Reducing Risk and Increasing the Probability of Project Success
IT systems are at the heart of modern business and the development of new software applications and maintenance of existing systems are critical to productivity and profitability. Advances in software technology over the last 20 years have allowed progressively more complex business solutions to be created enabling companies to offer their customers exciting new services and products. And yet, software development projects still suffer from similar problems and characteristics, regardless of the technologies being used, that they suffered from more than ten years ago.
Project Risk Management
Several techniques are available that you can employ to identify risks to your projects. Some project managers rely on regular team meetings, brainstorming sessions, reviews with stakeholders or experience from similar projects.
SMART Goals
What's so smart about SMART? Why has this acronym become part of the vocabulary of project planning and performance management?
Setting SMARTER Goals in 7 Easy Steps
The mnemonics SMART and SMARTER are useful when setting project goals and objectives. They provide a way of ensuring everyone understands them, they are trackable, relevant, there are enough resources to achieve them and a firm deadline is set. Try these seven steps to help you set SMARTER goals for your projects.
Stepping Up SMART Goals
The SMART acronym is a great tool for making sure our goals and instructions are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timed. It helps us clarify what we want to accomplish and set deadlines to make sure it produces the results we want in the timeframe we need. Here are six steps that will help you formulate your goals in the most effective way possible.
7 More Reasons Goals Are Not Achieved
Success and achieving goals are two topics that have universal appeal. You would think that something that commands the interest of so many people would be understood and used by nearly everyone. However, what I have discovered is that most people make the same mistakes again and again. They never reach their desired outcome. Here are 7 more of the common mistakes that most people make in their quest for improvement and achievement.
The Top 7 Reasons Why Goals Are Not Achieved
It's that time of year again when we reflect on what we had hoped to accomplish in the past year and what we plan to accomplish in the next. Most times we look back and realise that we didn't quite measure up to our hopes and dreams. As a business advisor and executive coach I have found that people tend to make the same mistakes when setting goals for both their business and personal lives.
Top 10 Steps to Successful Goals
"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia" - Author Unknown. Get very clear about your goals. It helps you avoid the Rinse and Repeat Trap - get up in the morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, fall asleep in front of the TV, stumble to bed, get up the next morning, rinse and repeat.
10 Steps to Setting SMART Objectives
Setting effective objectives to guide your team and organisation is very important for a leader to get right. Badly formulated objectives will steer an organisation in the wrong direction. I found this 10 step approach to setting SMART objectives from the National Primary and Care Trust.
Defining Project Goals and Objectives
The very first step in all projects: business, home, or education, is to define goals and objectives. This step defines the projects outcome and the steps required to achieve that outcome. People, including project managers, do not spend sufficient time on this step or complete it incorrectly thereby ensuring an unsuccessful project completion.
SMART Goals Aren't Good Enough
When a tool is inspired by a clever acronym, you've got to wonder how robust it actually is. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Sounds great, but that's actually not enough. Is it a good goal, or a 'should' goal?
SMART Goals Reduce Ambiguity and Increase Commitment
Ambiguity is a fact of life in all organisations. In many cases it can be an advantage. But in most cases, the clearer the requirements, the better. Use SMART goals, keep them simple, and watch people respond with a high level of commitment to the enterprise. They can be, as in this case, the difference between success and failure.
Use SMART Objectives to Focus Goals, Plans and Performance
Objectives that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-bound) are likely to be achieved. Learn how to develop SMART objectives with the power to focus goals, work plans, and commitment to performance targets. Because meaningful and practical measures are built in, SMART objectives also enable feedback and learning that can keep you on track to success.
8 Strategies for Achieving SMART Goals
Setting goals is easy but achieving them isn't. That's why setting "SMART" goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely - is the first step in making your goal a reality.
SMART Goals and Business Coaching
Leaders of all industries know the importance of setting achievable and effective goals for themselves. These goals are termed SMART goals. Goals are one of the most underutilised yet important tools that businesses have. Once the main outline of your project has been set, your attention needs to be turned towards developing certain goals that can help make your project a success. The SMART goals checklist can be used to evaluate the set of goals to be used. This process can help the employees as well as the employers share a certain understanding of how the goals have been set and how they are to be achieved.
SMART Goals
Once you have planned your project, turn your attention to developing several goals that will enable you to be successful. Goals should be SMART - specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time-based.
The Importance of Working Together With Your Team
The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn't just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed.
The first step in the selection of a good training course for project managers is to clearly understand the role of the project manager as it is understood today.
Is Project Management Certification Worth It?
What usually makes someone a "good" project manager is their experience, the fact that they have made mistakes and learnt from them in a real project environment and that they have achieved success in a real project environment. Experience on a range of projects and, most particularly, on complex projects can never be underestimated. But neither can the right sort of academic qualifications and relevant training. A project manager with the right credentials, such as one with a PMP Certification, is not necessarily better at leading and directing projects, but the qualification itself is an indication of how serious that person is to be recognised as a professional.
12 Competencies: Which Ones Should Your People Have?
The concept of competency as a factor in recruitment, selection, hiring and employee performance evaluation has become very popular not only among HR practitioners but to the management echelons as well. Yet, in the more than three decades since it became a buzzword, still many are really unfamiliar with the details of the concept. More so with its appropriate application and utility.
How to Become a Project Manager
If you are new to project management don't be bamboozled by all the jargon. Managing a project is just another branch of business management. There are well understood methodologies, tools, guidelines, and procedures to help you on your way to developing the important life-skill of project management. This article sets out the key skills needed to become a competent project manager.
Top 10 Benefits to Earning a Certification
Is it worth it for you to put in all of the work? Consider these 10 benefits of earning a certification, and if you see the benefits for your situation, go for it!
Project Management Training
Project management is a very specialised and often complex task, and requires more training than the average programmer or executive might expect in very specific organisational tasks. To meet this demand, professional groups such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) were organised to set standards for the training of project managers.
Project Management Courses for Project Team Members
Today, public and private organisations around the world are adopting project management approaches. In the developed countries organisations of all sizes see this as a new discipline that is replacing many traditional management tools and techniques, in order to effectively manage the increasingly complex and fast-changing activities that they operate.
How to Choose Project Management Training Courses for IT Professionals
The first step in the selection of a good training course for Project Managers is to clearly understand the role of the Project Manager as it is understood today. Project Management is essentially concerned with a one time operation as opposed to an ongoing operation. The distinction is seen by many as being insignificant and this misconception leads to not only poor selection of Project Managers, but also for poor selection of training courses.
How to Choose the Best Course to Improve Your Leadership Skills
How can you make sure you invest your training money, time and effort wisely and get the long term results you want? Find out with this guide distilled from personal experience and best practice from The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organisations.
Careers in Project Management: Learn to Get the Job Done
A career in project management requires people skills, and the competence to handle projects efficiently. Many large corporations such as banks and insurance companies have started hiring project managers in order to accomplish their work more effectively. You could have a bright career in project management if you have the ability to initiate work on your own, or delegate it to others.
Project Management an Undervalued Skill
Many skills are admired and sought by individuals who want to progress in an organisation. But one which would make them more effective in an organisation is usually treated indifferently, by the individual and the organisation. People studying for their MBA and aspiring executives concentrate their learning on marketing, strategy, finance, e-commerce and organisational behaviour but rarely show an interest in project management.
PRINCE2 Training Courses for Structured Project Management
If you are new to project management, or want to improve your project management skills, PRINCE2 training courses is for you. PRINCE2 is a project management method that covers the organisation and management of projects.
PRINCE2 Training Myths & Misconceptions
As more and more people undertake PRINCE2 training so the myths and misconceptions around it seem to grow. This article looks at five aspects of PRINCE2 to give you the clear, concise information you need if you're considering investing in this valuable training.
PMP Exam Application
The PMI (Project Management Institute) has three levels of certification, starting with the CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) which is the basic level and is intended as certification for project team members. The PMP (Project Management Professional) is the second highest level and regarded as one of the most valued credentials in project management. Anybody who has passed the PMP certification exam successfully and met the PMI's requirements for documenting their professional experience is entitled to use the abbreviation PMP after their name. A new certification, PgMP (Programme Management Professional) has been introduced by the PMI in late 2007 for Programme Managers.
PMP Exam Day Tips
You have devoted at least 4,500 hours to project work, you have sat through at least 35 hours worth of classroom training on project management, you have studied for hours and answered hundreds of practice questions, you have completed PMI's application for the PMP exam, you have paid the fee, you have received your acceptance letter, you have even scheduled your exam date. In short, you have a lot invested in this exam. Are you nervous?
Team Building
Team building is a project focused process that builds and develops shared goals, interdependence, trust, commitment and accountability among team members.
Hiring for a Competitive Advantage
Successful hiring is one of the key factors to operational success for large and small businesses alike. Executives should approach the hiring process as a means to both improve their existing workforce and to secure a candidate who will add long-term value to the organisation. If approached merely as a step toward replacing a lost asset, the hiring process will squander considerable resources and forfeit significant opportunity value from a potential personnel improvement. The mission is obvious, yet, according to business owners, finding the right employees can be an elusive aspiration in a drawn-out process.
Authority Earned, Not Given
For project managers, the support of their team is critical for completing projects successfully. Yet, a team's respect cannot simply be assigned like a task. Acquiring and executing project authority with the support of a full project team demands careful and skilled execution.
Managing Team Conflict
When teams come together, conflict is almost inevitable. Not all conflict is unhealthy though. Conflict has the potential of bringing out the best from individuals and teams and building rapport when it is directed towards the goal at hand. Only when it starts damaging the team spirit and jeopardising the common goals that it becomes a cause for concern. Therefore conflict needs to be properly identified, analysed and managed.
Building Sustainable Relationships in Project Teams
Building sustainable and flexible working relationships to create an effective working environment starts with the project team, but does not end there. They will also need to be built with others such as the sponsor, steering group, suppliers and of course internal colleagues. A project manager will need to influence a variety of people, sometimes without the necessary authority, to obtain information, input and commitment from them.
Handling Difficult Conversations
As Project Managers we often find ourselves needing to handle difficult conversations in order to make progress on a project. These meetings will happen with direct reports on a project team, but also with other stakeholders who we have no direct authority over, but are critical to the project success. How often do we plan effectively for any of these meetings, not just data and information, but around how we are going to handle the meeting and the people attending it?
Resolving Project Team Conflicts
Resolving conflicts on project teams isn't easy; but left unchecked can affect the project's outcome and team morale. It is the project manager's responsibility to manage conflicts to keep the team moving in the right direction. The best way to manage a conflict is to ensure that the parties involved in the conflict are the ones developing the solution. You can't resolve it for them; they have to come to agreement on how to resolve the conflict themselves.
How Do You Help the Group Reach Consensus When They Simply Don't Agree?
Do you ever feel that you're herding a group of feisty cats instead of leading a meeting because your team members simply can't agree? Well, take comfort in knowing that this common problem plagues most meeting facilitators at one point or another. Indeed, if your group is disagreeing vehemently (but respectfully), that's a sign of healthy conflict, congratulations, you're likely on your way to some great ideas and solutions! Unfortunately as meeting facilitators, we often need to guide the group towards a consensus decision and oftentimes that just doesn't seem possible.
How Do You Get Team Members to Come Prepared to the Meeting?
We've all attended meetings where participants were asked to read a document, do some research, or conduct some other "homework" prior to the meeting, but very few people actually did it. Obviously, the intent of assigning the pre-work is to ensure that all attendees are prepared, which should result in a quick, efficient meeting, right??? Wrong!!! Too often some attendees don't complete the assignment as requested, which drags down the entire group. Before you lead your next meeting, consider these tips about assigning pre-work.
Don't Just Manage the Plan, Engage Your Team Members!
As project managers, it's tempting to focus entirely on our project plan. But successful execution of your project plan is entirely dependent on your project team. And your project team is dependent on each team member! For example, if your team is all working well together except one person, who is lacking motivation and missing deadlines, than the whole team will start having trouble, and your project success may be in jeopardy.
The Five Stages of Team Development: A Case Study
Every team progresses through the five stages of team development; forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. An understanding of those five stages enables a manager to better understand team dynamics and assist his/her team through the five stages in order to reach a high performing team as quickly as possible.
Post Project Resource Evaluation: a Forgotten Contributor to Project Success
In the course of assessing project management capabilities for clients, a practice that I've found absent across most non-projectized organisations is the evaluation of team members at the end of a project by the project's leadership. Usually, the rationale provided for this gap is that the functional managers do not consistently solicit this feedback from project managers, or when this feedback has been offered in the past, it has been ignored.
How Can I Have Responsibility Without Authority?
By far, the question I am most often asked during "Project Management . . . by the Numbers" has always been, "How can I get my project team to actually accomplish their tasks on time, if even at all?" After a short discussion, the question translates to, "I don't have the authority to delegate, but I am responsible for their work, both the quality and the timeliness."
Managing the "Meeting from Hell!"
Project Manager Sherry Martin couldn't stop thinking about her last team meeting as she walked down the hall towards her office. Slamming her office door behind her, she let out an exasperated scream and looked for something to punch! Her team was driving her absolutely crazy and she channelled Scarlett O'Hara as she proclaimed, "I will never run a meeting like that again!" Her problem in a nutshell boiled down to three really difficult personalities that continually recurred on her team. These personalities were indeed a cancer not just infecting the team and its results but also spreading throughout the group and impacting the other team members as well.
Identifying Performance Issues With Your Project Team
The phrase "project manager" is a bit of a misnomer; while project managers do manage projects, they deliver them by managing a project team that does the work of the project. How successful they are at managing that team will go a long way to determining the success or failure of the project. Perhaps the most difficult (and certainly the most unpleasant) aspect of managing the high performance team is dealing with issues of poor performance.
Why is People Capability Maturity Model Necessary?
The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute developed the People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) to help businesses manage knowledge workers across global borders, as well as between greying and millennial generations. Similar to CMMI, P-CMM has five maturity levels, but the model is focused on the need to improve the capabilities of a workforce as a differentiating factor from the competition.
Has Your Project Team Considered all the Key Dimensions of the Problem?
Many readers have mentioned to me that they feel that a lot of the projects they sponsor (even the successful ones) are often on "automatic pilot." This typically happens once the project teams feel that they understand the problem and have decided on what they believe to be the most appropriate direction for solving the key issues facing the project.
Putting People Management Back into Project Management
No one will ever be able to convince me that the most challenging component of project management is the science behind it. The way in which we need to pull people together to be a high performance team over a relatively short period of time is the most challenging part of project management. This article will focus on the communication issues within the project team, in particular, the people management aspect.
Recipe for Great Virtual Teamwork: The Right Communications Tools at the Right Time
You've just finished the project kick-off meeting with your new virtual team. Everyone seems clear about roles, responsibilities, deliverables and deadlines. So far, so good. But, as you think about the magnitude and velocity of the work that lies ahead, you realise how critical a well-orchestrated team communications plan will be to getting the work done. This article offers some simple guidelines to keep in mind as you assemble a communications plan to make it easy for virtual team members to communicate and collaborate.
Building the High-Performance Global Workforce
Companies that can work cheaper, faster, and better are well-positioned to develop and market products and services that give higher value to their customers. But how do project managers and business leaders effectively manage geographically dispersed workforces?
10 Steps to Finding a Project Manager
Project managers, when you hire well, can become your most favourite person on the planet. Hiring a good project manager means you can sit back and relax knowing that the project tasks are being taken care of in a professional, productive, and profitable manner. It frees up your time, reduces or even eliminates stress, and increases your bottom line. However a bad hire can affect profits, increase stress which can kick your blood pressure up to dangerous levels and waste a tremendous amount of time and money. Here's how to hire a qualified project manager.
Discovering Future Performers in Your Team
Browse up on your organisation's competency requirements and set more informed business directions concerning your people. Management needs a checkpoint to determine if performance meets organisational requirements, given the knowledge and skills set of the employees. This is the birth of competency analysis.
Exploiting Feedback to Improve Bottom-Line Performance
While feedback is vital to the growth and sustained success of any business, regardless of industry, employees or customer base, it may often be met with some level of resistance or uncertainty. For some, feedback seems to equate to, and therefore is received or delivered as, (negative) criticism, when in reality, this belief or response is unwarranted.
Use Your Whole Brain: Leveraging Right-Brained Thinking in a Left-Brained World
For organisations, flexing the right side of the brain can dramatically improve decision making, team building and innovation, and ultimately drive greater organisational performance. In fact, whole brain thinking is a secret weapon that successful organisations are using to evolve their business to the next level, and stay ahead of the competition. When you combine left-brained data-driven decision making skills with non-linear right-brained thinking, the result is greater insight and more well-rounded experience that will ultimately help you arrive at better solutions to complex problems.
Getting Work Done: The Human Side of Project Management
Project management is defined as the art and science of getting work done with the active co-operation of individuals and organisations who are directly or indirectly involved with the project. This includes Senior Management, Project Sponsors(s), Customers, End-users, Stakeholders, Team Members, Sub-contractors, Vendors and Consultants. Given the reality of minimal authority and total responsibility for the outcome of the project, the Project Manager's biggest challenge consists of "Getting Work Done."
Why Project Managers Should Coach
Coaching is a highly effective management tool and yet, I have met only a small number of project managers who adopt a coaching style when supporting their staff. The unfortunate truth is that many project managers do not understand coaching and have received little or no formal training.
Resourcing Project Managers
Ironically, although resourcing production team members is a significant part of a project manager's role, very little focus is placed on resourcing the project managers themselves. Because of this, I've encountered many project managers that are overwhelmed, worn out, and in many ways, ineffective. Over time, I've developed some generic strategies to help directors allocate an appropriate amount of work to project managers. In this article, I'll discuss some simple ideas to help get started.
The Importance of Working Together With Your Team
The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn't just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed.
Project Management: What Type of Organisation is Best?
Consider a company that is about to embark upon a project for the first time. A competent project manager is available, but this firm has never had to handle a complex project before, and now has to set up the most suitable organisation. If asked to advise, the project manager might immediately be faced with the question that often causes much controversy, should the company take all the key people destined to work on the project and place them under his/her direct control. Or, at the other extreme would it be better to have a weak or balanced functional matrix?
10 Ways to Inspire Your Team
Inspire. Just the word itself causes us to pause and think. We may remember our own personal heroes like Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa or a teacher or mentor who brought out the best in us and showed us the power of one person.
Project Management Goes Live With Virtual Team Collaboration
Web collaboration technologies enable project management teams to meet virtually with full audio-visual interaction, irrespective of their multiple locations. These solutions work by allowing one team member to securely share their desktop and its content in ad-hoc or scheduled meetings with their colleagues, and allow anyone to access and contribute to the information in real time.
5 Essentials To Project Team Success
To maximise the contribution of project teams, a number of essentials need to be recognised. The good news is that the essentials to team success aren't expensive, don't require the expenditure of large amounts of capital or expense money, and don't require new bricks and mortar. The further news and biggest challenge is that the only change needed to be made to implement the essentials to project team success is behaviour.
Five Steps to a Winning Project Team
As healthcare executives work to increase efficiency and decrease costs in a dynamic healthcare environment, they often undertake projects such as technology implementation, operational and process improvements and facility planning. These projects typically require the formation of collaborative teams comprising hospital leadership and staff as well as project managers and support staff from vendors and outside consulting firms. Executives must be prepared to establish efficient project teams that focus on communication and collaboration to achieve success.
Nine Ways to Contribute to Project Team Success
The world of work has changed. It used to be that most of us worked as a part of a process, whether on an assembly line, managing interactions with customers, or any one of a thousand other processes. Processes are ongoing, repeatable and never have an ending. If the nature of our work has changed, it is important to think about some of the skills that will help us succeed in this different world.
Building Your Project Team
Suppose that you as a manager have been asked to form a team for the life of a particular project. How should you set about choosing your people and forming them into a well functioning group?
Stealth Team Building
The thought of "team building" often creates very diverse reactions from project team members. Many people enjoy the potential for increased camaraderie and getting to know more about their peers; others have a very negative reaction. This article looks at an alternative "stealth" approach to team building.
Helping Project Teams Succeed
How often do we hear project managers complaining that they have been set-up to fail? If you're like me then quite often. I am sure that most organisations want their project managers to succeed. If this is true where does the "set-up to fail" idea come from. Could it be that the organisation doesn't have an environment that supports success?
Developing a High Performance Project Team
Much is written in Project Management journals about every conceivable facet of project teams. Topics about their organisation, culture, communication with clients, problem solving skills, etc. are virtually endless. There are lots of rules, tips, and suggestions about what they should do but not as much on how to do it. If you aren't sure how, this article will get you started in the right direction.
Managing Virtual Project Teams
These are interesting times for managing systems development projects. In the old days (as late as the 1980s), whenever a development project was initiated, it was necessary to form a project team at a centralised geographical location in order to expedite communications between project members. But now we live in an age of electronic communications that provides greater flexibility in terms of allowing workers to work just about anywhere.
Virtual Teaming Soft Skills Relevant to all Projects
One of the most critical aspects of project management leadership is the effective use of communication to facilitate the team process. Effective communication is one of the key enablers of building cohesive teams and is critical to the successful management of key stakeholders. The probability of communication breakdown is intensified in a virtual environment. Since virtual teams are fast becoming the rule rather than the exception, we will all be required to use these skills at some point in our project leadership careers.
People, Process, and Predicting Project Success
Great people, people with sufficient functional skills and domain expertise can trump process, good or bad. Good process, process appropriate for the context, will help those people. But great people can overcome bad process to deliver a good product.
Six Ways to Give Proper Project Leadership
Many things influence project management today. When we look at projects today compared to fifteen or twenty years ago, we notice a big change. In the old traditional setting, the boss might not even ask for any input, but today team involvement is critical. In a team setting, people are encouraged to give ideas and make decisions. This change governs how projects today are run.
Choosing the Best Team for Your Project
Human Resource Management is needed everywhere. At home, at the office, and especially when working on a project with a group of people. Using human resources during a project requires getting the most effective use of the people involved with the project. This includes everyone associated with the project: sponsors, customers, partners, and individual contributors. There are three major aspects of project human resource management: organisational planning, staff acquisition, and team development.
Risk Management
Nobody likes to think about what may go wrong on a project, but to overlook risk management means that you chance an unnecessary project failure.
Project Risks and How to Identify Them
Plenty of information is available about the best ways for a project manager to manage risk within a complex project. Much is written about how to communicate risks to stakeholders and how to mitigate and avoid risks. But what are the best ways of identifying those risks in the first place?
The Seven Deadly Sins of Risk Management
Risk management is the heart and soul of project management. Failing to practice it right can have fatal consequences on projects and programmes. Doing real effort in the planning stage can save the entire investment and will increase the likelihood of project success. However, planning alone is not enough if monitoring risks is not handled seriously. These are seven deadly sins of risk management and how to take preventive actions to avoid them.
Project Risk: Is It All Bad?
No one would disagree that managing risk within a project is not a good idea. Risk Management is an essential part of any programme or project and can vastly contribute to successful delivery. Where it can and does go wrong is when there is an over-reliance on the risk aspects of the project and they in themselves start driving the way the project moves forward. The management of risk is part and parcel of project management, but is not the be all and end all of it as it sometimes becomes in more risk averse organisational cultures.
The Principles of Risk Management
Every project manager and business leader needs to be aware of the practices and principles of effective risk management. Understanding how to identify and treat risks to an organisation, a programme or a project can save unnecessary difficulties later on, and will prepare managers and team members for any unavoidable incidences or issues.
Is Software Development Risk Costing You Money?
Poor software project management often means missed deadlines, cost overruns or even outright failure of the project. How can your company avoid this industry-wide problem? In our brief you'll learn best practices for successfully completing software projects.
Ranking Risks: Rare to Certain, Negligible to Catastrophic
Risk is a concept that denotes a potential negative impact to an asset or some characteristic of value that may arise from some present process or future event. In everyday usage, risk is often used synonymously with the probability of a known loss. Risk is measured in terms of impact and likelihood. Since risk is directly correlated to loss, it is important to be able to assess risks in one's business and to address them. Needless to say, inattention to risks can definitely affect a company's bottom line.
10 Golden Rules of Project Risk Management
The benefits of risk management in projects are huge. You can gain a lot of money if you deal with uncertain project events in a proactive manner. Experience shows that 10 golden rules exist for implementing risk management successfully in your project.
Project Management: Stakeholder Risk Management
Is it really true that on time, on budget, and fulfilling all requirements means project success? Whose requirements are we really trying to meet anyway? And who decides if the original due date can be changed when the scope grows? In this article we'll address the people swirling around your project, stakeholders. You'll find some useful tips and other resources for optimising stakeholder involvement in your project.
Risk Management Options
Risk management is an ongoing process to identify potential problems that could arise when new projects occur within a business. There are various tasks that need to be completed so the overall goals of a project can be fulfilled.
Your Risk Management Process: A Practical and Effective Approach
A solid risk management process can help to make a project run smoothly. By identifying and addressing a list of project risks as part of a larger project management system, many surprises and roadblocks can be eliminated. Learn more about the definition of a risk as well as the steps that should be a part of your business's risk management process and how you can incorporate such a process into all projects going forward.
Project Risk Management: It's Either Contingency Planning Now or Emergency Relief Later
Proper project risk management entails more than simply identification and analysis at the beginning of a project. Risk management must be integrated into the project plan, consistently applied, and clearly communicated throughout the life cycle of the project.
The Risky Business of Project Management
Undertaking any project, whether in-house or in partnership with a professional services firm, entails risk. Project risk is defined as any area of concern that could prevent a project from achieving all of its benefits. Project risk requires careful management and involves identification, assessment, and mitigation.
The Top Five Software Project Risks
I recently posted an entry on a risk assessment tool you can download and use. Risk management (or more precisely risk avoidance) is a critical topic, but one that is often dull to read about and therefore neglected. One of the few useful and entertaining books on the subject is "Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects" by Tom Demarco, Timothy Lister, authors of the ever popular "Peopleware." This post provides a useful summary of their top 5 software project risks.
Project Management: Risk Management
In many projects, risks are identified and analysed in a random, brainstorming, fashion. This is often fatal to the success of the project, as unexpected risks arise, which have not been assessed or planned for and have to be dealt with on an emergency basis, rather than be prepared for and defended against in a planned, measured, manner.
Reducing Risk and Increasing the Probability of Project Success
IT systems are at the heart of modern business and the development of new software applications and maintenance of existing systems are critical to productivity and profitability. Advances in software technology over the last 20 years have allowed progressively more complex business solutions to be created enabling companies to offer their customers exciting new services and products. And yet, software development projects still suffer from similar problems and characteristics, regardless of the technologies being used, that they suffered from more than ten years ago.
Project Risk Management
Several techniques are available that you can employ to identify risks to your projects. Some project managers rely on regular team meetings, brainstorming sessions, reviews with stakeholders or experience from similar projects.
SMART Goals
What's so smart about SMART? Why has this acronym become part of the vocabulary of project planning and performance management?
Setting SMARTER Goals in 7 Easy Steps
The mnemonics SMART and SMARTER are useful when setting project goals and objectives. They provide a way of ensuring everyone understands them, they are trackable, relevant, there are enough resources to achieve them and a firm deadline is set. Try these seven steps to help you set SMARTER goals for your projects.
Stepping Up SMART Goals
The SMART acronym is a great tool for making sure our goals and instructions are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timed. It helps us clarify what we want to accomplish and set deadlines to make sure it produces the results we want in the timeframe we need. Here are six steps that will help you formulate your goals in the most effective way possible.
7 More Reasons Goals Are Not Achieved
Success and achieving goals are two topics that have universal appeal. You would think that something that commands the interest of so many people would be understood and used by nearly everyone. However, what I have discovered is that most people make the same mistakes again and again. They never reach their desired outcome. Here are 7 more of the common mistakes that most people make in their quest for improvement and achievement.
The Top 7 Reasons Why Goals Are Not Achieved
It's that time of year again when we reflect on what we had hoped to accomplish in the past year and what we plan to accomplish in the next. Most times we look back and realise that we didn't quite measure up to our hopes and dreams. As a business advisor and executive coach I have found that people tend to make the same mistakes when setting goals for both their business and personal lives.
Top 10 Steps to Successful Goals
"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia" - Author Unknown. Get very clear about your goals. It helps you avoid the Rinse and Repeat Trap - get up in the morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, fall asleep in front of the TV, stumble to bed, get up the next morning, rinse and repeat.
10 Steps to Setting SMART Objectives
Setting effective objectives to guide your team and organisation is very important for a leader to get right. Badly formulated objectives will steer an organisation in the wrong direction. I found this 10 step approach to setting SMART objectives from the National Primary and Care Trust.
Defining Project Goals and Objectives
The very first step in all projects: business, home, or education, is to define goals and objectives. This step defines the projects outcome and the steps required to achieve that outcome. People, including project managers, do not spend sufficient time on this step or complete it incorrectly thereby ensuring an unsuccessful project completion.
SMART Goals Aren't Good Enough
When a tool is inspired by a clever acronym, you've got to wonder how robust it actually is. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Sounds great, but that's actually not enough. Is it a good goal, or a 'should' goal?
SMART Goals Reduce Ambiguity and Increase Commitment
Ambiguity is a fact of life in all organisations. In many cases it can be an advantage. But in most cases, the clearer the requirements, the better. Use SMART goals, keep them simple, and watch people respond with a high level of commitment to the enterprise. They can be, as in this case, the difference between success and failure.
Use SMART Objectives to Focus Goals, Plans and Performance
Objectives that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Realistic/Relevant, and Time-bound) are likely to be achieved. Learn how to develop SMART objectives with the power to focus goals, work plans, and commitment to performance targets. Because meaningful and practical measures are built in, SMART objectives also enable feedback and learning that can keep you on track to success.
8 Strategies for Achieving SMART Goals
Setting goals is easy but achieving them isn't. That's why setting "SMART" goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely - is the first step in making your goal a reality.
SMART Goals and Business Coaching
Leaders of all industries know the importance of setting achievable and effective goals for themselves. These goals are termed SMART goals. Goals are one of the most underutilised yet important tools that businesses have. Once the main outline of your project has been set, your attention needs to be turned towards developing certain goals that can help make your project a success. The SMART goals checklist can be used to evaluate the set of goals to be used. This process can help the employees as well as the employers share a certain understanding of how the goals have been set and how they are to be achieved.
SMART Goals
Once you have planned your project, turn your attention to developing several goals that will enable you to be successful. Goals should be SMART - specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time-based.
The Importance of Working Together With Your Team
The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn't just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed.
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