Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Many introductory courses that include information about budgeting for project managers discuss the idea that a project budget may have to be time based.  That is, the expenditures are divided over weeks, months, or quarters to show how spending will occur over the course of the project.  But the project budgets in an organization only tell a part of the story.  Budgets are about...

[Note: Beginning with last week's article and continuing forward, in addition to tagging articles with knowledge areas, we will be adding new tags for business, people, and technical (including process). We will update past articles over time. This will align content with the new PMP® exam content areas, which in turn, align with the PMI talent triangle areas - Leadership, Technical Project...

Management skills are usually grouped into several categories, including interpersonal, technical, and conceptual. But time management skills go beyond attributes that simply make you an effective leader. Knowing how to manage your minutes is crucial to the success of your business and your personal life. Here are a few examples of skills to refine that will have a positive impact on your time...

Whether you have a predictive or agile project, you will always need to have the team on the same page and satisfy the client.  Today, we're going to look at the two best ways to get team and client buy in.  Involvement and clarity are two of the best ways to obtain buy-in.

Involvement: The #1 Tool for Buy-in

Let's suppose you developed a course.  If you were asked to approve the...

There are four important tools a project manager can use to improve communications. These four critical tools are the elevator pitch, status report, project deck, and communication plan.  Let's take a detailed look at each of these one at a time.

Elevator Pitch: Your elevator pitch is a concise and compelling message about your project. It should start with an attention-grabbing opener or...

It's been said that project managers spend 90% of their time communicating.  This isn't just talking.  It's about communicating in many different forms, such as reports, presentations, meetings with groups and individuals, emails, social media posts, and more.

So to start, let's look at what communication is through a relatively simple model. Communications involve a sender and a...

Last week we looked at 4 Steps to Diligently Delegate.  There are five very common barriers to enacting a successful delegation. Good project managers understand what these are and avoid the pitfalls.

1.  The project manager may have a personal interest in the task. While you may have a personal interest, your job now is to manage and grow the team. Don't let your personal interests...

In addition to good planning up front, execution of any project can be effortless if you develop the critical soft skills needed to succeed.  Let's consider delegation.  Unfortunately, new project managers often lack confidence or fear loss of control, leading to lower levels of delegation. Even more unfortunately, loss of control is what normally happens when project managers fail to...

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

- Peter Drucker

Rather than wait for your project management future, if you are planning to pursue a career, get started now and create it.  Here are five tips you can use to predict the high quality of that future:

1. Have a clear vision for every project and the team, and communicate it to all stakeholders.  Add to this clarity of...

No matter what project management methods or project life cycles you are using, risk management is an important component.  While there may be some nuances for different circumstances, some elements are universal.

It's important to note that risk is unavoidable - no environment is completely risk free. But do scale your efforts accordingly.  A very complex project, projects with large...