November, 2015

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What did the Project Managers ever do for us?

The Lazy Project Manager

There is that famous scene in Monty Python and The Life of Brian where the rebels are demanding action against the oppressive Romans and ask the question ‘What did the Romans ever do for us?’- The answers came back over and over again as the rebels listed the many things that the Romans brought with them … medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health.

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We need more detail but how do we get it?

Ron Rosenhead

I have observed many, many people when they start a work breakdown structure (WBS). The initial enthusiasm is tempered with the call from some; we need more detail. But, they soon come to a rapid halt unable to develop the WBS any further. As one person commented, “We seem to have hit the wall.” I have seen this happen frequently and the groups range from those on a training course to those in a project team on an actual project.

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10 tips to meet your project planning goals

Moira Alexander

If you’re a project manager, chances are your daily calendar is already filled from the moment you sit down at your desk to whatever time of day – or evening, most likely – you clock out. Many people at all levels of the enterprise rely heavily on you to have a solid grasp on all aspects of project management, including timing, status and direction of projects, at all times.

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Five Productivity Hacks that Any Manager Can Start Using

TeamGantt

Learn 5 productivity hacks savvy project managers use to streamline team planning, keep projects on budget, and maintain control over work schedules.

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Understand Digital Debt, Form a Team, Set Goals, and Plan Roadmap for Transformation

Understanding digital debt is crucial before digital transformation. Assemble a team to assess internal operations, market pressures, and digital debt's impact. Define future digital vision with measurable goals. Refine hypotheses and conduct market analysis. Develop a roadmap for transformation with defined projects, cost estimates, and governance.

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Solve Productivity Roadblocks With Resource Management (Infographic)

Ganttic

Productivity roadblock comes in more forms than what we are commonly aware of. This infographic shows you the 15 most common productivity roadblocks and this post will provide you solutions to reduce these statistics along the way. Infographic Data: Top Productivity Roadblocks Juggling too many tasks at the same time is terrible for productivity, a whopping 60% of employees are essentially getting none of these tasks done. 49% of employees that wait for other people’s actions end up being less p

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SPM 028 | Applying Project Management Behaviors as an Aspiring Project Manager

SensiblePM

In the final session with Naomi Caietti, Jared discovers the final steps required to apply project management behaviors into his personal development plan. In the past three sessions with Naomi she has helped Jared focus on a plan which will help him develop the skills and behaviors that make a successful project manager. During the Podcast. Applying Project Management Behavior.

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Some thoughts on Setting up a PMO

Jez Lister

I first came across the Project Management Office or PMO concept twenty-five years ago whilst working as a project manager for a large systems integrator. Most of my colleagues – myself included were initially unclear about the purpose of the PMO and assumed that we were all to be relocated to new offices. Eventually we all realised that the PMO was there to formalise previous reporting and administrative arrangements.

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3 Best Practices For Managing Creative Agency Retainers

Function Point

3 Best Practices For Managing Creative Agency Retainers. A retainer relationship works best when both sides find value in it, and maintain an active role in its progress. This way you know how much time you’re spending on your client’s jobs. If you’re running over-time—or under—you’ll know that it’s time to talk to your client and adjust the agreement.

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Are you feeling mature?

Mike Clayton

Software development, project management, and risk management all have maturity models that set criteria to allow organisations to measure the level of institutionalisation of good practices. It think it is time that Stakeholder Engagement Management also had a maturity model.

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Strategic Project Finance Essentials: A Project Manager’s Guide to Financial Metrics

Speaker: Ketan Jahagirdar - Sopheon’s Director of Product Management

Empower yourself as a project manager with insights that directly influence the financial landscape and strategic direction of your organization! Join us for a deep dive into the world of financial strategy, as we dissect key metrics that drive CFOs and business leaders’ investment decisions. This session will equip you with the necessary tools to craft compelling business cases as well as a comprehensive understanding of the crucial distinction between capital expenditure and operational expend

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More Project Disasters

The Tao of Project Management

And another one from the Why Do Projects Fail blog. Los Angeles Unified School District e-Enabled Learning Tools Project Apr 2015 Cost: $1.3B The Los Angeles Unified School District’s efforts to provide every student, every teacher and every administrator with a iPad turned into a disaster. Launched in 2013, the initial plan called for more than 100,000 iPads to be purchased.

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Top 10 Project Management Software and Tools

TrustRadius Project Management

In this article, we provide a comprehensive exploration of leading project management software products, including advice on how to compare products based on key metrics like research frequency and user ratings. To help you evaluate project management software based on your particular use case, we’ve collected data on company sizes and industries of the end-users reviewing the products, as well as ratings of specific project management features such as Gantt charts and support for Agile methodol

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The Project Managers Guide to Mastering Agile- Book Review

Stepping Into Project Management

The book was sent for review, though I chose it amongst others. The book piqued my interest because project management and agile are considered contradictory ideas. Published by Wiley, the book covers all aspects of agile and how its different from the traditional waterfall. What it covers is: Provide a better understanding of what Agile is Talk about the roles and how they are different in Agile Take the main discussion points from PMBOK and explain how the same topic is looked in Agile Dedicat

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The Annual Performance Review – is it Time for a Change?

Fear No Project PM

All managers (Project Managers, department heads, Executives) in most organizations have a responsibility to provide feedback to their staff members. Over the years I have found that many people view this as an agonizing task and some completely ignore performing this key process. I recently read a great post by Lindsay Scott on developing Project […].

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20 Common Mistakes Made by Inexperienced Project Managers

You’ve read the PMBOK® Guide several times, taken the certification exam for project managers, passed, and you are now a PMP®. So why do you keep making rookie mistakes? This whitepaper shows 20 of the most common mistakes that young or inexperienced project managers make, issues that can cost significant time and money. It's a good starting point for understanding how and why many PMs get themsleves into trouble, and provides guidance on the types of issues that PMs need to understand.

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3 Best Practices For Managing Creative Agency Retainers

Function Point

3 Best Practices For Managing Creative Agency Retainers. A retainer relationship works best when both sides find value in it, and maintain an active role in its progress. This way you know how much time you’re spending on your client’s jobs. If you’re running over-time—or under—you’ll know that it’s time to talk to your client and adjust the agreement.

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Comparing Organizational Change Management Models

Troubled and Failing Project

A few weeks ago, I set out to write a post on the comparison of various organizational change management (OCM) methodologies and realized that would be a disservice to my readers. It would simply drag you down the path of implementation while failing to focus you on building the foundation. The pressure was too much and I have relented to numerous requests on making that comparison.

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Three Point Estimate Formulas

PM by PM

Quick Reference on Three Point Estimate I have written a series of articles on Three Point Estimate and related concepts. Before reading this, you should look at my first article of the series. I have explained the basic concept of Three Point Estimate in my first article. I have also explained that PERT is not […]. The post Three Point Estimate Formulas appeared first on PM-by-PM.

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6 proven strategies for evaluating and prioritizing IT projects

Moira Alexander

Regardless of business size, industry or structure, many projects today are unfortunately still selected and initiated in a siloed department-by-department manner, without considering the overall strategic impact. What are the risks of initiating projects in this manner? Businesses run the risk of more than one area competing for the same project resources, including people and technologies, and also conflicting deadlines and goals.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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How to Turn a Tense Client Conversation into a Win-Win

TeamGantt

Every project manager has war stories from client relationships gone awry. Here’s how to salvage the situation and turn a tense conversation into a win-win.

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Five Ways to Better Manage Your Stakeholders

Gina Abudi PM

Here are five simple ways to manage (and engage) your stakeholders in your project: Utilize a stakeholder register to track each stakeholder and contact information as well as their needs, wants and expectations as it relates to the project. Take the time to meet each stakeholder – either in person or via a virtual format. [.]. The post Five Ways to Better Manage Your Stakeholders appeared first on Gina Abudi.

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Top 2 Mistakes Creative Agencies Make With Their Rates

Function Point

Deciding on your agency’s rates and billing structure will be one of the most critical factors to long-term profitability. To do this, you’ll need to calculate your agency’s billing factor, agency blended billing rate, and staff cost rates to understand the true value of your work. There are various methods of billing, including hourly and fixed fee.

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Are your beliefs helping or hindering your as a leader?

Susanne Madsen

​Have you ever considered how important your values and beliefs are to the results you get (or don’t get) in your personal and professional life? Beliefs are so powerful that they shape your attitudes, decisions, actions, and ultimately determine your results. They are something you accept as being true or real. They are firmly held opinions about what you think you can and cannot do.

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How to Stay Competitive in the Evolving State of Martech

Marketing technology is essential for B2B marketers to stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape — and with 53% of marketers experiencing legacy technology issues and limitations, they’re researching innovations to expand and refine their technology stacks. To help practitioners keep up with the rapidly evolving martech landscape, this special report will discuss: How practitioners are integrating technologies and systems to encourage information-sharing between departments and pr

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When are you planning to take PMP Exam?

PM by PM

I conducted an online poll to determine “when are PMP aspirants planning to take PMP Exam?” The result of the poll can be seen in above figure. There are some interesting facts and observations from the poll results. Let me share my opinion. Observation I There is a trend to take PMP Exam as late […]. The post When are you planning to take PMP Exam?

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Podcast 67 – Are you are stress junkie?

Fix my Project Chaos

About This Podcast: Are you stress junkie? Addicted to the rush that stress provides you? Long periods of bad stress can be harmful to you and being a stress junkie can exacerbate this situation. In this Podcast Dr John Hinwood from Stress to Strength shares his expertise in how to stop being stress junkie. Key […]. The post Podcast 67 – Are you are stress junkie?

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The 8 Rules for Effective Remote Meetings | TeamGantt Blog

TeamGantt

Remote meetings can be tough to keep on track for lots of reasons. Find out how to make your next remote meeting less awkward and more awesome for your team.

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Four Key Ways to Disengage Overly-Involved Project Sponsors

Gina Abudi PM

There are times when we need to disengage a project sponsor who is overly involved in the day-to-day work of the project team. We want them engaged in the project, certainly; but not so involved in the tasks associated with the project that the team feels they can’t get the work done. Much of time [.]. The post Four Key Ways to Disengage Overly-Involved Project Sponsors appeared first on Gina Abudi.

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From Complexity to Clarity: Strategies for Effective Compliance and Security Measures

Speaker: Erika R. Bales, Esq.

When we talk about “compliance and security," most companies want to ensure that steps are being taken to protect what they value most – people, data, real or personal property, intellectual property, digital assets, or any other number of other things - and it’s more important than ever that safeguards are in place. Let’s step back and focus on the idea that no matter how complicated the compliance and security regime, it should be able to be distilled down to a checklist.