Sat.May 26, 2018 - Fri.Jun 01, 2018

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10 Project Management Buzzwords and What They Mean

ProjectManager.com

Jargon is how professionals or people within a specialized group talk. It’s like code or shorthand, really, a way to address specifics to their trade or interests. Think of it as special words or expressions that are opaque to most but clearly understood by those in the know. But what if you’re not in the know? Then those buzzwords used by your coworkers can be hard to decipher.

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9 Simple Ways to Quickly Start a Project

Project Risk Coach

I wish I had a dime for every time that I have been handed a project with a deadline of yesterday. You've been there too? Well, let's talk about some practical steps that we can take to quickly start a project. Jumpstarting a new project requires time and focus. Clear your calendar as much as possible. Secure a project administrator to help you with your administrative tasks.

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An Introduction to Project Steering Groups

Rebel’s Guide to PM

A Project Steering Group is the oversight committee of a project. You might use the term Project Board or Governance Committee, or something else that means a similar thing. All projects should have one, but the make up of the group depends on your project. It’s generally acknowledged that having strong leadership is important for project success, so getting your Project Steering Group set up as soon as you can is a good start.

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Timing is everything for your team!

Kiron Bondale

Those of us who have managed projects with team members dispersed across distant time zones are well aware of the risks caused by geographic, cultural and temporal distance. The benefits of thoughtful co-location for right-sized teams are also well recognized, but even in such ideal situations, we face a different challenge which Daniel Pink covers in his latest book, When.

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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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Some "$10 words" in Risk Management

Musings on Project Management

When you get into risk management a bit, there are some biggies that get thrown around -- I call them $10 words -- and there are two that more or less divide risk management along the lines of. The unknown that is possibly knowable with some legwork The unknown that is likely to remain unknowable First case For the first case, this is all about knowledge, the nature of knowledge, and how.

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Teaming – could this be the future of agile?

Growing Agile

We all know the benefits of teams. A bunch of people who work together over long periods of time and are fairly stable. They grow together and learn together and the team is worth more than the sum of the individuals. IF you’ve worked in one of these teams – you will know what I’m speaking about. It feels amazing. However in most companies this idea of stable teams seems like an impossibility.

Agile 96
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Should Agile Teams Have a Definition of Ready?

Leading Agile

In The Dangers of a Definition of Ready , Agile thought leader Mike Cohn expresses a concern that is shared by many in the community: That by establishing strict rules about what information must be provided before a development team can take on a backlog item, we risk backsliding into a linear process model. It is a truly terrifying prospect! Oh, wait.

Agile 98
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Fixed price contracting and Agile

Musings on Project Management

In my book, Project Management the Agile Way, now in its 2nd Edition, I make this statement in the chapter on contracts: Firm Fixed Price (FFP) completion contracts are inappropriate for contracting agile. I got an email from a reader challenging that assertion, to which responded: I always start by asserting that agile is a "fixed price" methodology.

Agile 150
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Resource Planning Tools: How Thoroughly Should You Use Them

Ganttic

Resource planning is a process of allocating tasks to human and non-human resources in a way that would maximize the efficiency of the resources. Resource planning can also be a process of allocating tasks to human and non-human resources in order to get an overview of resource availability and capacity. It can be both of those things and it can be something in between.

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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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Teaming – could this be the future of agile?

Growing Agile

We all know the benefits of teams. A bunch of people who work together over long periods of time and are fairly stable. They grow together and learn together and the team is worth more than the sum of the individuals. IF you’ve worked in one of these teams – you will know what I’m speaking about. It feels amazing. However in most companies this idea of stable teams seems like an impossibility.

Agile 68
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How successful project management makes your business successful

Proofhub

The definition provided by the Project Management Institute (PMI) states that successful project management is ‘the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements’. Whether you’re in charge of a huge conglomerate or you run a small/medium sized enterprise, you are going to come up against projects in the natural course of business.

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4 Strategies for Dealing With Difficult Stakeholders

Wrike

“This isn’t what we wanted!” “No, you have to do it this way.” “When this project fails, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” If you haven’t dealt with a difficult stakeholder yet, don’t worry. You will soon. This means you must arm yourself with strategies to deal with them amicably and continue working on the project despite possible roadblocks.

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How to Prioritize Projects in 5 Easy Steps

TeamGantt

No matter who you work for or how big your project, knowing what to tackle first when you’ve got lots of balls in the air is tough for any project manager. Project prioritization gives you and your team an easy-to-follow plan for the work that needs to be done, while also setting clear expectations for […]. The post How to Prioritize Projects in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on TeamGantt.

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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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Product Management and Agile – Agile Misunderstood

Meisterplan

Are you using Jira for software development? Do you find that agile approaches are helpful? And are you trying to tackle all projects in the company using agile and Jira? Yes? Then we’ve already found three things in common! Ok, let’s keep going: Are you asked every week “Where do we stand now?” and “When will project XY be finished”?

Agile 60
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What is Scrumban? | Video

Online PM Courses

You’ve heard of Scrum… You’ve heard of Kanban… So, what is Scrumban? Dr Mike Clayton is founder of Online PM Courses.com. Here, he answers this question, in under 5 minutes. Project Management in Under 5. What is Scrumban? You may also like… Agile Project Management. What is Scrum? What is Kanban? What is Lean Project Management?

Lean 61
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A day at the outreach

ActiveCollab

Imagine a beach. Late summer, when it’s still warm and pleasant, but no longer too hot. Soft sand glittering under the morning sun, palm trees swaying in the breeze. The waves, high and imposing, drawing you in, daring you to take up the surfboard and mount them. Now, doing outreach can easily compare to surfing in a tropical paradise such as this. I own the wave, glide through water on my board, in perfect sync and balance.

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New Feature: Checklist

Teamweek

Declutter your timeline by breaking a task down into smaller units. Check the items off one-by-one and keep everyone up to date with the progress. Up until now, Teamweek’s product team has developed mostly with project managers in mind. Our new checklist feature, however, will empower individual users by helping them think through, communicate and manage all the sub-tasks of a larger task.

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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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I am fired up!

PM That Works

In my daily reading, two articles peaked my attention today. The first was called The Blair Witch Project Manager. It talked of a horrible project and a horrible experience the person had with a project manager. He then went on to say: "I get, though, why awful PMs enthral senior leaders. The PM ‘Body of Knowledge’ features lots of complex tools and techniques that make ‘planning’ seem like rocket science.

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How to Increase Productivity with GanttPRO: Resource Workload, Multi-Assign, and Personal Calendars

GanttPRO Project Management

Projects are all about tasks, dependencies, deadlines, and of course resources and assignees. If you use a Gantt chart online tool, it means that you manage your tasks efficiently. But […].

60
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Quote of the Day

Herding Cats

Uncertainty is the consequence of all complex systems. It is the lack of needed knowledge of the state of the system in the present or in the future that creates risk. [1], [2] Adaptability, flexibility, and other systems “?illities” are devoid of meaning in a deterministic world. [3] In the non?deterministic world, risk management is a critical success factor for increasing the probability of program success. [4] Risk Never Occurs Without a Cause, that Cause is Uncertainty ?

2005 31
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How to use a Simple Gantt Chart to Reverse Engineer a Complex Project

Teamweek

If you’re managing a complex project, a simple Gantt chart may be the perfect tool to help you keep track of all the moving parts. You don’t have to be an expert to use one, we’ll show you why you it’s useful and how to set up your first Gantt chart. . How to use a Gantt Chart. So, what is a Gantt chart? A Gantt chart has a very simple definition and an even more simple application.

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Acclaim Projects Helps Deliver Innovation Projects on Time and on Budget

This large intercity transportation company for people and freight employs 100+ IT employees and contractors across North America and Europe and spends $10MM annually for approximately 50 inflight projects. The company needed the right financial tools to budget for innovation initiatives and real-time information on spending and forecasting. This transportation company turned to Acclaim Projects by Sopheon to help deliver projects on time and within budget.

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ActiveCollab & the General Data Protection Regulation

ActiveCollab

1. What is the GDPR. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new law establishing protections for the personal data of EU residents. The main goal of GDPR is to establish a standard for all organizations in the region when it comes to data privacy. Organizations (regardless of the organization’s global location) are required to develop certain procedures and safeguards that will regulate collecting, maintaining and using personal data of EU residents.

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How to Increase Productivity with GanttPRO: Resource Workload, Multi-Assign, and Personal Calendars

GanttPRO Project Management

Projects are all about tasks, dependencies, deadlines, and of course resources and assignees. If you use a Gantt chart online tool, it means that you manage your tasks efficiently.

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Quote of the Day

Herding Cats

I do not define Time, Space, Place and Motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation, they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which, it will be convenient to distinguish them into Absolute and Relative, True and Apparent, Mathematical and Common - Issac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , Book I, def.

2017 28
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The Benefits of SWOT Analysis in Project Management

Teamweek

SWOT. It sounds like something you’d do to a fly. Despite the onomatopoeia, this isn’t the case. What is SWOT? SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The concept is simple: In a SWOT analysis you try highlight areas of a project that can make it more successful. Then you look at aspects of the project that can be potentially harmful.

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From Concepts to Actionable Insights: Powering Digital Transformation Success

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

70% of most digital transformation projects fail. Learn how you can quickly improve that success rate. To be successful, digital transformation involves the strategic application of digitalization to improve a business’ entire system of production, procurement, sales, operations, human resources, and financial management. In short, to basically transform the way a company makes money and delivers value to customers.