Thu.Jul 29, 2021

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How to use a bullet journal for project management

Rebel’s Guide to PM

How do you manage your projects? Whatever it is you’re managing you’ll probably use, or need, a tool to help you do it. Maybe it’s a Trello board, a Kanban board, a system of sticky notes…Asana, Toggl… a wall calendar and planner, or a combination of them all! What remains the same is that there is a lot to manage. And a lot to remember. There’ll be different tasks, different meetings, and multiple deadlines to meet.

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How to Calculate Cost Variance for a Project (Formula Included)

ProjectManager.com

Throughout the life of a project, project managers check in on progress and compare it to the project plan—comparing their predictions to reality. If they don’t do this regularly, odds are the budget will suffer and their project will fail entirely. Luckily, these deviances from the plan, such as cost variance, don’t have to sink a project. In fact, they can actually strengthen it.

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The best thing you can do to manage risk?

Musings on Project Management

You ask: What's he best thing I can do to manage risk?Answer:Make time your friend. Insert time buffers in your schedule around every uncertain event, around milestones that are critical to success, and around major blocks of scope that determine whether project objectives will be met.Time is your friend if it is allocated in your schedule to give you space to work, and rework, mitigations.

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10 Startups With The Best Company Culture in 2021

Proofhub

What’s the one thing you are Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels looking for when searching for a job? That’s right. Company culture. A Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey in 2019, found that over 77 percent of people across four countries?—?US, UK, France, and Germany, would consider company culture as an important factor for applying for a job, while almost 80 percent would consider a company’s mission and purposes before applying.

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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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Do we need a Scrum Master forever?

Scrum.org

Does the role of the Scrum Master go away with time? For addressing the doubt, first, understand the role of a Scrum Master clearly. . Suppose you go by the Scrum Guide , the person accountable for ensuring that everyone in the Organisation understands the purpose of the Scrum Framework. Thus, the Scrum Master serves not only the team but also the Product Owner and the Organisation.

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All About Scope Creep: Causes, Consequences, and Tips on Preventing It

Epicflow Blog

Scope creep is a common challenge that project managers have to deal with. In an effort to make the project’s final outcome perfect and satisfy customers, project managers/team members/stakeholders may be unable to leave it well enough alone. This results in making too many or too significant changes to the project until its scope goes far beyond what was agreed upon initially.

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What do your stakeholders need to know about your project?

Planview

Of all the things a project manager needs to manage—timelines, budgets, change orders and so on—the most important of all may be stakeholders’ expectations. After all, completion of any project depends on stakeholders doing what they’re expected to do, and the final determination of whether a project is a success or failure is made by stakeholders as well.

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Candidate 101 – How Long Should Video Answers Be?

Teamweek

As digital technology becomes more powerful and the world continues to adapt to remote working, the use of video interviews has increased by 67%. Whether preparing for a 1-2-1 video interview or some pre-recorded questions, candidates often ask – how long should video answers be? The truth is, there’s no clear answer, but let’s run through the type of questions you could be asked and how best to respond to them in either 30, 60 or 90 seconds.

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Formal vs. Informal Project Management: Which is Right for You?

Planview

Have you ever heard a project manager refer to “formal” project management and wondered what exactly makes it formal? While different organizations might have their own definition of the term, formal project management is the area of interest to professional project managers, and is the preferred style of management for most enterprise projects.

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

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 expendi

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What Is Cost Overrun? How to Prevent It

Wrike

Project planning is all about accuracy. With about 28% of projects failing due to imprecise cost estimates, it’s clear that your project plan deserves time and attention. Inaccurate forecasts about costs, resources, benefits, and estimated durations can bring project risks that could impact your organization’s profitability and growth opportunities.

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Project Budgets: Tips for Estimating & Cost Tracking – Clarizen

Planview

Effective project budget tracking is essential to ensure that project costs do not spiral out of control — and potentially threaten project success. This informative and easy-to-read article explores the basics of project budget tracking , including best practices and a 7-phase methodology. One of the most difficult tasks in project management is cost tracking and staying on top of project expenses.

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Back to the foundations of the Scrum framework (11) - How the Scrum Master helps raising Transparency

Scrum.org

Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and transparency is one of the three pillars. Each of the Scrum Roles exist to also raise transparency to the other Scrum Team members and the stakeholders. If you feel that there is a lack of transparency for any aspect of your initiative, check who is best placed to bring clarity. Note: transparency is way more than bringing “visibility”.

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The Importance of Project Management Tools – Clarizen

Planview

With the growing use of technology in all facets of modern life, it’s no surprise that a huge range of project management tools have been developed which assist PMs in just about every aspect of their day-to-day work. The importance of project management tools is apparent for any project manager seeking to ensure project success. Here are just some of the benefits that they can bring to your work.

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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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Why The Biggest Risk To Your Business This Year Is Burnout (And How To Tackle It)

Trello

After a year and a half of living and working through a pandemic, it’s no surprise that employees are sending out stress signals at record rates. According to a 2021 study by Indeed, 52% of employees today say they feel burnt out. Over half of employees report working longer hours, and a quarter say they’re unable to unplug from work.

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Best Practices of Project Management Execution Phase

Planview

When it comes to the execution phase of your project there are several ways of succeeding in terms of developing and completing deliverables. The third phase of the project life cycle is one of the most crucial of the project phases , since it’s the phase where you will construct your deliverables and present them to your customer. This is usually the longest phase of the project life cycle and typically the most demanding.

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Overcoming Challenges of Returning to the Office with Dr. Kelly Lingerfeldt

Leading Agile

Listen to the SoundNotes Podcast on the go! Find and subscribe to SoundNotes on: Apple Podcasts. Spotify. Soundcloud. RSS. As vaccination rates rise and the number of people infected with Covid-19 drops our world is slowly moving on to some new form of normal. Many of us have returned, or soon will be returning, to the office. After a year working from home, that shift back to the thing that was once part of our every day work lives, is going to present unique challenges for each of us.

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What Great Leaders Know About Top Down Management – Clarizen

Planview

Leadership determines productivity and morale. The wrong style can set a company into a tailspin of dissent that could have serious consequences for your staff retention rate. If your leadership style doesn’t match the company culture or situation, chances are you won’t be successful at managing your people. The majority of management styles in modern business are about a shared environment where all employees have an equal say and decisions are made as a group.

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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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Top 5 Best Knowledge Management Software to Look for in 2021

nTask

In this article, we have highlighted the best knowledge management software you can get started for free today. . Businesses deal with a vast amount of knowledge every day. The data collected exceeds the limits of gigabytes and terabytes, it has been estimated that the data generated every day exceeds over 2.5 quintillion bytes. Storing such an enormous amount of data is a hassle in itself, but organizing, sharing, and managing this data on top of everything can be an impossible feat to achieve.

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What is Critical Path in Project Management? | Clarizen

Planview

Trying to find a simple, clear and accurate critical path definition in project management can be difficult — but not impossible, because that’s exactly what this article provides! Keep reading to discover key concepts, best practices and warnings that every project manager should know about a critical path definition in project management.

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Project Planning: What Are Typical Project Milestones? – Clarizen

Planview

Just as highway travelers can see how far they’ve traveled by watching for mile markers along the side of the road, project teams can use milestones to measure their progress toward their objectives. Milestones are an essential tool for communicating project status to internal and external stakeholders. In fact, defining and identifying project milestones is one of the most important abilities that a project manager must possess.

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What’s the Risk Analysis Process in Project Management? – Clarizen

Planview

Risk management is one of the core project knowledge areas, an essential and ongoing process which can be described as the methodical process of identification, analysis and response to project risks involving several major phases which are similar to all projects. Regardless of the methodology or approach, risk management processes generally include risk identification, analysis, risk response planning, risk monitoring and control.

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3 ‘Must-Dos’ for Addressing Digital Transformation Challenges

Digital transformation projects are crucial, with global spending projected to hit $3.4 trillion by 2026. However, they often fail at a rate of about 70%. To enhance success: Employee Buy-in: Acknowledge concerns and establish a change management team to communicate benefits transparently. Identify Processes and Tools: Form a digital transformation office to establish metrics, workstream lifecycles, data capture, and tool selection.

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What to Include in a Project Scope Statement

Planview

Of all the documents that get created, reviewed and shared over the life of a project—project plans, timelines, budgets, status reports and issue logs, just to name a few—the project scope statement may be the one that has the greatest influence over the project as a whole. The scope statement describes the goals, deadlines and relationships that will shape the project from start to finish.

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Five Things to Know About the Bottom Up Strategy – Clarizen

Planview

A common debate in project management circles is between the two styles of creating and executing a project plan : top-down and bottom-up. Top-down strategy involves the management of a project, i.e. the project manager having complete control over the delegation of tasks and the setting of the project schedule and deadlines. On the other hand, the bottom-up approach calls for more input from those who will be completing the tasks.

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Top Personality Traits of Highly Effective Project Managers – Clarizen

Planview

Every project team takes on at least a little bit of its project manager’s personality. If the PM is disorganized and careless, the team will almost certainly miss deadlines and produce substandard deliverables, even if the same team members have performed well on other projects. In the same way, teams working under a harsh, unfriendly PM are very likely to experience internal conflicts.

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What Are the Benefits of the Bottom Up Approach? – Clarizen

Planview

A common debate in the world of project management is that concerning the top down approach vs bottom up approach to management. While we have discussed this question before on our blog , here we will narrow the focus slightly, to investigate the benefits of bottom up approach theory and what they can bring to your project or organization. First, What’s the Bottom Up Approach?

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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.