June, 2021

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5 Pre-Vacation Stress-Busting Tips for Project Managers

Project Risk Coach

This is a guest article by Elizabeth Harrin from GirlsGuideToPM.com. When I’m on holiday I want to be, you know, actually on holiday. Enjoying my vacation time, chilling out with a cocktail and a barbeque and playing ball with my kids. I don’t want to be checking emails, dealing with phone calls from my project sponsor or still doing project reports from the cabin in the woods because no one else can possibly write them in my absence.

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Parametric Estimating: A Project Manager’s Guide with Examples

Rebel’s Guide to PM

What is parametric estimation? Parametric estimating is a top-down form of project estimation that works for time, resource and cost estimates. It uses parameters (characteristics) to create estimates based on what you already know, so in that respect it’s useful for a project manager because it’s reliable. You get accurate data because they are data-based and thought-through – it’ a quantitative approach.

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Back to Basics: A Master Class on the 4 Phases of the Project Life Cycle

Planio

If you build software for a living, you probably don’t think you have much in common with real estate developers, sculptors, or ancient Pharaohs. But every project–from redesigning a website to building the Colossus of Rhodes–follows the same four phases of the project life cycle : Initiation. Planning. Execution (and monitoring). Closing. The project life cycle is the ultimate guide to take you from idea to finished product.

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Project Manager Job Description (with free copy+paste examples!)

ProjectManager.com

Project managers are the point person in charge of a specific project or projects within an organization. We regularly feature project management resources to help train PMs to land jobs in the industry or develop better skills in their current role. So we thought it would be a great idea to take a look at what core qualifications are required of project managers and define their responsibilities and the common job descriptions for several PM roles.

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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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[VLOG] Habits of Highly Effective Scrum Masters

Scrum.org

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is an awesome book. It is one of the biggest inspirations in my life! It is written by Steven Covey. Maybe Steven is sometimes dogmatic or even a bit sectarian as if he was enlightened and the only one who knows how the world works. Maybe sometimes he uses language which is a little bit too "coaching" for me like: "Emotional Bank Account" or "I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care" or my favorite: "The Miracle of The Chinese Bamboo

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How to Improve the Performance of Your Project Teams

Project Risk Coach

Watch what happens when new teams are formed? Maybe you’ve seen a new team of baseball players, a music group, a civic group, or a business team. The initial dynamics can be rather rocky and uncertain, even with skilled individuals. Let's explore ways to improve the performance of your project teams. Imagine a new project team that was formed to consolidate customer service centers from 20 locations across the United States to five regional locations.

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Project Management Communications Q&A

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Alexis Dondic has over 15 years of experience in the auto industry and more recently she has worked in a strategic communications role on projects. She also works as a trader and a coach. She splits her time between Germany (where she is from originally) and Mexico, where she dialed in for this discussion about project management communications at the Project Management Club on Clubhouse.

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Why Agile Transformations Fail & 3 Things To Start Doing Today

The Digital Project Manager

The post Why Agile Transformations Fail & 3 Things To Start Doing Today appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

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Schedule Performance Index (SPI): An Introduction

ProjectManager.com

If someone asked how much value you get from a day of work, what would you say? Odds are, you’d give one of the customary responses — a fair amount of value, not much value, a lot of value, etc. Unfortunately, these answers aren’t helpful and aren’t valuable to projects. The schedule performance index was created to eliminate the guesswork and give a specific, quantifiable answer to the question, as well as show where improvements need to be made for maximum efficiency.

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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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Can the Product Owner also be the Scrum Master?

Scrum.org

Can the Product Owner and Scrum Master be the Same Person? Scrum is an agile project management framework that enables teams to deliver value in 30 days or less. The two most notable roles in Scrum are the Scrum Master and Product Owners. But for those new to Scrum, question we sometimes get asked is, can the Product Owner and Scrum Master be the same person?

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Perfecting The 30 60 90 Day Plan – Uses, Benefits, And Tips

nTask

The first 3 months of your new job are usually the most demanding. These 90 days play a fundamental role in defining your future in the company. To make the most of these crucial months, you can take help from the infamous 30 60 90 day plan. 30 60 90 day plan is your gateway to successfully adapting to your new job. It is a detailed roadmap that guides you on how to form a firm foothold in the new environment.

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Five Ways to Improve Project Communication

Project Risk Coach

Communication is the vehicle for successful projects. From the beginning to the end of a project, the project manager and team must plan, execute, and deliver the required products and services while interacting with stakeholders. What are you doing to improve your project communication? Project managers are not lone rangers. Projects involve interdependent relationships such as the sponsor and other leaders, the project manager and the project team, and users interacting with the systems.

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9 Essential Project Management Competencies

Rebel’s Guide to PM

We’re almost at the end of the quarter and you’re thinking what a great year it’s been so far at work. Your thoughts turn to what you should be doing for your professional development in the months ahead… and there’s a lot of choice. I don’t have the time (or the requirement) to take a certification course, but I’m always prepared to develop the project management competencies I need to succeed.

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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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Use Case Template: Introduction of Change Management with InLoox

Inloox

Digitalization, sustainability and, more recently, global pandemics are probably the most influential challenges facing companies today. For organizations this means that they inevitably will have to adapt. Be it because of societal changes, political events or simply to stay relevant in their target market. Our world is in a constant state of change and those who don’t adapt will be left behind.

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8 Free Excel Construction Templates

ProjectManager.com

Any construction project, no matter the size or scope, requires a wide range of documents. These documents must be thorough and clear, and using construction excel templates guarantees each document includes all the information it needs. . The following are our top 8 Microsoft Excel construction templates for better construction project management. Use them as needed, and combine them all for a cohesive set of documents owners and team members will appreciate. 1.

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Differences between Scrum and Kata

Scrum.org

Earlier this week, I shared a doodle-style video about how you can use an Agile Approach to an Agile Transformation with a Kata. Yes, you heard right, we have seen so many agile transformations that are planned top-down and waterfall. The Agile Transformation Kata can not only help with that, it also creates a culture of autonomy and self-organization while going through the agile transformation.

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The Ultimate Guide to Project Leadership in 2021

nTask

Leadership in any way of life is the most crucial aspect of keeping yourself and everyone around you on course. Be that self-leadership or leading a team, you should always be equipped with the knowledge and courage, to ensure that you and everyone around you are not aimlessly sailing in the unknown ocean. And when it comes to project management , leadership is everything that a company needs, otherwise all of the different projects that they have on their roster are going to be failures.

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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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8 Ways You Can Better Respond to Unrealistic Demands

Project Risk Coach

This is a guest post from Colin Gautrey , an author, trainer and executive coach who has specialized in the field of power and influence for over ten years. He combines solid research with deep personal experience in corporate life to offer his audiences critical yet simple insights into how to achieve results with greater influence. We’ve all been there.

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Project Communication Management: What is it all about?

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Did you know that 56% of your project budget might be at risk due to poor communications? Perhaps that number (from research by PMI ) surprises you, but I’m sure you aren’t surprised by the fact that good communication management on projects leads to higher success rates. We know that all projects use finite resources to achieve an objective. One of the most valuable resources in a project is the people (developers, engineers, subject matter experts, etc.) who support it.

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The Transformation Journey: Lessons Learned

Planview

Most organizations are on a transformation journey of some kind, including Planview. It can be challenging to expand Agile practices beyond IT and development teams. Planview is committed to helping our customers with this transition and to that end, Chief Product Officer Patrick Tickle and I recently presented a webinar on “ Leading an Agile Transformation.”.

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Five Gantt Chart Alternatives

ProjectManager.com

If you’re a certified project manager, then you likely use Gantt chart software. A Gantt chart is a good tool to show the bigger picture on a project and work well for people who like things displayed graphically, and that’s why we love them. But not everyone loves them. Gantt charts have their downsides. Let’s be honest—once you start adding milestones and dependencies, they get messy.

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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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How to become a Product Owner – 5 Simple Steps

Scrum.org

How to become a Product Owner – 5 Simple Steps. The Product Owner is a critical role in Agile and Scrum. And although the Scrum Guide doesn’t give much guidelines around great product ownership, the role is still absolutely necessary for great Agile and Scrum Teams. There is a lot to do to become a great Product Owner and this role is not for the faint of heart.

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Estimating Projects: What you Need to Know

nTask

Estimating projects is part and parcel of project management for any project. However, estimating projects with accuracy is not always so successful. In fact, many of the issues in project management can be traced back to failed attempts at estimating projects. Whether that be projects that run overtime or budget, are short in resources, or a load of other issues.

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The Path to Troubled Projects

Project Risk Coach

Every project manager wants to be successful, right? We start each project with intentions of delivering value for our organizations. So, how do projects fall into troubled waters? One day at a time. It's a gradual process, one that's often unnoticed. Slowly, but surely, troubled projects lose momentum. Team members become distracted and fail to complete their activities.

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The Best PRINCE2 Exam Simulators

Rebel’s Guide to PM

I remember studying for my PRINCE2 exam and taking plenty of sample papers and mock tests. They were all on paper back then, and learning to deal with the style of questions and the time management required to get through the exam was as important as knowing your way around the manual. These days, the best exam prep I can suggest for PRINCE2 certification is to use online exam simulators.

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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.