October, 2019

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How to Write an Effective Project Charter

nTask

In the old days, businesses or the organizational culture was a hit or miss affair. Businesses were pushed forward and projects were pitched without asking the tough questions or defining a specific direction for the team on how to achieve the goals that were set by the company. If you are in such a position that you are responsible for setting the direction and scope of a team to work on a project, then you should be able to write an effective Project Charter and in this article, we’ll gu

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The Iceberg Phenomenon in Project Management: How to Make "Invisible" Efforts Visible

Inloox

Each project has a workload of clearly visible time expenditure that flows into previously defined activities and work packages. In most cases, however, there is an additional proportion of "invisible" time expenditure, where even project managers cannot say exactly which tasks this time has been allocated to. This "iceberg phenomenon" represents a major problem in many projects, precisely because many managers neither calculate these hidden time expenditures nor know how muc

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How To Help Your Team Manage Project Risk

Rebel’s Guide to PM

A project manager’s job isn’t just about managing the work. You are also responsible for your team, and making sure they have the skills required to do their jobs. Part of a resource management plan is to build the skills of your team. Normally we’d think of that in terms of the technical skills they need to deliver the project, like taking a course in a programming language or brushing up their system maintenance skills.

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What are the 3 biggest mistakes that project managers make?

Susanne Madsen

In my role as a project leadership coach, trainer and facilitator I come across many project managers who are struggling to gain traction on their projects. They find it hard to get team members to commit, to gain buy-in from stakeholders and to win people over. They put in a lot of effort and complete a lot of work; yet they are not getting the results they want.

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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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The Relationship Between Project Risk Management and Project Management

Project Risk Coach

Project management is "the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project objectives" (PMBOK—6th Edition). So, how does project risk management fit into the world of project management? Hand in Glove Relationship Project risk management fits in project management like a hand in glove. It empowers the project manager to achieve the project objectives.

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Five Steps to Rapid Recovery of Failing Projects

Strategy Execution | PMO Perspectives

Project failure can occur for an infinite number of reasons. Sometimes it’s out of your control. Maybe a blizzard caused your group to miss a series of deadlines or fail to deliver necessary components for your project. Maybe you lost a key member of your project team or were given unrealistic deadlines. But sometimes it’s in your control.

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10 Essential Project Management Skills for Success…and Your Resume

Project Bliss

When considering a project management career, there are some basic project management skills you need to know about. If you think a project management career is right for you, you possibly already have some great skills you need for the role. There may be skills you already have that can be perfect for helping you move into project management. After all, it is the perfect career.

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Agile vs Waterfall: Which one is Right for Your Project?

Online PM Courses

Agile vs Waterfall. It's one of those classic line-ups, and we can't resist pitting two seemingly opposite contenders against one another. The post Agile vs Waterfall: Which one is Right for Your Project? appeared first on OnlinePMCourses.

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7 Simple Yet Effective Steps to Create A Perfect Project Timeline

Taskque

One of the biggest reasons why projects fail is because project managers set unrealistic deadlines and goals. Setting unpragmatic deadlines and targets not only put extra pressure on your team but also forces them to rush through project activities. When they rush through project activities, chances of errors and cutting corners increase manifolds. As a result, the quality of your project’s deliverables takes a hit.

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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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Zombie Projects and How to Kill Them

Rebel’s Guide to PM

One of the first things that project managers learn on training courses is that a project has a start, a middle and an end. Unfortunately, outside the classroom you’ll come across projects that don’t work like that. What is a zombie project? A zombie project is one that never ends. It simply consumes resources and carries on because no one has the foresight (or courage) to kill it off.

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Team Building Activities to Enhance Your Company Culture

LiquidPlanner

Team building activities can be an enjoyable part of workplace culture. They can also build meaningful bonds that help teams excel even more in their collaborative projects. Here are some ideas that can help you grow your company culture with group activities. Mixing Fun and Purpose. Since the goal of team building activities is to build trust within your organization, it follows that your activities should be geared towards getting people to not only work together but to also believe that other

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3 Best Project Management Charts for Project Planning

ProjectManager.com

Communication is fundamental for most everything we do, and that goes doubly so for projects. Without a clear way to disseminate information and have it understood, missteps follow. To avoid a catastrophic misunderstanding that can delay or derail a project, project managers need a communication plan that informs every phase of the project—especially the planning phase.

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8 Things All Bad Project Managers Have in Common

Project Risk Coach

Bad project managers create project cultures filled with stress, confusion, and little progress. Unfortunately, many of these individuals are not aware of their behaviors. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock Let's run through a list of eight behaviors that all bad project managers have in common. Furthermore, let's talk about how to remedy these behaviors.

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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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The 10 Best Project Management Software For Mac in 2019

The Digital Project Manager

You're asking, "Are there any better alternatives for Microsoft Project out there?" Yes! We've reviewed the best Microsoft Project alternatives that are more powerful, easier to use and cheaper. Choose from this list of the best MS Project alternatives for creating Gantt charts, project plans, and other PM essentials. The post The 10 Best Project Management Software For Mac in 2019 appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

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Mind your language (if you want to be Agile)

Scrum.org

There are four key words in the first value of the Agile Manifesto: “ Individuals and their interactions over processes and tools ”. Most of us can spend countless hours debating the value of focusing on people and the dangers related to focusing on processes and tools. Interestingly, in our debates we seem to be oblivious to the reference to interactions and what it truly means to social and tribal animals as we, humans, are.

Agile 171
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Project Delivery, Uncertainty and Neuroscience [Giveaway]

Rebel’s Guide to PM

I recently sat down and interviewed Carole Osterweil and now I am happy to announce that I have two copies of her book, Project Delivery, Uncertainty and Neuroscience: A Leader’s Guide to Walking in Fog, to giveaway! What is the book about? Fully referenced, yet concise and easy to read, Project Delivery, Uncertainty & Neuroscience, draws on recent research in neuroscience, mindfulness, complexity and project management.

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Software Development Process: How to Pick The Process That’s Right For You

Planio

There are lots of things in life that are better with a little spontaneity—relationships, weekend plans, tattoos. But software development isn’t one of them. Instead, as Benjamin Franklin so famously put it: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin. Every great piece of software starts with a plan and a clear process in place.

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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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Gantt Chart Template

ProjectManager.com

Create a visual tracking of your project tasks with our free Gantt chart template for Excel. It’s a great way to see the duration of the overall project. Once you schedule your tasks on our Gantt chart template, you’ll never go back to the old-fashioned task list. Download Now. ? Great! Please check your email for your download link. Just enter your business email below and we’ll email you the link to the download: Download.

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How to Develop a Quality Management Plan

Project Risk Coach

Entering projects with little consideration to quality can be costly in numerous ways. Let's look at the cost of having no quality management plan. Then, we will explore how to develop a practical quality management plan. The Cost of Poor Quality First, we may not meet customer's needs and expectations. Second, the cost of corrective action and defect repair may be higher than expected.

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Webinar: Risk Management Tips & Tools To Manage Risk Like A Pro

The Digital Project Manager

Join Ben Aston, Founder of the DPM, as he condenses what he has learned over. The post Webinar: Risk Management Tips & Tools To Manage Risk Like A Pro appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

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Faking Agile Metrics or Cooking the Agile Books

Scrum.org

TL; DR: Faking Agile Metrics — An Eye-Opening Exercise. Imagine you’re a Scrum Master and the line manager of your team believes that the best sign for a successful agile transformation is a steady increase in the Scrum Team’s velocity. Moreover, if the team fails to deliver on that metric something is wrong with the Scrum Team. Alternatively, something is wrong with you as you are the Scrum Master and hence responsible for the team’s performance.

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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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The Stakeholder Management Workshop is now open!

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Project management is a people business. Projects get done through people. We need people on our teams to do what they say they are going to do, and we need to help them do that. That’s why stakeholder engagement is such an important skill. So what does it look like when stakeholders aren’t engaged? If you aren’t seeing the success you were hoping for in building relationships with your project stakeholders, then this will sound familiar: You can’t get time with your stakeholders You’re stressed

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Kill the messenger?

Musings on Project Management

The messenger: “Unfortunately, my King … here I am, unwilling and unwanted … because I know that no one ever welcomes a bearer of bad news.” —Antigone by Sophocles, circa 442 BC The surprise: “It is pardonable to be defeated, but never to be surprised.” —Frederick, the Great Who's listening? Pedro C. Ribeiro, writing in NASA's ASK magazine, has a nice posting on risk perception.

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Project Organization 101: How to Structure Your Project

ProjectManager.com

The day to get organized is now, not later. Without having some organization for your project, you run the risk of sending an extensive and time-consuming project spiraling into abject failure. A well-organized project ensures that everyone knows what’s expected of them, what their authority is and what they need to do. It provides the track on which to run a project.

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How to Develop a Project Charter

Project Risk Coach

In this post I'm going to show you how to develop a project charter. In fact, these are the exact techniques that I used to create charters for small-budget to multi-million dollar projects. Let's kick things off by defining the project charter. Quick Navigation. What is a Project Charter? The Importance and Benefits of a Project Charter Agile Project Charters The Elements of a Project Charter What You Need for a Great Project Charter 1.

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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.