February, 2022

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7 Ethics Tips For Project Managers

Rebel’s Guide to PM

A project manager approached me recently with a problem. She knew that some of the data that was being submitted in internal reports was — frankly — made up. It was made up with the best intentions from educated guesses and extrapolation. It’s probably fairer and less controversial to say that it was ‘estimated’ rather than created totally randomly from scratch.

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Gray Is A Color You Want To Avoid

Clinton M. Padgett

In project management, back and white are your friends – murky gray is not. As a project manager, you want to deal with clear and verified information, not assumptions. When assumptions are made and not validated, mistakes get made, timelines get delayed, and projects fail. Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.

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A Quick Guide to Project Charters: Definition, Steps & Key Elements

ProjectManager.com

Projects need approval before they can be executed. A project charter is a project planning document that sells the project to stakeholders and sponsors. If you’re able to show its viability and return on investment, the work will get the green light to move forward. But there are a lot of elements to any successful project charter. If you’re new to project management , a project charter template can set you up to make sure you’re hitting all the major points.

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PMOs Shifting from Watchdogs to Strategic Enablers

Project Risk Coach

Unfortunately, many Project Management Offices (PMOs) become nothing more than a watchdog, one that ensures compliance to a strict set of rules. In this article, we will explore why this happens and what it takes for PMOs to become strategic enablers. PMOs Have Gone to the Dogs PMOs are started with the best of intentions. Management sees it as a way to give oversight to all the programs and projects.

PMO 457
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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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When standard is no longer “standard”

Kiron Bondale

Project management standards such as the PMBOK® Guide, Sixth Edition state that contingency reserves, which are established to offset the cost or schedule impacts of realized identified risks, are considered part of the project budget and cost baseline. As the project manager is authorized to spend the budget as planned, it is assumed that they have the ability to draw upon contingency reserves directly as risks are realized.

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The Complex Project Toolkit (Book Review)

Rebel’s Guide to PM

The Complex Project Toolkit is really a book about paradigms in project management and how to encourage teams (and project managers) to stay curious and to embrace uncertainty. This is not a ‘how-to’ book with templates or checklists, but rather a scaled-out strategy view. It’s packed with examples from history, science, as well as some project anecdotes.

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5 TOOLS TO HELP CREATE PRODUCT GOALS AND SPRINT GOALS

Scrum.org

Since it’s the beginning of the year, it makes sense to talk about setting great goals. As you know, Product and Sprint Goals aren’t optional in Scrum. However, many teams are struggling with it. Btw, stay tuned for an upcoming video on that topic to uncover why setting goals is so hard. It’s not a Scrum Master accountability to set up goals. Instead you need to help your Scrum Team, and especially the Product Owner, to do so.

Lean 198
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Risk Breakdown Structure for Projects: A Complete Guide to RBS

ProjectManager.com

Uncertainty is a certainty in projects. Risks will arise and threaten the successful delivery of your project. Using a risk breakdown structure (RBS) is how you prepare for the unexpected. A risk breakdown structure is great for identifying and prioritizing risks so you know which will be more or less impactful. That’s the first step in planning, managing and mitigating risk in your projects.

Risk 363
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Are You Tired of Missing Project Risks? 3 Ways to Stop It

Project Risk Coach

I have had the privilege of managing three Project Management Offices (PMOs), composed of several project managers. The best project managers were the ones who had a habit of identifying and managing risks. Let's look at three ways you can improve your risk identification and reduce major misses. Wise project managers know that there are unknown risks lurking in every corner.

Risk 221
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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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You say “positive risks”, I say “opportunities”

Kiron Bondale

Similar to my previous article, this topic stemmed from a discussion I had with the learners of the PMP preparatory course I taught this week. While presenting the project risk management knowledge area from the PMBOK framework, when I indicated that while in our daily conversations risks are usually threats there can be positive risks as well, I was met with some disbelief and skepticism.

Risk 334
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9 Steps to Managing Risk for Your Projects

LiquidPlanner

Risk and uncertainty are inherent parts of all project work, making project risk management an important topic for teams to address. Which is why so many projects—especially large technology projects—run into trouble. When studies tell us that easily half of all IT projects run over budget and past deadline , we see how easily risk turns into real trouble for projects and their organizations.

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How We Chose the Perfect Planning Poker Tool

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Planning poker® is a great technique for scrum teams. It is a team-based estimating approach to work out the efforts involved for achieving business goals. Even serious developers like gamification! Our company is a part of Wisebits Group and develops an online entertainment streaming service. The organization consists of several software dev teams that develop different parts of our product.

Planning 387
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How to Sabotage A Product Owner — 53 Anti-Patterns from the Trenches

Scrum.org

TL; DR: How to Sabotage A Product Owner — 53 Anti-Patterns from the Trenches to Avoid. One of my favorite exercises from my Professional Scrum Product Owner classes is how to best sabotage a Product Owner as a member of the middle management. The exercise rules are simple: You’re not allowed to use any form of illegal activity. So, outsourcing the task to a bunch of outlaws is out of the question.

SCRUM 198
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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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What Is an Issue Log? Templates & Tips

ProjectManager.com

Before defining an issue log, let’s define project issues. An issue is any roadblock or unintended impact that directly affects your project’s timeline and or performance. It’s different than a risk, which can be defined as a potential problem or future issue that might happen in your project. An issue is something that has already come up in your project, and you need to identify and track that issue immediately.

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Product Development with the Stage-Gate® Process (Part 3): Procedure and Structure

Inloox

In the last parts of our blog series on innovation management with the Stage-Gate® process, we looked at the basics such as the definition, strengths and weaknesses, and the basic principles. In this article - the third part - we dive even deeper and look at the basic structure as well as exemplary the idea-to-launch model, which structures and accompanies projects from the idea to the market launch.

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Safety is a prerequisite for effective non-solo work

Kiron Bondale

When we consider the benefits of non-solo working approaches such as pair programming or mobbing, the ones which normally come to mind are related to improvements in the speed or quality of delivery. The old adage “two heads are better than one” applies as we are usually able to get more work completed faster and with fewer defects. And by injecting variety by having participants alternate between different roles frequently, we also reduce the likelihood of fatigue.

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Falling in Love with Your Project Plans

LiquidPlanner

Do you have a plan for Valentine’s Day? If not, it is time to get on it, so you are ready with a demonstration of your love for that special person in your life. Speaking of planning, how about your project plans? Do you love them? Are you investing sufficiently to ensure they receive the attention they deserve and will be healthy into the long term?

Planning 147
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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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The 6 Things Every Stakeholder Wants

Rebel’s Guide to PM

You think you know what your stakeholders want. Emad Aziz has a model that will make sure you do. He shared it with delegates at the PMI Global Congress EMEA in 2015 (it’s still relevant today) and it will give you a huge degree of clarity when starting to work with a new group of project stakeholders or a new sponsor. Emad Aziz, at the PMI Global Congress.

2015 384
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Using Scrum Values for decision-making

Scrum.org

Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 3-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra. “Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming proficient in living five values.” — Scrum Guide 2020. Scrum as a framework has no prescribed rule for every interaction and collaboration within and outside the Scrum Team.

SCRUM 215
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How to Use a Project Decision Log for Optimal Results

ProjectManager.com

Projects are a series of decisions. Each decision should, ideally, be the result of thorough research, counseling from the team and historic data. Project managers use a decision log to keep stakeholders updated on who authorized a decision and how it came about. A decision log is a critical communication tool that all project managers need to understand.

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Why Your Annual Operating Plan Is A Lie and What To Do About It

Leading Agile

Imagine you’re a CIO, CTO, IT Leader, or Finance Manager. You prepare an annual operating plan outlining your budget and allocations every year. Once the dust settles and everything is agreed to, you are asked to do more with less. Everything after that is chaos. WHERE THE PLAN GOES WRONG. Projects that you targeted did not start when you planned. Unplanned events, outages, and work eat at the money you planned to invest in a new value.

Planning 127
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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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My first year as a Scrum Master

Growing Agile

Part 1. AGILE MINDSET: “Mindset” – is this a buzz word or is this truly possible? . Scrum master that is good adopts the responsibilities of the role/ great scrum master adopts the mindset and skills. One of the big buzzwords in the Agile world, is adopting an “Agile mindset”. It doesn’t help to just DO agile, you need to BE Agile. But what does that really mean?

SCRUM 117
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5 Steps to Build Confidence in Your Team Members

LiquidPlanner

In a previous post, 5 Tips to Build Confidence in Yourself As a Project Manager , we looked at how to build confidence in ourselves. In this updated post, we change the focus and look at how to build confidence in your team. As project management professionals, one of our most important roles is to bring out the best in our team. This includes not just building a great team, but encouraging collaboration and empowering people around us.

Energy 158
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Why is it a project manager’s job to fix companies?

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Projects are the future, a good portfolio office can influence and shape strategy and project management is the only way to holistically deliver improvements. If you have sat through any project management conference presentations or talked to someone evangelizing about the role of the PMO then you will have heard this stuff before. At the roundtable discussion about project management in the collaborative age way back in 2012, the talk turned to how project managers could shape strategy.

2012 345
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Moving from Values to Virtues

Scrum.org

Scrum Values were added to Scrum Guide in 2016. Values are what makes Scrum fully uncover it's potential. These values include Courage, Focus, Commitment, Respect, and Openness. When Scrum Team embodies these values, they create an environment where the Team can thrive. Since than values have proved themselves to be a very useful tool in a team coaching.

2016 201
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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.