About A Rebel’s Guide To Project Management

A Rebel’s Guide to Project Management provides practical solutions and easy-to-use templates to help you manage your projects more successfully. As well as that (and maybe more importantly) we are a community trying to get work done in the real world, not the ideal situations that the textbooks describe.

If you juggle multiple projects, competing priorities and want less stress at work, you’re in the right place!

Welcome!

My name’s Elizabeth Harrin and I have so much to share with you.

Elizabeth Harrin standing in front of a laptop computer

I started blogging about project management in 2006, the year that I wrote my first book. I was a normal project manager with a job just like you for about 20 years. I like to think that gives me insights into what works in real life because I have tried and tested A LOT of things.

Since then I have grown a community of 16k project professionals, become a Fellow of the Association for Project Management and had a number of books published.

You can read more about my professional career on my LinkedIn profile.

Learn to manage your projects better

Today, I teach people how to manage their projects more effectively, through live and video training and mentoring.

I also run Project Management Rebels, a membership community for people who want to improve their skills on a more structured and continuous basis (and earn regular PDUs).

project management mentoring
Some of the resources you can find inside Project Management Rebels

Project management is vast subject area and if it’s your first time here (or if you are new to managing projects) I get that it’s hard to know where to start. I recommend that you get a cup of tea and then start at the beginning — Only joking!

Here are some shortcuts to popular articles:

And don’t forget to check out my free template library. (If you’re looking for something a bit more all-in-one, done-for-you for project set up, then my Essential Documents pack is what you need).

Our community

The easiest way to stay up-to-date is to join thousands of other project managers and get my newsletter. It’s a mix of practical guidance, highlights from the blog and the odd giveaway and freebie too.

You can also hang out in Project Management Cafe, our Facebook group. We have kind-of-regular training videos and sometimes live broadcasts. Mostly we just help each other out and try to get our jobs done.

The history of this website

This blog began when I realized that there weren’t enough women writing and speaking about project management, although there were plenty working very hard at it. When I started the blog, it was called A Girl’s Guide to Project Management: I was the Girl and it was my guide to the world of working as a professional project manager.

Back in 2006, flicking through the trade press and going to conferences meant reading and listening to what men had to say about project management. 

There’s nothing wrong with that – they were (and still are) often very good. But the project management world was lacking a female perspective. 

Basically, there wasn’t enough stuff about shoes, chocolate and crafts for my liking.

Today, things are better. 

Conference organizers tell me that they go to lengths to attract female speakers. Editors have more balanced editorial panels. However, it isn’t their fault that they have to make a special effort: it’s ours.

If we want women to have a more active role in promoting project management as a 21st century profession we need to get out there and do something about it.

I don’t speak for all female project managers, of course. And I hope I speak to men as well. This blog has evolved over the last years into a place where I hope all project managers will find something useful. 

It’s also grown up a bit: the ‘Girl’s Guide’ moniker no longer fits and the world’s a different place than it was when I was a young woman working overseas. Plus, it’s no longer just me. In 2019 I gave up my corporate job to work full-time with our PM Rebels community, as well as teaching, blogging, mentoring and working with corporate clients. We expanded the team as we grew.

In 2021 we changed the name to The Rebel’s Guide to Project Management to bring it in line with my feelings about ‘Girl’s Guide’ and our brilliant Project Management Rebels community, which has existed since 2017 but has stayed pretty much behind the scenes! It was time to bring everything together with a fresh new look.

We’ve reached over 1 million people with our aim to provide some direction in the world of project management by offering news, opinion and coverage of the many project management events that happen in the UK (and when I can get to them, overseas too).

In short, I’m the Rebel Project Manager, and this is my Guide. Welcome.

My books

I’m the author of seven project management books:

  • Managing Multiple Projects (Kogan Page, shortlisted for the Business Book Awards in 2022)
  • Collaboration Tools for Project Managers (a PMI bestseller)
  • Customer-Centric Project Management
  • Shortcuts To Success: Project Management in the Real World (now in its second edition, and shortlisted for a UK business book award, published by BCS)
  • Project Manager (published by BCS)
  • Engaging Stakeholders: How to harness people power (published by APM)
  • Communicating Change (published by Bookboon)

I’ve also contributed chapters to the following books:

  • Gower Handbook of People in Project Management (Gower)
  • Project Pain Reliever (J. Ross)
  • Strategic Integration of Social Media into Project Management Practice (IGI)

They are available on Amazon, via the publishers or wherever you normally get your books.

Conferences and Speaking

I occasionally speak at conferences and events, and I try not to fall off the stage too often.

Get in touch if you’d like to book me to speak at your event.

Awards & Recognition

In 2020, ProjectManager.com named me as one of the 18 most influential people in project management, and I got onto another list of top blogs.

A Rebel’s Guide to Project Management is an award-winning blog.

It won the Project Management category of the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards in 2008, 2009 and 2010 (under it’s old name of Girl’s Guide to Project Management). In 2010 I was also named Computer Weekly’s Blogger of the Year and in 2011 I was named Computer Weekly’s IT Professional Blogger of the Year. I was shortlisted for a Women in Technology award in 2015.

In fact, over the years, people have said some very nice things. In 2017 I was named as one of the top 10 women in project management to follow on Twitter.

In 2018 I was named as one of ILX’s 30 influential people in project management.

I’ve been seen in:

Podcasts

Here’s a selection of podcasts where I’ve been interviewed:

The Small Print

The views expressed on this site are mine only, and don’t represent those of any employer or client past or present with whom I have worked.

Posts are copyright me unless otherwise specified. That means you can’t copy and paste my writing from here to your own website. Comments and guest posts are copyright their authors. 

For more terms, read this.