Author: Elizabeth Harrin

Elizabeth Harrin is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. She holds degrees from the University of York and Roehampton University, and several project management certifications including APM PMQ. She first took her PRINCE2 Practitioner exam in 2004 and has worked extensively in project delivery for over 20 years. Elizabeth is also the founder of the Project Management Rebels community, a mentoring group for professionals. She's written several books for project managers including Managing Multiple Projects.
Jason Westland

Predictions for online project management software

In the first article in this year’s Software September feature, Jason Westland, CEO of ProjectManager.com, shares his predictions for the future of online project management software. We’re in interesting times, as the saying goes. Online project management software has evolved almost beyond recognition in the last 10 years and it is still evolving. These are…

conversations that get results

One radical idea that will transform workplace interactions

I’m delighted to welcome back Shawn Kent Hayashi of The Professional Development Group, who last wrote an article for us back in 2010. This time she’s sharing some great ideas about making the most of criticism at work. There’s one radical idea that will transform workplace interactions. Here it is: Criticism is a form of…

Ian Needs

How to Develop Olympic Project Management Skills

This is a contributed article by Ian Needs, Marketing Manager at KeyedIn Solutions. It’s been about a year since the London Olympics. Imagine you were the manager of transportation programmes during the Games. That’s a huge responsibility. Where would you start? How would you stay organised? For most of us, Olympic project management is a…

Janice Haddon

Advice for returning to work: Interview with Janice Haddon

As regular readers will know, I’ve been on maternity leave since January, and I’m now easing myself back into work. I spoke to Janice Haddon, a coach and management consultant who specialises in helping people return to work successfully (amongst other things). This is what she had to say about returning to work after a…

An open laptop computer sitting on top of a table

Talking about risk: interview with Wilhelm Kross (part 2)

Recently I spoke to risk expert Dr Wilhlem Kross about risk communication and the challenges facing project managers talking about risk. Here is the second part of that interview, in which Wilhelm and I talk about how project managers can best communicate about risk on their projects. Wilhelm, you talked about how sometimes people communicating…

An open laptop computer sitting on top of a table

Talking about risk: interview with Wilhelm Kross (part 1)

It can be hard to talk to stakeholders about risk, but project status reports should include information about the risks faced by the project. In 2013, risk expert Dr Wilhlem Kross, a partner of Plejades and the Amontis Consulting network, spoke at Project Zone Congress in Frankfurt about real-life risk management. I caught up with…

Front cover of Kevan's book Making the Matrix Work

Managing in a matrix – we are all project managers now!

This is a guest post by Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration. Project managers have had to deal with ‘matrix management’ for decades. They have to build the skills to manage short and long-term teams with representatives from different functions, regions and specialisations. The matrix actually first developed as a response to the need to…