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.
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Agile and Distributed Teams: research results

I worked with ProjectsAtWork in 2012 to research and analyse good practices for making Agile successful with distributed teams. Agile isn’t the first approach you would think of to manage a project with team members spread all over the world, but actually it is a really common approach. Why people use Agile with a distributed…

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The future of project management software: the Microsoft view

In this video, Richard Gordon from Microsoft discusses the role of SharePoint, bemoans the fact companies don’t upgrade to the latest versions or use the full functionality and muses on the future of project management software. This video was filmed at the Project Management in the Collaborative Age round table discussion hosted by Microsoft and…

Ben Snyder

Is everything a project? Interview with Ben Synder

Today I am interviewing Ben Snyder, author of Everything is a Project: 60 Lessons from Successful Project-Driven Organisations. I spoke to Ben about his book, starting with the idea behind the title. Hello Ben. Let’s get straight into it. Surely not everything is a project? What about routine repetitive tasks like manning a customer service…

The Power Of Presence

3 Steps to Presence: Book Review of The Power of Presence

Presence. It’s that thing all successful project and programme managers have. It’s when you walk into a room and the team subtly acknowledges you’ve arrived. You see it when the project team listen to a good project sponsor talking about the project’s objectives, or when a portfolio manager discusses the business benefits that will be…

Project Politics book cover

Talking Project Politics: Interview with Nita Martin

Politics. Every project has politics. Today I’m interviewing Dr Nita Martin, Managing Director of Pure Indigo. Nita’s book, Project Politics: A Systematic Approach to Managing Complex Relationships, deals with that difficult subject of how things get done on projects. Nita, ‘politics’ means different things to different people. How do you define project politics? ‘Project politics’…

Cover image of Advising Upwards book
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Advising Upwards: Interview with Dr Lynda Bourne

Today I’m interviewing Dr Lynda Bourne, author of Advising Upwards: A Framework for Understanding and Engaging Senior Management Stakeholders (Gower, 2011). Lynda is CEO of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd, a training and consultancy firm based in Australia. Lynda, your book is about helping project managers communicate better with executive stakeholders. Let’s start at the beginning….

Behind the scenes at Project Management in the Collaborative Age

For those of you who would prefer to read rather than watch the video, here’s the transcript: Elizabeth Harrin: I’ve come to Victoria in London and I am looking for the Microsoft offices. I’m going to be chairing a round table discussion there today about project management in the collaborative age, and the things that…

Are project managers pompous and manipulative?

Business Life magazine – the one shoved in the seat pockets on British Airways flights – has a column in this month talking about project managers. It’s the light relief, ‘Business Lifer’ column at the back, written by an anonymous ‘executive globetrotter’. During January, Business Lifer has been recruiting as well as considering his own…