This is a guest post by Conrado Morlan, the Smart PM. Dear Smart PM… I am a new hire at the project management office of a large corporation. I had been working in project management for several years as a freelancer. Although I consider myself to be a good networker, I found difficulties networking within…
In my last post about project management in a matrix structure I shared 4 challenges of that environment. This week I want to talk about how we can overcome these. This was a topic that Shilpa Arora, PMP, spoke about at a Women in Technology event I attended. The 4 challenges she discussed were: Let’s…
One of the questions I’m asked frequently is: “How do I use social media tools for communication?” I addressed this during my presentation at the PMI Leadership Institute Meeting in Dublin (in 2011), and one of the organisations I drew on to illustrate how other people are doing it was the Chartered Management Institute. The…
Most projects operate in some kind of matrixed environment. Project managers rarely have direct line management responsibility for all, if any, of the people on the project team. So how can we best get things done when we don’t control the team? In this article, I’ll explain what matrix management is and why it creates…
Dr Eliyahu Goldratt, the management expert who developed Critical Chain project management, has passed away. Dr Goldratt was the author of The Goal, which has sold over 13 million copies since publication in 1984. He also wrote Critical Chain. His theories are still influential – he’s quoted in The Project Management Answer Book by Jeff…
I’m delighted to announce that the APM’s youngest ever female fellow has been appointed and her name is… Elizabeth Harrin. – Penny Pullan, CoChair, WiPM SIG I have had the results from my application for Fellowship of the Association for Project Management – and I’m now a Fellow! (Thanks to Brendan for the title of…
Jovia Nierenberg is Chief Operating Officer at Experience in Software. That’s the company behind the new project management tool Webplanner. She’s only 23. I asked her about her life as a COO, what’s next for Webplanner and her advice for young women wanting to work in project management. Jovia, how did you end up being…
Imagine working in a company with 10,000 people. You’re working on a secret project. You don’t know your colleagues from the next room. You don’t know what the overall project objectives are. You don’t know who else is on the project team and you can’t tell anyone what you’re working on. All you know is…
Last week I wrote about what the PMI Educational Foundation does. One of the missions of PMIEF is to build project management skills in young people and teachers, better equipping students for the future. How exactly does it do that? At PMI’s EMEA Leadership Institute Meeting in Dublin in 2011, two volunteers spoke about their…
If you’ve been around projects for any length of time you have probably come across the Project Management Institute. You might even have heard of PMIEF: the PMI Educational Foundation. But what does it actually do? I thought it mainly sponsored research, but it turns out I was wrong. PMIEF’s Chair, John Rickards, gave a…
In case you’ve been living under a rock, today’s the day that Prince William of Wales marries Catherine Middleton, and it feels like London has been turned into one big Union Jack. I planned my wedding in Microsoft Project, and I’m not the only project manager who considered their big day worthy of proper planning….
Over 75% of you feel that social media tools provide the opportunity to improve the way you manage projects, according to this year’s Social Media in a Project Environment survey. The 2011 results show how project managers around the world are using Collaboration Tools to manage projects and lead teams. There was lots of interest…