Michel Dion on Project Leadership [Interview]
Author and leadership expert Michel Dion shares his views on leading for project managers. Find out when leadership starts to become a career essential.
Women in IT Awards: the results
The inaugural Women in IT Awards were held in London on Thursday and I’d been nominated, with my colleague, for work on a large IT transformation project at Spire Healthcare (the project forms the major case study in my book, Customer-Centric Project Management, This photo is of us just before dinner was served. It was…
Predicting the State of Online PM Software: Was Jason Westland Right?
This is a guest post by Jason Westland. Some links are affiliate links. At the end of 2013 on this blog, I made three predictions for the future of online software. This is one area of project management that is evolving at a rapid pace, and I wanted to call out the trends I was…
Top Tips for Breaking into Project Management
“What advice do you have for project management students fresh out of school who want to break into the discipline?” That’s what Geoff Crane asked me, and other project managers, so he could compile our top tips for his students. I found it quite difficult to come up with some tips because there are so…
15 Communication Hacks to try in 2015
Want to get ahead with your project communications this year? Here are 15 hacks to try in the coming months. 1. Use a milestone tracker The milestone tracker I use is a simple Excel spreadsheet. It lists the milestones in one column, organised by project phase. It also includes the name of the person responsible,…
Project Management Answers: Interview with author Jeff Furman
The PMBOK® Guide v5 refresh introduced new topics for students taking the PMP exam. Jeff Furman, author of The Project Management Answer Book, has just released a second edition of his book, covering all that and more. It’s a weighty book to support students preparing for the PMP exam and also more generally in their…
Managing change on projects: James T. Brown at Synergy 2014
“We have to get them to want what we have to deliver,” said Dr. James T. Brown at the PMI UK Chapter event Synergy earlier this month. “We have to go through this process to prove you are a good person and to make them anticipate the deliverable.” He was talking about wooing. It’s what…
Project Managing the Freezer [The Parent Project Month 21]
The house is in crisis. The middle pages of Percy And The Kite have fallen out. Without the mid-section, you have no way of knowing how Percy fares in the kite contest although he does look (spoiler alert) very pleased on the final page. The final page is sticky-taped to the back cover. That one…
Synergy 2014: Conference Highlights
“When what you do is not unique, the way that you do it makes the difference.” That’s how Ricardo Triana, Chair of the 2014 PMI Board of Directors opened Synergy last Thursday. Synergy, organised by PMI’s UK Chapter, was attended by around 600 project managers from around Europe. “Project management,” Ricardo went on to say,…
Why Project Management Is Like Surviving The Hunger Games
Find out why project management is just like The Hunger Games! You need a creative team, a flexible plan, a generous sponsor… Sound like any projects you’ve worked on?
Risk management doesn’t have to be difficult
“We try to convey the earnesty and legitimacy of risk management by communicating as if it were a science,” said Mark Engelhardt, senior lecturer at IIL, during his presentation at PMI Hungary’s Art of Projects conference last week. “The problem is that risk management is far from being a science in most of our industries.”…
How to communicate in virtual teams: Hungarian PMs speak
I traveled to Budapest in 2014 to speak at the PMI Hungary Chapter’s Art of Projects conference for International Project Management Day. I gave a presentation on social media use in virtual teams and also ran a workshop on virtual meetings. My fellow facilitator and I split the audience and asked them to discuss issues…