February, 2019

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5 Tips for Better Decision Making (With Process)

Rebel’s Guide to PM

We make hundreds of decisions on projects. Every day, we’re expected to take some action and that inevitably means making a decision about something. It might be something small like whether or not to call a meeting. Or it might be something substantive like whether to escalate an issue to your sponsor. Get a free decision log template to help you track the decisions you make.

Process 286
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Burning up the team

Musings on Project Management

Are you on one of those death march projects about to burn out. Want some time off? Perhaps it's in the plan Google among others -- Microsoft, etc -- are well known for the "time off, do what you want toward self improvement and personnel innovation" model; formulas like you suggest lend objectivity to the process (not playing favorites, etc).

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Burndown Chart: What Is It & How Do I Use It?

ProjectManager.com

At times it feels like there’s never enough hours in the day to get everything done. Often, the powers that be want things done yesterday, even though it’s an impossibility. Their intent is clear: get it done fast. Therefore, clever managers know that time is a constraint which they’re always working to control. The better data they have related to time and work, the better they can adhere to the schedule and get the project completed on time and within budget.

2002 350
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Mind Mapping Supercharges Project Management

The Digital Project Manager

Mention Project Management software and most people’s thoughts will automatically go to Microsoft Project or. The post Mind Mapping Supercharges Project Management appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

Software 275
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The 2nd Generation of Innovation Management: A Survival Guide

Speaker: Chris Townsend, VP of Product Marketing, Wellspring

Over the past decade, companies have embraced innovation with enthusiasm—Chief Innovation Officers have been hired, and in-house incubators, accelerators, and co-creation labs have been launched. CEOs have spoken with passion about “making everyone an innovator” and the need “to disrupt our own business.” But after years of experimentation, senior leaders are asking: Is this still just an experiment, or are we in it for the long haul?

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How to Improve Interpersonal Project Management Skills

Project Risk Coach

Think of the project managers you admire most. Often, these are individuals who possess more than the technical skills such as developing project schedules and performing risk analysis. These project managers have strong interpersonal project management skills. So, what are interpersonal skills? Why are they important? And, how can we improve these critical skills?

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Challenging project leaders to lead confidently in uncertain times

Rebel’s Guide to PM

This is a guest post by Nadine Rochester, technical marketing director at Strategy Execution. Strategy Execution’s Top 10 Trends for 2019. At the beginning of every New Year, Strategy Execution aims to release its Top 10 Trends list to help guide you and your teams through the constantly changing business landscape. We understand the exceptionally fast growth and complexity businesses witness these days, whether that be expansion across geographical boundaries, or organizational ones.

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Myth: The Product Backlog is maintained exclusively by the Product Owner

Scrum.org

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery. Scrum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, a silver bullet or a complete methodology. Instead, Scrum provides the minimal boundaries within which teams can self-organize to solve complex problems with an empirical approach. This simplicity is its greatest strength, but also the source of many misinterpretations and myths.

SCRUM 193
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What Is Business Impact Analysis & Why Is It Important?

ProjectManager.com

If Newton’s third law of physics is correct, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction, then businesses need to take note. That’s because any successful business relies on making intelligent and well-timed actions. Those actions set a course towards profit and market dominance, but whether they achieve these objectives or not, they’re making an impact on people, places and things, which will react in kind.

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10 ALM Tools To Deliver Better Projects

The Digital Project Manager

Easily compare the best ALM tools (Application Lifecycle Management tools) and get expert criteria to help you choose the right ALM software for your organization. The post 10 ALM Tools To Deliver Better Projects appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

Software 325
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Breaking Ground on Better Payment Processes: Strategies for Construction Pros

Speaker: Timothy Allsopp

Payment challenges often lead to delayed projects, financial bottlenecks, and strained relationships. With construction projects becoming more complex, outdated processes are no longer sustainable. By refining financial workflow, companies can improve cash flow, reduce error, and foster trust between stakeholders. Discover practical strategies for redesigning payment systems to overcome workflow challenges while creating a smoother, more reliable process for contractors and subcontractors alike.

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6 Tools and Techniques for Controlling Risks

Project Risk Coach

Changes in project risks are inevitable. As a project progresses, the probability and impact of current risks change, new risks emerge, and residual risks may increase or decrease. What tools and techniques can project managers use for controlling risks and getting the results they are looking for? Allow me to introduce you to two project managers—Tom and Susan.

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Breaking habits requires substituting one routine for another

Kiron Bondale

I was asked to facilitate a lessons learned session for a program team using a retrospective format. After the team had brainstormed, prioritized and discussed most of the challenges they had faced, it became clear to them that there were only a couple of root causes for most of the main pain points they had identified. Neither of those root causes was a true learning but rather they were just simple reminders of good practices to follow for large, complex programs.

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How To Motivate Your Project Team

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Ruth Pearce knows everything there is to know about motivating your project team. She’s even written the book on it. I caught up with Ruth to find out more about how to motivate teams and why it’s something you should be actively doing. Ruth, let’s start at the beginning. Why do you think motivation on project teams is so important? Because motivation is intrinsic.

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Organizational Culture Requires Deliberate Effort

Scrum.org

We all know that developing ourselves intellectually requires sustained dedicated effort toward continual learning. We take classes, read books, read from experts online, we find mentors, we collaborate, and many of us learn by teaching others. Continual learning and growth are key to acquiring skills and experience needed for our future career opportunity and personal goals.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

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Top 5 Leadership Theories

ProjectManager.com

Everyone has a theory on what makes a great leader, and with good reason. Leadership is a quality that’s important for success and yet so difficult to define. Jennifer Bridges, PMP, cuts through the noise and reveals five of the best leadership theories. Here’s a screenshot of the whiteboard for your reference! In Review – Top 5 Leadership Theories.

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How To Run A Sprint Planning Meeting Like A Boss (+ Meeting Agenda)

The Digital Project Manager

Are you actually doing what you want to accomplish with your sprint planning meetings? Here’s an overview of sprint planning meetings, why and how to do them, and a free sprint planning meeting agenda template. The post How To Run A Sprint Planning Meeting Like A Boss (+ Meeting Agenda) appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

Planning 230
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Process Optimization in Project Management (3): Lean Project Management

Inloox

In the last blog post on process optimization in project management we introduced you to the 5-S framework, which is also very popular in Lean Management. Therefore, we will now deepen the topic Lean Project Management. Working Efficiently with Lean Project Management Getting project costs under control and optimizing communication with the customer: this is where Lean Project Management comes in.

Lean 186
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Songs for when you are in a project management state of mind

Kiron Bondale

As a teenager who had an eclectic taste in music, one of my hobbies was attempting to create the perfect mix tape to fit the theme of different activities I would do such as studying, working out or just relaxing. So how about project management? To quote Barney Stinson: “Challenge accepted!” Can I Play With Madness (Iron Maiden): You know those projects where it seems no one has a clue about what we are trying to achieve?

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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali

As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.

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Capacity Planning: The Secret to Successful Projects

Rebel’s Guide to PM

Not that long ago, a project manager – who, for the purposes of this article has asked to remain anonymous – was planning out Phase 2 of her project. There was a lot of work to do for the project management team, which was just her. No problem, she thought. A project coordinator, or an admin resource from the PMO would be the perfect extra pair of hands.

Planning 276
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When Done is Too Hard

Scrum.org

"The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of "Done" product at the end of each Sprint." - The Scrum Guide. The Scrum Guide is markedly ambitious in the standard of professionalism it demands of a team. Development Team members must be self-organizing and cross-functional, to the point that they will repeatedly and sustainably create a valuable product increment -- fit for immediate release -- in no more than one calendar mont

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What Is Product Management?

ProjectManager.com

Put simply, product management is a way to organize the planning, production, marketing and other tasks related to the creation and distribution of a product. It involves the coordination of teams, data, processes, business systems and more. In reality, product management can be a complicated matter. There are a lot of moving parts in the creation of any product, regardless of its size.

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The Best Requirements Management Tools of 2019

The Digital Project Manager

Requirements management tools help you make sure your products and projects do what they’re supposed to do. This expert review compares the best requirements management tools on the market to help you choose the right one for your organization. The post The Best Requirements Management Tools of 2019 appeared first on The Digital Project Manager.

2019 252
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How to Drive Cost Savings, Efficiency Gains, and Sustainability Wins with MES

Speaker: Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions

Is your manufacturing operation reaching its efficiency potential? A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) could be the game-changer, helping you reduce waste, cut costs, and lower your carbon footprint. Join Nikhil Joshi, Founder & President of Snic Solutions, in this value-packed webinar as he breaks down how MES can drive operational excellence and sustainability.

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Garbage in.

Musings on Project Management

Garbage in; garbage out. GIGO to the rest of us Re GIGO, this issue is raised frequently when I talk about Monte Carlo simulation, and the GIGO thing is not without merit. These arguments are made: You have no knowledge of what distribution applies to the uncertainties in the project (True) You are really guessing about the limits of the three point estimates which drive the simulation.

Estimate 186
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How do you know when your agile ceremonies are Done?

Kiron Bondale

In last week’s article, I wrote about the benefits of having a Definition of Ready for agile ceremonies as one method of ensuring that they are adding value and not being perceived as just more wasteful meetings. But how do we know that we achieved what we were hoping to from the ceremonies? A Product Owner might walk out of a sprint planning session feeling happy that the team will be delivering a major feature but some team members might feel that they have accepted more product backlog

Agile 189
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How to Improve User Adoption of SharePoint for Project Management

Rebel’s Guide to PM

I’m delighted to be working with BrightWork to bring you this article by Micheál Clesham. Read on to find out how to get your free SharePoint project management template. ‘A good craftsman never blames his tools’ as the old saying goes. Yet I’m guessing the Sistine Chapel wasn’t painted with crayons or Venus de Milo created with rubber chisels! Despite the best planning and intentions, the tools we use to realise our vision, very often dictate the success of our efforts.

2010 276
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How to get a head start with Scrum

Scrum.org

Scrum is easy to understand, yet difficult to master. The Scrum Guide says so and it's true. If you have worked with Scrum in your organization you probably recognize it also. It's not difficult to start with Scrum. But often it does not take long for the first organizational bump in the road. Or the organization is not ready to receive a "Done" increment every couple of weeks.

SCRUM 172
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Navigating Chaos in Project Management

This text offers practical guidance for project managers navigating diverse frameworks. It covers topics like centralized reporting, standardized metrics, communication, training, risk management, and alignment reviews. By implementing these strategies, project managers can improve efficiency and achieve their project goals.