This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Mike was a functional project manager in an organization where I managed a PMO. He was winsome and a hard worker. But his projects were trending in the wrong direction and his manager was not happy with Mike's performance. In a one-on-one meeting, I asked Mike how he was identifying, analyzing, and managing his risks. His response revealed his belief in risk management but a lack of actual application with his teams.
Creativity is the cornerstone of innovation. Thinking creatively is what takes your work from average to outstanding. Creativity fixes problems. It looks out for risks. It delivers better products and services, supporting the creation of better solutions for customers and businesses. And it makes work more fun. So how can you put more creativity into your work day?
It would be an understatement to say that project managers have had to deal with a lot of change this year. Projects have had their budgets vastly reduced or been cancelled outright, and remote work has become the norm rather than the exception. We are still far from the end of the pandemic, but in those areas where they have successfully flattened their first waves, some companies are starting to encourage their staff to return to the office.
More organizations have taken to virtual teams. They have, obviously, skyrocketed in practice over the course of this year. It certainly seems like virtual teams are here to stay, but are they right for your company? Are virtual teams the magic bullet to end all ills for your company? Simply put, no. It might be ideal for your company and it might not.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
This is a guest post by Adrian Johansen. In a matter of months, COVID-19 has impacted pretty much every aspect of our normal daily lives. It’s changed the way we educate our children to the way we socialize and how we get our entertainment. Even more, it’s changed the way we work. Those of us fortunate enough to be employed in fields that accommodate telecommuting are at least spared from the worst of the economic ravages that this pandemic has incited.
TL; DR: 20 Questions a New Scrum Master Should Ask. Twenty questions for you — the new Scrum Master — that fit into a 60 minutes time-box. Start learning how your new Scrum Team is currently delivering the product and get up to speed: from Product Backlog forensics to metrics to team challenges and technical debt. Download a printable template for your convenience.
TL; DR: 20 Questions a New Scrum Master Should Ask. Twenty questions for you — the new Scrum Master — that fit into a 60 minutes time-box. Start learning how your new Scrum Team is currently delivering the product and get up to speed: from Product Backlog forensics to metrics to team challenges and technical debt. Download a printable template for your convenience.
Ninety percent of a project manager’s job is communication. And one of the most important things to communicate is your risks. How do you communicate risks? Communicating Project Risks 1. Understand Your Stakeholder Needs and Preferences It all starts with your stakeholder. We can’t manage expectations if we haven't identified the individuals, groups, and organizations who may impact your project or be impacted by your project.
Sarah Coleman is co-author of Project Leadership, a book in its third edition exploring how leadership and project management intertwine. The last edition came out 16 years ago – yes, people were talking about project leadership even then! I caught up with Sarah to find out more about what effect a leader can have on a project. Sarah, how does a leader impact the project?
Projects are not done by a single person. There are many stakeholders who each have a vested interest. Project managers are the ones tasked with planning, monitoring and managing the teams, but PM’s can’t manage it all alone. Depending on the size of the organization or project, there can be dozens of employees working to make sure everything is running smoothly.
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?
After daily coordination events (a.k.a. Scrums, standups or huddles), velocity might be the most misused tool by teams new to agile and the stakeholders supporting them. Used appropriately, it can help a team to understand how much work they can complete in a fixed amount of time and thus could be used to forecast when they might be done with a release.
Does your team struggle to get items to Done? Do they experience a high amount of spill-over into the next cycle because they are waiting on another team or another person? Do items sit in a blocked state and age out while waiting on other teams or people to complete work? Dependencies are an epidemic in software development. There could be many reasons why - perhaps your organization has adopted an Agile framework, but you're not yet structured to support sustainable teams.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to transform their operations during the first six months of 2020, with lockdowns and social distancing rules driving a massive shift from centralized office working to remote working, affecting teams across all departments and putting many projects on hold. Moving into the second half of the year, the pressure is on to get these projects back on track and project management teams back to work, and in the new post-pandemic, ‘normal’ many organizations a
We all know the problem: We spend far too much time in stuffy conference rooms, discussing problems, listening to people’s opinions, brainstorming products and strategies. Countless gurus have advocated for the benefits of reducing the time spent in meetings, of the number of meeting attendees, and even of meetings in general. The truth is, some meetings are necessary and if done right they are simply the best way to exchange ideas, form plans and make decisions.
Construction projects are high-stakes operations where even minor inefficiencies can lead to costly delays, safety concerns, and budget overruns. Managing risk in construction has always been a challenge, but as projects grow in complexity, traditional methods no longer cut it. Enter Digital Transformation - a game changer approach that replaces inefficiency with AI-powered analytics, real-time monitoring, and automated workflows to proactively manage risk.
For many project managers, the only obstacle to embracing a virtual team is the perceived difficulty of managing one. You’re not in the same office as your team, and you’re worried everyone will feel disconnected. In such an environment, you think that there is no way to maintain productivity. The fears are not entirely unfounded, but those fears only become true if you don’t use the project management tools you need to mitigate them.
All managers struggle with team building and the process of team development. But one thing is for sure: If you want to take your team’s performance to the next level, you too have to be ready to grow as a person and as a professional as well. You have to grow as a manager so your team will grow with you. You have to lead, inspire, and motivate your employees so they can chart their own paths in the corporate ladder, with the goal of leveraging their success and strengths to achieve your c
TL; DR: Agile Metrics. Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization. At the team level, qualitative agile metrics often work better than quantitative metrics. At the organizational level, this is reversed: quantitative agile metrics provide better insights than qualitative ones.
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?
“Reopening schools” has been the buzz phrase in the news recently and much of the rhetoric has revolved around economic impact, the safety of students, and the potential for increased Coronavirus outbreaks. But what’s really behind something that seems to be such a simple project — reopening classroom doors? Let’s take, for example, a contained entity (like a university) and first try to understand the question being asked: do they open and operate as they normally would?
In Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders there’s a whole section on different types of meetings, what they are for and how they work. I read it and thought, ‘Everyone knows how to run a meeting, surely?’ Having said that, I’m spending a lot of time in and chairing meetings at the moment, and actually it wouldn’t hurt to brush up my skills.
Organizations are always looking for ways to improve. It’s how they stay relevant and, more importantly, profitable. But you don’t get better just by desiring it. It takes strategy, and then a model to implement that strategy. No surprise, there are models to accomplish this called strategic planning models. They’re great for businesses, big and small, and assist in project planning and implementing organizational goals in a thorough and structured manner.
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.
Knowing how to network doesn’t come naturally for most pople. But networking – and building business relationships – is one of the most valuable things you can do for your career. After all, your network can help you grow in your career. And often in ways you can’t even know yet. But sometimes knowing how to network can be tricky.
TL; DR: 18 Signs of a Systemic Toxic Team Culture. What looked like a good idea back in the 1990ies—outsourcing software development as a non-essential business area—has meanwhile massively backfired for a lot of legacy organizations. While they try to become more appealing to product and software developers, they still have difficulties understanding what it takes to build an attractive product/engineering culture.
Most of us -- that is, all but the few formally trained in risk assessment -- really suck at risk assessment, a necessary first step toward managing risk. Why so? Bias, for one thing. Confirmation bias being a biggie: we all want confirmation that our thinking, experiences, and instincts are right for the situation we find ourselves in. But, of course, we know objectively, even if not.
I’m still constantly surprised when I hear that people work in a command and control style management hierarchy. It’s not something I’ve been part of for years and I don’t believe it works – at least not in a project management, office-based environment. If I was a front line soldier I would probably think differently. I talk to a lot of project managers though, and it still seems that some of them are stuck in environments where being told what to do is the norm.
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.
Overview Projects: Powerful Project Reporting at-a-Glance. Simple yet powerful project and portfolio management is at the core of what we do, and with this new release, gaining insight into your project performance has never been more customizable. We have massively redesigned the Overview Projects page into a powerful portfolio and reporting tool for you and your team.
Following the great success of the pilot program, I will be launching another Supported Self-Study Group in September. For more details and schedule of Zoom calls email me at SeptemberACP@gmail.com. Part book-club, part study-group, these sessions feature weekly live Zoom calls with me, Mike Griffiths and exclusive study materials. This small group, seven-week program, is a cost-effective alternative to full-blown training courses for people able to work through my book independently.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 100,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
459 
Let's personalize your content