Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

If you're a project manager, creating a good work environment is key to inspiring your team to do their best work. But what exactly does "a good work environment" mean? Here are four things that make for a motivating workplace.

The most critical ingredient in creating a motivating work environment is good people. They're the ones who can help you move your company forward and achieve goals, so it...

With outstanding leadership comes great responsibility. For example, suppose you are a project leader, whether a project manager or team lead. It's up to you to communicate clearly with your team and manage their expectations. Luckily, there are some things that you can do as a leader to make this process easier.

Your ability to lead is a skill that you can improve with practice and patience. The...

There's nothing more daunting than a long list of urgent tasks.  When everything is urgent, it's hard to know where to start.  So here are four tips for taming your to-do list when everything is or at least seems to be urgent.

Eliminate or postpone those you can.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed by competing demands.  This is especially true if you are in a role where you have many responsibilities...

Despite many internet articles to the contrary, PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) and FPA (Function Point Analysis) estimates can be valuable for many projects outside of software-related industries and not just for scheduling.

PERT estimates are a part of a more extensive system and was designed to focus on schedules.  Its benefit is that it mathematically provides everything an estimat...

[Project managers take note!  Starting a business from scratch and without capital is something you may do if you want to start a private practice.  Plus starting a project from scratch without capital is very similar.]

When you have little to no startup capital, founding a business can feel like climbing a mountain. Fortunately, the digital revolution has made starting up easier and more afforda...

This week, I was asked by someone to define leadership.  In addition, they asked if leadership was something that could be taught.  So let's look at each of these questions, one at a time.

There are three essential elements to leadership:

1. A leader is someone who guides, influences, and manages people by influence, not authority or power.  Therefore, leadership has nothing to do with your title
...

[NOTE: Want to find out more about project cost management?  You're invited to the launch of PPC Group's new publication, Project Cost Management: Principles, Tools, Techniques, and Best Practices for Project Finance, by Ray Frohnhoefer and Inham Hassen, in June 2022. For more information and to register for the event, click here: https://www.accidentalpm.online/PCM_Virtual_Launch_Registration.]

Projects fail for a lot of reasons, so it's a good idea for the project manager to be aware of what is happening on the project.   Things may even be perfect - no variance and all goals met - but management may decide to kill the project or there may be other hidden problems.  Here are four signs that your project may be failing or left to fail.

The project sponsor(s) are nowhere to be found.  If...

I frequently receive questions such as how do I get started as a project manager and how do I learn more about project management.  It takes time to learn.  You will also need to learn not just best practices but the practices your organization already employs.

This post is not about training or competency studies but relationships. Building the right relationships ensures you get the proper trai...

With the move to more remote work, this is a good time to think about improving virtual team communication.  Fortunately, I've been working with remote teams since the 1970s, so have learned a few important lessons along the way.  Communication, for some, is difficult face-to-face and even harder when working remotely.

Here's a perfect example of how not to act with remote colleagues.  A manager ...