Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

It's been said that project managers spend 90% of their time communicating.  This isn't just talking.  It's about communicating in many different forms, such as reports, presentations, meetings with groups and individuals, emails, social media posts, and more.

So to start, let's look at what communication is through a relatively simple model. Communications involve a sender and a receiver. The se...

A question I sometimes need to field is “what are the top 5 critical communication skills a Project Manager must possess to be successful?”.  There are more than 5 skills that revolve around communications, so the choice is a difficult one.

Then the proverbial light bulb went off! I decided my answer to this challenge involves looking for the “lowest common denominators” — the most general and en...

Before the era of PowerPoint, presentations were given with flip charts. A vice president of a prominent fortune 100 company was providing a quarterly sales update presentation to the CEO, the senior executives, and the Board.  Unfortunately, this VP was reading the flip charts.  After a few moments, the CEO leaned forward and declared, "I can read!  When I say 'flip,' flip to the next chart.  Rea...

Julia couldn't be more frustrated! There were less than three months to finish the project, and yet everything was going wrong. And to top it all, the budget to complete the work was nearly exhausted.

Julia's problem boils down to ineffective project management. She may have failed to complete the steps necessary to prepare for project success.  She may have also failed to create a proper plan fo...

Project managers need to be able to calmly and professionally deliver bad news, when it happens, ranging from missed budgets and deadlines to team layoffs. Here are five tips for improving the delivery of bad news.

1. Don't surprise, delay, or hide it. Deliver the news promptly. Make an appointment and set the agenda for a face-to-face meeting, if at all possible.
2. Be prepared. Don't wing it or de
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When issues escalate into crises, these five leadership competencies are essential for project leaders to both weather the immediate storm and confidently move toward the future. It is difficult to recover when both being blamed for the crisis and taking the wrong management steps.

1. Build an environment of trust. Given the importance of trust, this should already be in place and continued in a t
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Studies have shown that roughly 20% of projects fail due to poor communications. Whether you are discussing risk management or just having a meeting, having strong communication skills is critical for project managers. Here are 5 tips for improving those skills:

1. Know your audience. Do a thorough stakeholder analysis to understand communications needs and preferences.
2. Develop a formal communica
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They say that 90% of project work is about communications in some form. Others have estimated that meetings can take up around 50% of project communications time. So, make a commitment to follow these five steps to take your meetings from good to GREAT:

Goals: Pre-plan the meeting and determine what goals must be met to achieve meeting success.

Right people: Determine the right set of people to ...

In general, I recommend checking in on project status no less than once a week. If you wait longer, say two weeks, by the time you find out an issue, get it solved, confirm the solution, and make sure things are on track, you can lose up to six weeks. Serious issues may require more frequent meetings than weekly so you can stay on top of the solution. The key is both flexibility and good judgment....

This week someone questioned the wisdom of having a weekly project status meeting where all project team members participated to discuss issues and potential requirements changes. "Wouldn't that be an expensive meeting?" he asked. "Sure", I replied, "but imagine the expense without it."

It's especially important when dealing with a virtual team or remote clients. Without it, instead of managing t...