Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

The execution phase of a project, while not immune to issues, can be as effortless as possible if you follow these principles:

1. Do the right amount of planning: too little and things "fall through the cracks", too much planning risks "analysis paralysis".
2. Get the right team: people that want to do the work, have the skills and have a supportive network.
3. Exercise key soft skills: delegation, fo
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Always do the right thing. It demonstrates integrity and ethics. You want to be known for this type of behavior - it builds trust, makes it easier for you to lead and negotiate, and creates project success.

What is the "right thing"? Here are some examples:

• When requesting an initial project budget, don't guess. Use your best estimating skills to get it right so the organization doesn't suffer
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Does the team put together the perfect plan with your facilitation? Even so, project execution is more than just checking progress and writing status reports. Here is where your leadership is most needed. These are some items for a project execution checklist to ensure you are leading:

• Manage team conflict. Stop negative conflict quickly and encourage collaboration for positive conflict (i.e. d
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Improving your leadership skills will help you, as well as the team, grow and advance in your careers.

1. Coach and mentor, rather than direct. Give trust to the team to get the job done, remove obstacles for them, and empower them to solve problems.
2. Create a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Eliminate silos, share knowledge, and collaborate.
3. Identify growth paths for all on your t
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Improving your project management skills will help your professional and personal growth, and increase your value to your organization. Here are 5 tips for improving your project management skills:

1. Adopt a mindset of continuous improvement. Learn from past successes and mistakes and make changes for the next project.
2. Improve your communication skills. Communication, including effective listeni
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As we've learned from projects like healthcare.gov, Agile isn't always the best method to follow for software development. If we look at its strengths and weaknesses, Agile is not especially well-suited in its pure form for projects with fixed deadlines and fixed scope. It also exhibits limitations in complex projects which require strong integration testing.  So there are other methodologies and ...

If project management feels like it's herding cats, you are probably doing something wrong. Here are 5 steps to avoid the cats:

1. Be sure you develop a definition of success and a clear vision with the project sponsor.
2. Be sure there are clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
3. Do enough planning, so there is a clear plan for the team to follow.
4. Follow the appropriate project and decision-ma
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Why do our projects not succeed?

Toward the end of last week, I completed a corporate training for UCSD Extension at a major San Diego/US defense contractor. They were taking the final exam, so I covered some short topics to generate discussion rather than cover new material.  I showed them the results of industry studies by organizations such as Standish Group and Meta Group. I showed them acade...

For the last two weeks, we looked at two different ways to evaluate project selections to determine which to work on. This type of activity is often carried out by senior management and not the project manager. The project manager is usually involved once the project charter has been developed. A special form of project charter is the Statement of Work or SOW. Its often associated with a contract ...

Last week we looked at the BCR -- Benefit-Cost Ratio as a way of evaluating a project. This week I'd like to look at a related technique -- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The purpose of many projects is to introduce a new product or service. Often this new product or service has a later ongoing operation. For example, if you have installed Oracle Financials, there is a need to develop the customiz...