Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Always foster good relationships with the client and the team, and remember that the client has the final acceptance of deliverables. If you are practicing Agile, the client will also be a part of the team. Here are four ways you can use to demonstrate respect for your client.

1. Respect the client's time. Conduct efficient meetings, starting with agendas, and ending with action items and decision
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Decision making is a skill we need to apply to weigh the pros and cons of alternatives and choose the best path forward.  Bad decisions contribute to project risks and can put a team into firefighting mode, correcting wrong decisions after bad choices.  Here are six tips to improve your project and other decision-making efforts.

1. Treat decision making as a process. There are many existing proces
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These can assist you to keep a project on schedule:

1. Ask for "as soon as possible," rather than set a deadline.
2. Never say, "I don't have time." According to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, it is the same as saying, "I don't want to." Better: "I can fit it in next week, would that work?"
3. If falling behind, carefully consider:
   • Can I start some tasks earlier or eliminate unnecessary tasks?
   • Will
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Whether you are a project manager or a business analyst, these five open-ended questions posed to the project sponsor and other senior executives can get you vital information you need for project success in a short amount of time:

1. What does success look like to you? – Learn what is most valuable to manage the triple constraints appropriately.
2. What are your biggest challenges and opportunities
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Honored to be named #8 of 50 Top Global Thought Leaders on Risk Management (March 2020) by Thinkers360. See more here:

Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on Risk Management

Ever work on a project where it seemed like there were constant issues? Here are some tips to both avoid getting into this state and effectively handling the issues if you do.

1. Have a robust risk management process. Issues are risks that "happened," so proactively identifying potential issues upfront will help you avoid or manage them.
2. Have a robust risk response planning process. A robust proc
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Following these five tips will go a long way in assuring successful project delivery.

1. Rather than skip risk management, scale and tailor a process to your project needs. Completing the exercise will help you more easily identify responses when unidentified risks occur later in the project.
2. Document your process in a robust risk management plan. Frequently this document, once completed, is reus
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Good project managers, especially those working in an Agile environment that can be very internally focused on the client-team collaboration, need to continuously scan the environment for external changes that might impact their projects. Make this a part of your periodic risk assessment. These can include legal, compliance, regulatory, financial, economic, and cultural changes.

Examples:

• Eve
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Risk management is not a one-time event. During the course of a project, good project managers continue to help the team focus on monitoring risks and repeating the processes of identification and analysis as the project changes. Here are five tips for helping team members maintain their focus:

1. Encourage open and transparent communication about risk.
2. Remind the stakeholders that risks aren't j
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