Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Risks are both threats and opportunities which can hinder or help project success. Proper risk management can save you from later firefights to bring things back under control. Here are five tips to improve risk management and/or reduce project risks:

1. Don't skip or skimp on risk management. Larger and more complex projects need to have more robust processes that begin to examine risks earlier...

As a project leader, it's critically important to be earnest - have an intense conviction and confidence in the plan. Staying calm and confident is reassuring to the team, sponsor,  and stakeholders alike.  The team will take their cues from you, follow your lead, and rise to meet any challenges or setbacks positively.  Whether you are looking at the Inc. list, the Forbes list,...

Moving forward ten years, I found myself as a program manager responsible for several projects related to a $10M+ Unix rollout. A colleague was responsible for the procurement and hardware side of the operations while I was tasked with getting a workstation into the hands of 400 developers in 16 locations. Each had to be trained on the basic services of their workstation, they had to receive...

Back in the early 80s, when corporations like IBM and Univac were mainframe giants, it took the typical systems team 3-5 years to produce a new compiler. It was during that time I took on a project to finish where some R&D left off. The goal: produce a compiler, assembler, and linkage editor for a family of computers in use in the world’s largest private computer network. This was...

The Oz Principle was initially released around 1994, but the authors (Craig Hickman, Tom Smith, and Roger Connors) felt an update was required in 2004 and also have a few sequel works that are much newer (Journey to the Emerald City, How Did That Happen?).  These books build on their original key principle – accountability.  In leadership roles such as Project Management,...