Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Seeking a leadership career? Embarking on a career in Project Management and earning a PMP® is a good path PMs typically earn more than "experts," and PMPs typically earn more than non-PMPs. The skills you learn will benefit any future management positions. You can wait to become an "accidental" PM or be proactive and follow this high-level roadmap:

1. Gain minimal knowledge. Learn the vocabulary
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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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Projects can be stressful for all concerned, especially around holidays. Here are 5 tips for project leaders to reduce stress for everyone involved:

1. Clarity is the #1 stress reducer. Be sure everyone knows the vision for the outcomes, the plan, and their roles and responsibilities at all times.
2. Have high expectations, but don't expect perfection. Acknowledge progress and accomplishment.
3. Perfo
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Feeling a larger team is needed may be a sign that you need to work on expanding the capacity of the team, not just grow the team in size. When a team member asks directly or indirectly about expanding their responsibilities, consider these four alternatives:

1. If team member performance is a concern, discuss it with them. Individual improvements expand team capacity.
2. If team member performance
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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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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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I usually have to visit a copy shop at least 2-3 times a year to fulfill various needs for PMI meetings and events. This past weekend I had a critical business need to have a small number of copies made and spiral bound for a customer meeting. With FedEx Kinko's being the closest, I dashed off last night to have the copies done. Since I don't frequently visit, this was like a "first visit" all ove...

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 ...

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...