Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

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...

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 the...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The primary goal of risk management is to navigate the uncertainty found in any initiative. As the development of the risk management process begins, here are four more general principles to keep in mind to guide decision-making:

1. Timebox risk assessments. Because all uncertainty is not identifiable and the process needs to be scalable to the size of the initiative, allocate some fixed time.
2. No...

The primary goal of risk management is to navigate the uncertainty found in any initiative. As the development of the risk management process begins, here are four general principles to keep in mind to guide decision-making:

1. The organization and initiative stakeholders have attitudes toward risk. These attitudes will affect thinking throughout the process and need to be determined in advance.
...