Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Project management can be a demanding role.  Use these time management tips to manage time more effectively, from day-to-day and month-to-month.

1. Know When You are Most Productive. The first step in effectively managing time is to know when you are the most productive.  This time is when you feel more energized and creative.  Are you a morning or afternoon person? This time is...

One of the most challenging tasks for project managers is creating a schedule. Any number of dependencies need consideration – logical progressions of work, resource availability, client or sponsor delivery demands, team preferences, and more.  Here are five tips for getting the best possible schedule:

1. Have enough milestones. What gets measured is what gets done. Be sure to include...

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...

 1) Be sure there is a project...

Getting good estimates is often challenging for projects.  Here are 5 tips for getting better estimates for difficult-to-estimate tasks:

1. Decompose the work further to understand it more fully. Document all assumptions and constraints.
2. Look for similar estimates provided for past projects—network with other projects or organizations willing to share their experience and expertise.
3. Do...

These tips are from Pursuing Project Excellence: Six Ideas to Improve Your Projects by Bob Jewell, PMP (with permission).

1. Define the word "scope" carefully. It is "the ... work to accomplish the ... deliverables (product, service, or other results) to the agreed-upon requirements."
2. Get clear requirements. "Assign each of the project's deliverables to a team member and give them the...

A lot of folks in San Diego wonder how the construction of Petco Park, a managed project, could have possibly spent all the funding before it was half completed without anyone knowing. While I certainly don't have proof as to the actual cause, there is a very good way a project can get into this state -- they failed to look at all three key project success factors -- time, cost, and...

Here are some additional tips for getting better plans with MS Project:

1. Manually scheduled tasks have shortcomings. Set up Project such that new tasks are automatically scheduled (Options>Schedule>Scheduling options for this project); use manual sparingly.
2. As plans expand, section them out by project phase or major deliverables through space separation, changing bar colors, highlighting,...

Microsoft Project does not encourage best practices and may result in plans with unintended consequences. Here are 5 functions to use as you create your plan. These tips are good for virtually every version of Project:

1. Add project critical success factors as milestones at the top of plans as a reminder. They will not have any effect on plan computations.
2. Add the Type column to the Entry Table...

I've heard from several industry experts that many new project managers do not know how to effectively create and manage schedules. Here are 5 tips for better control of schedules:

1. It is essential to start with a well-constructed schedule.
2. Track all time on a daily basis. On Friday, most people won't remember how many hours they worked on specific tasks and projects on Monday. Be sure to...