Project Hero Blog - Weekly Best Practices and Tips

Project management plays a crucial role in the successful execution of any initiative, be it small or large. However, project managers often need help with the overall outcome. Today let’s explore common project management challenges and provide strategies and techniques to overcome them, ensuring project success. In addition, each challenge includes a link to additional tips and...

One of the most challenging aspects of project management is managing differing expectations. Whether you are working with team members, stakeholders, or clients, people will inevitably have different needs, goals, and expectations. As a project manager, it's your responsibility to manage these differences effectively to ensure project success and maintain healthy relationships.

Today...

Effective project management is all about ensuring that your project is completed on time, within budget, to the required level of quality, and delights the customer. One of the key ways to do this is by using metrics to track the progress of your project and identify any potential issues before they become problems. Let’s look at seven critical metrics that you should be monitoring as a...

To start this week's topic, let's look at a definition of change management. According to the PMBOK Guide - 7th Edition, "Change management, or enablement, is a comprehensive, cyclic, and structured approach for transitioning individuals, groups, and organizations from a current state to a future state in which they realize benefits."

Note that the critical elements of this definition are about...

A statement of work (SoW) is an important document that usually accompanies a contract.  It provides some high-level detail about the work to be performed and the associated roles and responsibilities.  Having a good SoW is always essential to get the best outcomes, and it is crucial for fixed contracts.  Here are five tips to improve your SoWs.

Define success.  After a...

Predictability helps organizations more effectively and efficiently manage people, cash, and other resources.  And predictable projects usually finish sooner than others as well.

I often hear talk about how unpredictable projects are because <insert any excuse here>. By following some good and best practices and continuously improving, you will find that over time, your projects...

Whether you are a project manager or a scrum master, if you are leading an agile project, there are some critical things to keep in mind.  Some of these we have covered in past articles and some of them are new. Here are seven tips for agile project managers.  Repetition helps to build retention, so even if these seem old, think of them as new :)

1. Respect client deliverables. ...

Let's face it.  Estimation is a necessary evil for all projects.  Having good estimates helps to mitigate time and cost risks and better enables us to deliver successful projects.  While the agile environment may have more flexibility, most organizations cannot tolerate never-ending projects.

As a whole and at a high level, estimation of agile projects is not that different from...

As an agile project manager, you may need to conduct requirements elicitation or work with a BA team that performs elicitation.  Either way, you will need some familiarity with the common forms of agile requirements.  As with all projects, requirements are an important element for success. 

Having the right requirements and having them understood by those doing the project work...

With a growing number of organizations shifting to agile methods for projects, those in the traditional project management role may want to consider how to transition from predictive to agile projects.  In the future, the best project managers will operate more flexibly and manage projects with either waterfall or agile methods as needed. 

While many project management fundamentals...