Tag Archives: project manager tips

Project Management is the second most boring job in the world, according to a recent study. When you factor in that working in IT also makes the top ten you would be forgiven for imagining that all IT Project Managers must be constantly nodding off on the job. Who did …

            I just gave some seemingly contrary advice. “You need to be more solid, steady, dependable, consistent – you’re all over the place,” I told an experienced IT Project Manager friend who is having one of those blips where nothing goes right. “OK, how?” he …

Getting lulled into a false sense of SECURITY can be bad enough – in your personal life, in sport and, of course, especially in business. Last year my friend’s company boasted about a new contract on social media before the client had signed on the dotted line only to have …

It can be all too easy to focus on the processes and procedures that get a project done and to overlook the people who are ultimately responsible for its success. However, more and more project managers are coming to realise the value of emotional intelligence and the necessity of the …

Quality Assurance is the process concerned with monitoring the quality of all aspects of a project so that the final product fulfils all requirements. So QA is performed before the product is finished – it is an essential part of project management and one of the factors that will determine …

GANTT CHART Gantt charts are the most generally useful tool in project planning. They are used for scheduling and monitoring tasks, for showing costs and expenditure at all stages throughout the project, for communicating progress and producing reports. They show, on a simple block diagram, the activities and costs over …

I have often written about the well-recognised traditional project management methodologies such as APMP, PMP and PRINCE2; less so about the Agile and Scrum techniques. But whatever type of method is employed to get a project done an experienced project manager will know that they also have to be a …

  I’ve mentioned often in the past (to anyone who will listen) that one of the key factors in the success or failure of any type of project is the personality of the project manager.     You can train an individual to do a very good job at managing …

When asked how does professional project management add value to a business I always struggle to answer in meaningful terms – terms that equate to the bottom line of a business. It’s relatively easy to describe the benefits and advantages of managing projects properly but to actually quantify or measure …

In small, relatively simple projects it is not uncommon to find the project manager using a set of spreadsheets to manage the project schedule, the budget and the scope of the project. If the project involves just one internal department and a small project team using spreadsheets often avoids the …