Author: Linky

Linky

Make Projects Work For Your Business!

8 Project Management Methodologies and Standards

You will find a more current article on PM Methodologies and Standards here: 7 Facts on Project Management Methodologies and Standards

I have decided to do a series of postings about Project Management methodologies and Project Management best practices.  The purpose for this is not to replicate information that is already out there, but to inform, equip and empower business owners and service professionals about the project management profession and how to put it to use to sustain and grow their business.

As an introduction to this I have 8 questions to help define what a methodology and a standard is based on a summary of the best information I could find and that I know from experience. I would then like to encourage the reader of this post to contribute in the form of comments towards more methodologies and standards that can be covered here (and I encourage you to link to sites that you recommend as worthwhile reading on these topics.)

1.   What is a methodology?

A methodology is a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out to deliver projects. It tells you what you have to do, to manage your projects from start to finish. It describes every step in the project life cycle in depth, so you know exactly which tasks to complete, when and how.

The key concept is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that, you will gain efficiencies in your approach.

2.   What is a standard?

A standard is “a collection of knowledge areas that are generally accepted as best practice in the industry”.

3.    What is the difference between a methodology and a standard?

Standards give you industry guidance, whereas methodologies give you practical processes for managing projects. Standards are not methodologies, and vice versa. The two most popular standards are PMBOK and Prince2.

4.   Why use a methodology?

A Project Methodology should help you by giving you a clear process for managing projects. After you have customised it to perfectly fit your environment, your methodology should tell your team what has to be completed to deliver your project, how it should be done, in which order and by when.

5.   What should be included in a project management methodology?

When you buy a project methodology, it should give you:

  • A core set of processes to follow for delivering projects
  • A set of templates to help you build deliverables quickly
  • A suite of case studies to help you learn from past projects
  • An option for customizing the methodology provided
  • The ability to import your existing processes into it

6.   What a project management methodology will not do?

A Methodology is not a silver bullet. It will not fix projects by itself or guarantee success and an efficient, effective experienced project manager is still required to deliver projects successfully. Remember that the finest carpenter’s tool-box will only be as good as the carpenter.  No methodology will be 100% applicable to every type of project. So you will need to customise any methodology you purchase to ensure that it perfectly fits your project management environment.

7.   What are the benefits of using a methodology?

By using a methodology you can:

  • Create a project roadmap
  • Monitor time, cost and quality (project triple constraint)
  • Control change and scope
  • Minimise risks and issues
  • Manage staff and suppliers

Of course, you will need to use the methodology that is most suitable to each project you undertake. For smaller projects, you will only want to apply lightweight processes and when managing large projects, you should apply the heavyweight processes to monitor and control every element of your project in depth.

But if you can manage every project you undertake in the same way, then you will gain efficiencies with your approach, work smarter and reduce your stress. You will also give your team a clear understanding of what you expect from them and boost your chances of success.

Flick - Cappellmeister
Flickr – Cappellmeister

8.  A few project management methodologies examples with short descriptions:

  • PRojects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE) is a project management method. It covers the management, control and organisation of a project.
  • Method 123 Project Management methodology, also called MPMM (Project Management Methodology Manager) is based on the worldwide project management standards PMBOK and Prince2 and contains all of the project management templates, forms and checklists needed.
  • Ten Step Project Management Process is a methodology for managing work as a project and it’s designed to be as flexible as you need to manage your project.
  • UPMM Unified Project Management methodology based on suite of knowledge management tools.
  • AdPM – a best practices project methodology.
  • MBP- Managing by Project from X-Pert Group. Programme and Project Management methodology and services.
  • MITP – Managing Information Technology Projects. IBM’s established project management delivery method.
  • Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) is a set of principles, models, disciplines, concepts, and guidelines for delivering information technology solutions.

Please add more project management methodologies that you have used and tell us more about them.

For related Project Management articles, click here.

Linky

Social Networking Communities

Building Smart Communities Through Social Networking

Let’s first look at what is social networking? Social networking is where people develop networks of friends and associates. It forges and creates links between different people. A social network can form a key element of collaborating and networking.

In sequal to the previous posting on how to measure the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts and what ROI categories to use, we will now look at what type of social networking communities to create to gain advantages from free social networking.

The common types of communities created are:

  1. Customer Community
  2. Employee Community
  3. Partner Community

The goals for creating these types of communities are:

Customer Community goals:

  • Better understand customer preferences and profile
  • Increase awareness of your brand
  • Facilitate sharing of best practices
  • Increase adoption of your products and services
  • Improve customer loyalty and retention
  • Receive real time feedback from customers regarding wants and needs
  • Increase persistent traffic to the website
  • Solicit customer-driven innovation
  • Empower power users and experts to find and fill job positions

Employee Community Goals:

  • Create a company culture of sharing and teamwork
  • Increase intra-company communication and collaboration
  • Improve employee retention and the bond between company and employee
  • Discover new ideas and accelerate innovation
  • Encourage cross-functional inputs to drive better decision making
  • Bolster minority and special interest group programs

Partner Community Goals:

  • Enable general communication with partners
  • Facilitate sharing of best practices & creation of a knowledge base
  • Encourage co-innovation to better serve joint customers and markets
  • Increase sales through real-time market intelligence
  • Provide a central repository for partner communication
  • Enable opinion sharing and recommendations

This is an extract from my Social Media Marketing Report.

If you’re interested in related social media articles, read here and please feel free to leave any comments.

Linky

Measure Your Effectiveness With Social Media

How Do You Measure Effectiveness Of Social Media?

In order to get faster results from an investment in Social Media Marketing you need to measure your Social Networking efforts in terms of Return On Investment (ROI).

Five proven ways to increase your ROI are:

  1. Have a Business Strategy to increase exposure in support of your products and services and to create new business.
  2. Establish presence in your marketplace and reinforce your credibility.
  3. Expand your reach and create buzz for events you’re hosting.
  4. Nurture relationships and create strategic partnerships.
  5. Properly maintain your presence and be an industry leader.

What ROI categories do you use?

Once you have a Social Media Marketing strategy in place in support of your Business Strategy, the following ROI categories can be used to measure return on investment to create branded online community:

Customer Communities:

  • Increase in customer acquisition
  • Increase in customer retention
  • Reduction in customer service costs
  • Increase in page rank and general site traffic due to additional content on a community
  • Improved product and service allocation based on real time customer feedback and customer driven innovation

Internal Communities (Employees):

  • Increase in productivity due to
    • General knowledge sharing
    • Identification of subject matter experts to shorten ramp up
    • Virtual team environments for distributed teams
    • Increase in employee retention. People like meeting other employees, face to face and virtually. This produces a more enriching work environment.
    • Decreased hiring costs. It’s easier to hire from within. Finding good candidates through internal social networks can provide even more information (both profile based and content creation based) about internal candidates.

This is an extract from my free Social Media Marketing Report.

If you’re interested in related social media articles, read here and please feel free to leave any comments.

Linky

Why Should You Participate In Social Media Marketing?

Why Social Media Marketing?

This is another extract from my free Social Media Marketing Report.

Using Social Media for social networking is an effective marketing tool that became very popular in recent years. It compliments traditional media tools for marketing and should not be seen as the only way to market online businesses or the best answer to grow any business as this is not the Golden Compass to solve all your marketing challenges. But it certainly could be if used correctly.

Marketing through Social Networking is a long term activity where you are building your presence, your reputation and your credibility over time.  Use Social Networking sites to listen online to what people are saying about your company, about your products, about your brand.  One can refer here to a case study of Vodafone in Europe who has a team monitoring conversation in Social Media about Vodafone. To them it is all about customer retention.

Let’s look at the benefits to Entrepreneurs, Business Owners/Executives and Service Professionals of using Social Media as a marketing tool.

  • Generate exposure for your business
  • Help rise in search engine rankings and increase traffic
  • Reduce overall marketing expenses
  • Build new business partnerships
  • Bring in new qualified leads with increased subscribers from opt-in list
  • Help close new business

Taking into consideration that Social Media sites influence purchase decisions and change minds regarding purchasing products, these sites can be used to do product research and do consumer reviews.  Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool as consumers trust their friend’s recommendations more than any other form of advertising.

Your Virtualpm,

Linky

Linky

11 Key Social Media Tools To Consider For Marketing

What Are The Key Social Media Tools?

Social Media Marketing takes place through various Social Media platforms when they are used as a marketing tool to market a company’s products and services.  Social Media tools can be divided into different categories, each category serving its own purpose.

The above diagram depicts some of the key Social Platforms in use today.  Many of the platforms can be targeted as marketing tools to increase exposure to your business and grow your business through more sales and strategic partnerships. Let’s look at each key platform in more detail.  For the purposes of this article only one example of each type will be discussed.

1) Blogs

From term “weblog” is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.  At beginning of 2008 blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs and this number is growing at a rapid pace.

Currently there are 12,9 million active blogs with more than 5 billion readers.

 

2) Micro-blogging: Twitter

Twitter

Micro-Blogging is a Social Media tool that answers to 1 question:

“What Are You Doing?”

  • Answers question in short sentences of 140 characters or less.
  • Most users on Twitter are already on Facebook .
  • Twitter is one of the fastest growing Social Media platforms.
  • It is referred to as ‘Instant messaging on steroids’.
  • Demographics shows that it is used by politicians, celebrities, news anchors and individuals.
  • Total visits in May 2009 were 134 million ; with 32 million unique visitors in April 2009.
  • The Twitter platform is used by 94% of marketers.

 

3) Really Simple Syndication: RSS

RSS “feeds” allow people to subscribe to the various websites, blogs or sections of websites that are of interest to them.

 

4) Social Networking: Facebook 

 

Facebook is a well-known Social Media platform to create, participate in groups, share photos, videos, audios online.

  • It has an Alexa ranking of 5 (fifth most trafficked website in the world).
  • Currently 300 million active members, growing with 250 000 new members per day and predicted to be 500 million by 2011.
  • Demographics: fastest growing age group is 30-35. Women aged 55 is also a big growth area

Facebook presents huge opportunities to set up a group discussing areas of interest relating to your business.

 

5) Niche Networks: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a Professional Networking Social Media platform and the largest network of its kind. Currently, it is used by more than 50 million professionals to exchange information, ideas, opportunities and business networking.

6) Chatrooms

Build your own network of contacts who share your interests.

7) Message Boards: Forums

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site were any topic of interest  is posted and discussed.

8)   Podcasts

A podcast is a series of digital computer files, usually either digital audio or video, that is released periodically and made available for download by means of web syndication.

9)   Video sharing: You Tube

YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. You Tube is a video sharing Social Media platform that currently has 75 million videos and 150 000 more videos are added per day. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.  In 2006 YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. Video marketing is used significantly more by men than women.

 

10)    Photo sharing: Flicr

An online photo management and sharing application to show off your favourite photos and videos to the world.

 

11)   Social Bookmarking: Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages.

 

If you enjoyed this summary of social media marketing tools for business, go read my free Social Media Marketing Report which contains more useful information about your most pressing questions about social media as a marketing tool.

Related Social Media articles!

 

Linky

6 Reasons To Be A Project Management Consultant

6 Reasons To Be a Project Management Consultant

to Business Owners and Service Professionals

Following on from my previous blog post on ‘About Project Management Passion’, I wanted to explain Virtual Project Consulting’s 6 reasons for being Project Management Consultants to Business Owners and Service Professionals.

1. Core Desire To Help

As a Project Management Professional it is my core desire to help, equip and empower people to reach their full potential. I realized one way of doing this is to combine my calling to help more people with the sharing of my knowledge and experience in Project Management as a business tool. If life is about learning, earning and returning, you could say that my Project Management Consulting business is about returning my project management knowledge, skills and experience of the past 11 years to help other people grow.

In choosing a name for my Project Management Consulting Business, I decided on a name that will also work for doing business online with clients over the internet.  Hence the choice of VIRTUAL PROJECT CONSULTING.

What does VIRTUAL mean to me?  Virtual has several meanings as portrayed in the following graphic:

2. Our Vision

As part of our vision to be the Service Provider of choice for Project Management Consulting and related Products on how to manage successful projects in your business, the VIRTUAL component means that you can expect practical, effective and fundamental advice from us. We are the Virtual Project Manager in your business, without actually being there.

3. Support Our Mission

I believe in consistently delivering Professional Project Management Consulting Services:

  • That adds value
  • That meets the needs of clients
  • That provides inspirational leadership
  • That empowers people by equipping them with skills and knowledge required to be successful in business.
  • That is based on ethical business principles

4. Create A Community

Through interaction with different business owners and service professionals I want to use Virtual Project Consulting as the company vehicle to build a community of people who are passionate about what they do, to connect, to learn, to grow and to give back. Share success stories and learn from one another’s horror stories of what can go wrong in business. Aspiring project managers can read more Project Management related articles here.

5. Fill A Need

Many business owners and service professionals are entrepreneurs with no or very little project management training or experience.  Any-one starting out on their own or being a small to medium business, cannot afford to employ a project manager full time for the occasional projects required to be finished from time to time. This is where Virtual Project Consulting will fulfill the need of providing a basic project management methodology and process, guidelines and tools, as well as ready-to-use project management templates that can be customized according to your own needs.  These can be downloaded instantly and used by any-one with little or no project management experience. Solid As A Rock Project Toolkit will make you successful in managing your own business projects.

For service professionals who require assistance with their Online Marketing Strategy, I can help you plan and implement your Internet marketing plan helping you to attract more customers and increase sales for your business.

6. Community Involvement

One of my other passions that I care for deeply is educating people, including adults and school children. Through proper education they can too aspire to a better life. In my country we have a majority of people who are half-educated or completely illiterate – even in these modern times.

I aspire to donate a percentage of all earnings from Virtual Project Consulting to organizations that are positioned to educate less privileged children and adults. Through this my clients will also make a contribution to a good cause that can change the lives of many individuals in this country.

Please comment if you can associate with being a principled driven business who is passionate about what you do! Share your story with us.

Cape Town Waterfront with Soccer 2010 World Cup Stadium

Linky

15 PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS

VIRTUAL PROJECT CONSULTING

Presents project management tips:

1.   What is a project? 

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. It has a clear start and finish, a set of defined goals and objectives and a  sequence of activities.

2.   What is a good project definition? 

A project has a beginning and an end and is unique; unlike operations that are ongoing. It is about managing team priorities to deliver within time, cost and quality constraints.

3.   Why do we need projects? 

Some reasons why we need projects in business today are tighter budgets, diminishing resources, more time constraints, more competition and to achieve service excellence.

4.   What are examples of projects?

Examples of projects are:

  • developing a new product or service
  • implementation of strategic objectives 
  • restructuring your business organization
  • constructing a new facility
  • office move or re-arranging the office
  • planning a special event

5.   What is project management?

The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to projects to meet project requirements and deliver projects successfully within budget, on time and with desired quality.

6.   What does project management comprise of?

Project management comprise of a set of skills. Also required is:

  • Specialist knowledge, skills and experience are required to reduce the level of risk within a project and thereby enhance its likelihood of success.
  • A suite of tools for example document templates.
  • A series of processes. In professional project management various management techniques and processes are required to monitor and control time, cost, quality and scope on projects.

7.   What is a project methodology? 

A methodology is a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out as part of a project life cycle to deliver projects. The key concept is that you repeat the same steps for every project you undertake, and by doing that, you will gain efficiencies in your approach.

8.   What is the power of project management? 

The power of project management is that it makes it possible to focus on priorities, measure and track performance.

9.   What are the industries that use project management?

Project management is used in industries like online publishing, banking, software development, information technology and manufacturing.

10.       What skills do project managers need? 

Project managers need to be very skilled in leadership, communications, human resources-, quality-, time-, cost management and integration.

11.       What are the benefits of project management?

Some benefits of having project management in your business are:

  • it helps to meet or exceed customer expectations 
  • it maximizes the use of resources (time, people, money, space)
  • it brings projects to successful conclusion within budget, on time and with desired quality
  • it documents what was done for future reference
  • it builds confidence in your team for future projects.

12.       How is project management different from management?

In project management work is managed towards a single objective for a unique endeavor with a definite beginning and an end. In general management it is about multiple related objectives to manage the workload in an operations environment where work is done continuously.

13.       How are projects different from standard business operational activities?

  • Projects are unique and do not involve repetitive processes
  • Projects have a defined timescale. They have a clearly specified start and end date within which the deliverables must be produced to meet a specified customer requirement
  • A project have an approved budget
  • Projects have limited resources like labour, equipment, material
  • Projects achieve beneficial change. The purpose of a project, typically, is to improve an organization through the implementation of business change. 

14.       Who is the governing body for project management?

The Project Management Institute, or known as the PMI. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is prescribed as their project management handbook.

15.       Is there a special qualification for Project Managers?

The Project Management certification is called the Project Management Professional (PMP). The the title of a PMP certification is known and acknowledged worldwide.

Your VirtualPM

Linky

PS: For related Project Management articles, read here.

PPS: To use a Project Management Toolkit in your business, have a look at the Solid as a Rock here.

Linky

Social Media Phenomenon

Social Networking

The rapid emergence of social networking over the past five years is nothing short of a phenomenon. Social networking and blogs are now more popular than e-mail.  “Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience.” According to John Burbank, Nielsen Online’s CEO.

Social Media is part of Web 2.0. With Web 2.0 the potential exists to create an interactive, dynamic environment where individuals, consumers and business collaborate, communicate and share.  It is viral by nature.

A growing number of news publishers have adapted their strategies from simply having websites to participating in social media through active use of sites like Twitter to drive awareness and conversation around their brands and offerings.  CNN and the New York Times have some of the largest following on Twitter.  Source: Nielsen Report

According to Michael Stelzner who published the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, the people most likely to use Social Media Marketing, are aged between 30 and 39 years.  Certainly, for people new to Social Media, there are many questions that come to mind. These questions are asked by Entrepreneurs, Business Owners/Executives of any size company and Service Professionals.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing can be defined as an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales.  It’s the online conversation among customers, investors, employees, fans and critics.  The power is shifting from corporations to individuals and communities.

This is the new model that is part of Web 2.0 where people use the Web’s potential for creating an interactive, dynamic environment where individuals, consumers and businesses can collaborate and communicate in new and simpler ways.

The Social Media model enables a number of things:

  • informing
  • persuading
  • involving
  • demonstrating
  • reminding

Above all,  Social Media Marketing is free! All it takes, is a time commitment and using Social Media tools according to a predefined strategy. In this day and age it makes sense to use Social Media to promote your business.

To find answers on the 10 most asked questions, read this special report to understand how marketers are using Social Media to grow and promote their businesses.

Linky

ABOUT PROJECT MANAGEMENT PASSION

Can one be passionate about project management?

Wikipedia’s definition of PASSION as an emotion, is a strong feeling about a subject, usually of intense desire and attraction.

In a learning context, PASSION can be expressed as a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or compelling emotion towards a subject, idea. A person is said to have a passion for something when they have a strong positive affinity for it.

I would say that I qualify to be labeled as a passionate project manager. It all started in school with my desire to help people, also to help themselves. This influenced my decision to do a Social Work degree, which is not the kind of ‘help’ that I intended. I finished my degree, but in Psychology and from there went on to obtain an Information Technology qualification. My first real job was behind the computer at a corporate Life Insurance company, not as an IT specialist, but as a Project Administrator.

Being in a supportive role, I naturally transgressed into a technical IT support role with a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) qualification to earn the respect of my mostly male colleagues. As part of a Server Support team and being the only female for years, all the project management work which required much communication skills, was passed on to me.

One of my managers recognized my natural talent and skills as a flair for project management and sent me for proper project management training, which was also training in a project management methodology. I never looked back… A few years later (2004), I gained the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification.

Throughout years of studying and learning on the job, I was blessed with the addition of 3 beautiful children that enriched my life to the point that I actually gave up my full-time, permanent position and started to work in contract project management (2 years at Microsoft Consulting Services). This way I had the flexibility to work part-time and still continue with a professional career.

It was also during these years that I discovered Robert Kiyasaki’s books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Cashflow etc which really brought about a huge mind shift for me in how I view work.  Finally, I was on my way from being a permanent employee (working hard to enrich other people) to being a self-employed professional and eventually a business owner.  I find the final transition to being a business owner a bit harder and with a steep learning curve. However, working hard for yourself and your own (and family’s) financial freedom is one of the most satisfying journeys of my life so far.

After establishing a successful home business 1.5 years ago (leveraging other people’s time, making a consistent profit) and learning much about running a small business, I ventured into the world of having an Internet-based business. Here I was much influenced by people like Rich Schefren, Tellman Knudson, Stompernet, Mike Filsaime, Jimmy Brown to name a few who are all highly successful and influential Internet Marketers. I am discovering more people who I resonate with and like to learn from every day.

Now I am faced with a steeper learning curve than ever before (maybe as intense as becoming a parent for the first time).  I have a hard time juggling between learning, business building, information overload (emails, websites and meeting new people, networking etc) on the one hand, while continuing with a professional career and the needs and demands from a 5-person family on the other.

You may be wondering why I am sharing all of this with you?!

It is to prove that my core desire is still prevailing after all these years – my aspiration to help people, to equip people and to empower people to reach their full potential. This is part of a basic human need to self-actualization (see Maslow’s hierargy of basic human needs). If life is about learning, earning and returning, you could say that my Project Management Consulting business is about returning my project management knowledge, skills and experience of the past 11 years to help other people grow.

If you are also passionate about what you do, why not share it as a comment!

If you have business projects and you want to master project management, click here.

Linky

8 Skills Needed On The Project Management Road To Success

By Linky van der Merwe

What Are The Project Management Skills Needed To Be Successful?

Find a more current version of this article: 10 Skills for your Project Management Path To Success

Are you cut out to be a project manager? I landed in the project management profession by accident, but I stayed there on purpose. It is because I love what I do and I suppose my natural strengths and skills are a good match for doing project management. Whether you have planned to became a Project Manager or whether it happened by accident, it is important to know what your strengths and skills are and if they match the skills needed to be a successful project manager.

Project managers need both leadership and management skills, with a knack for problem solving.

Project managers are there to plan and manage the work – NOT to do it!

So what is the Project Management Skills Set you need to be a successful project manager? Eight key skills needed for project management are explained here (but the list is by no means complete). 

1.   Be a Leader and a Manager

Leaders share and communicate a common vision (future state or end goal); they gain agreement and establish the future direction. They motivate others. Managers are results driven and focus on getting work done against agreed requirements. A good project manager will constantly switch from a leader to a manager as situations require.

2.   Be a Team Builder and a Team Leader

Projects are often cross-functional in that they use people who may not have worked together before. It is up to the project manager to set the atmosphere of the team, and to lead them through the various team development phases to the point where they perform as a team.

3.    Be an Excellent Communicator

Being a communicator means recognising that it’s a two-way street. Information comes into the project and information goes out of the project. All communications on your project should be clear and complete.

As a project manager you will have to deal with both written and oral communications. Some examples are documents, meetings, reviews, reports, and assessments. A good mental guideline is “who needs this information, who gathers and delivers it, when or how often do they need it, and in what form will I give it to them”.

4.   Be a Good Organizer

Let’s just think of the aspects you will need to organize; project filing including all documentation, contracts, e-mails, memo’s, reviews, meetings, specialist documents, requirements and specifications, reports, changes, issues, risks, etc.

It’s almost impossible to stay organized without having Time Management Skills – so add this to your list!

5.   Be a Competent and Consistent Planner

The skill of planning can’t be underestimated (and neither can estimating!). There are known and logical steps in creating plans. As a project manager you will certainly own the Project Plan, but it must be created with input from the team. Examples are Test Plans, Risk Management Plans, Hand-over Plans, Benefit Realisation Plans, etc. As long as you’re aware that planning should become second nature to you.

6.   Be a Problem Solver

Fortunately, this is a skill that can be learned.

Firstly, you need to identify the possible ’causes’ that lead to the problem ’symptom’. Now, causes can come from a variety of sources, some are: 

  • interpersonal problems
  • internal sources
  • external sources
  • technical sources
  • management sources
  • communication
  • opinions or perceptions

Having found the root causes, the next step is to analyze possible options and alternatives, and determine the best course of action to take in order to resolve the problem(s).

7.    Be a Negotiator and Influencer

Negotiation is working together with other people with the intention of coming to a joint agreement. And for all these you need to have some influencing skills. Influencing is getting events to happen by convincing the other person that your way is the better way – even if it’s not what they want. Influencing power is the ability to get people to do things they would not do otherwise.

8.   Set Up and Manage Budgets

At the heart of this is the skill of estimating – particularly cost estimates. Nearly always the project manager will need certain knowledge of financial techniques and systems along with accounting principles.

Part of the Project Plan will be something called the Cost Plan. This will show the planned cost against a time-scale. The PM will want to get involved in purchasing, quoting, reconciling invoices, time sheets, etc.

The project manager then needs to establish what has actually happened as opposed to what was planned and to forecast the expected final costs.

Well, this is only a summary of the main areas.

If you are new to project management, don’t be overwhelmed by all this – there are well understood methodologies, tools, guidelines, and procedures to help you on your way to developing the important life-skills of Project Management.

Please subscribe to my blog (to the right) to receive more project management tips and articles!

Don’t forget to connect with Linky on her Social Network sites (top right) and share your experiences.

Linky

Efficiency Brings Effective Project Management

Efficiency vs Effectiveness

Effective Project Management
Effective Project Management

According to Wikipedia, a good way to distinguish between effectiveness and efficiency is to understand that effectiveness relates to ‘getting the right things done or setting right targets to achieve an overall goal (the effect)’. Efficiency relates to ‘doing things in the most economical way (good input to output ratio)’.

Companies are always looking, especially in this economy, for ways to make their work more efficient. This means new projects need to be efficient and streamlined: no wasting a company’s time or money. There is a high demand from corporations for technology that increases staff efficiency while keeping business costs reasonable. Poor project management is often the cause of lost revenue and resources for many businesses.

Billions are lost every year due to poor project management like when projects are handled inefficiently, dragged out beyond deadlines, or high costs beyond their means. Many different skill sets are necessary to ensure effective project management.

Effective project management eliminates any unnecessary costs associated with the project, making the work as cost-effective as possible. The project manager is responsible for keeping the project within the allotted budget. Keeping within budget can also keep the scope of the project in check; too often, both a project, and subsequently its budget, can grow out of control. Companies will pay for this mistake – a dual penalty of lost revenue and lost time.

Effective project management also guarantees efficient work by contractors for a task, matching the highest quality work to the best price. The responsibilities of project management are not limited to collecting bids from qualified individuals in order to complete the project, but also to determine if the company does in fact have the experience and knowledge to complete the work well. The project manager truly has to consider which company is best-suited for the task at hand.

A project manager must make sure that the project is meeting deadlines and keeping goals in sight. Effective project management will utilize software and other technology available to keep the project on target and meet scheduled goals. A company can lose a lot of money very quickly when one or more of its projects get off schedule.

Effective project managers ensure that all projects will be completed on time, within budget and with quality. They are responsible to control every aspect of the project, and regularly reporting its status back to company officials. An effective project management professional or firm can bring any project under control, no matter how unfocused or inefficient it was to begin with; their services can end up saving corporations millions in better-managed time and resources. It is commonplace now for companies to outsource their project management to consulting professionals or firms that will maximize efficiency and bring projects to completion within or even under budgets and deadlines, thus saving company resources.

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