October 31, 2012 Linky

Leadership Skills for Project Managers

Good leadership skills are what make a good project manager great. This article will explore the attributes that would make the project manager a great leader.

Inspire a Shared Team Vision

For a project to work, everybody needs to share the same vision for the project. Great project managers help all team members feel like they have an equal stake in a project, and empower everyone to share and experience the group’s vision. When team members share a similar vision, they are committed to deliver their best.

Integrity

Good leadership requires commitment and adherence to ethical practices. Good project managers abide by ethical standards and reward those team members who follow suit is part of the responsibility of the job.

Great Communication Skills

Project managers need to clearly communicate goals, performance and expectations; and they need to manage feedback coming at them from all directions. Being accessible, open, and direct is critical for being a good communicator. Further, having the ability to persuade team members to do certain tasks a bit differently, or work overtime when necessary, is equally as important. Overall, a project manager’s overall effectiveness is often realized by the ability to communicate effectively.

Competency in the Subject Matter of the Project

Team members need to feel like their project manager has some degree of expertise in the project’s subject matter. As such, project leaders should have the ability to lead their team with technical expertise if the project so requires it. Leaders who are seen as competent by their peers have the ability to inspire, enable and encourage.

Promote Team Building

A project manager must understand team building dynamics. He or she must go through each phase of team development – even when conflict arises – and get the team to focus on the common goal. Great project managers foster a sense of unity on the team, across personal dynamics.

Good with Task Delegation

Assigning the right tasks to the right people and trusting them to leverage the best of their abilities is a key characteristic of a great project manager.

Good Problem Solving Abilities

Great project managers solve problems by sharing the responsibility with the experts on their team. This means leveraging the knowledge of those team members and stakeholders who have the expert knowledge to assist; and setting a plan to solve tough problems by harnessing that team experience.

Stay Cool Under Pressure

In a perfect world, every project would complete on time, on budget, and on scope. Unfortunately, when the going gets tough, good project managers remain calm. Warrant Bennis stated: “Out of the uncertainty and chaos of change, leaders rise up and articulate a new image of the future that pulls the project together.” Great project managers stay cool under pressure.

I like this definition of Leadership: “leading is about establishing direction and influencing others to follow that direction”. This is a good indicator of how project managers should lead their project teams.

As a project manager you lead and facilitate the team members to work towards the same goal consistently.

About Linky van der Merwe: Linky is the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting. Her mission is to provide project management best practices and to recommend resources to aspiring and existing project managers. A certified project management professional with more than 13 years project management experience and a track record of more than 30 successful projects.

October 13, 2012 Linky

Project Management Leadership Master Class

By Kiruben Reddy

This promotional article is aimed at seasoned project and programme managers in South Africa who aspire to be more successful and outstanding in how they deliver projects. The information to be presented will also apply to CEO’s, Managing/ Project/Chief Directors, Engineering Directors, Project Leaders, Operations Executives, COO’s, HOD’s, I.T. Directors, Municipal Managers, Financial Project Managers, Team Leaders, Project Planning Managers, Business Analysts, Construction Managers.

Organisations more than ever are under pressure to operate and deliver more effectively and efficiently, place greater emphasis on stream-lining internal operations, increase focus on customer needs, on superior service delivery in relation to competitors and within shorter timeframes. This is necessary to retain their existing customer base as well as to increase their market share. With the current rate that Companies are moving at globally, coupled with the pace of change, now more than ever an organisation’s ability to execute (on time, on budget, to stakeholder expectations) is not only good for business but is a necessity.

This shift in mind-set requires organisations to have the ability to manage and effectively utilize their resources to the best of their ability to derive direct tangible value through the projects they initiate.

The Project Management Leadership Master Class will provide you with the essential insights in today’s industry and project efficiencies and touch on what’s required today to initiate, manage, monitor and drive delivery through the life cycle of a project successfully. Delivery is not only measured by the fact that it was brought to existence, but the manner in which it was executed and whether it is in line with the original expectations and business benefits of what it was intending to deliver.

Key strategies to be discussed, include:

Implementation of a project lifecycle methodology
Risk Management
How to deal with shortage of project management skills in South Africa
Achieving project results through our people

For more information, download the Project Management Leadership Master Class brochure and register for this today.

About the Author: Kiruben Reddy is the General Manager of Solutions Bridge, a 100% Black Women Empowered company and is Level 3 B-BBBEE certified. Your organization can recognize 110% of your spend for the Leadership Master Class hosted by them.

July 24, 2012September 27, 2013 Linky

Stakeholder Management: Stakeholder Analysis in Five Steps

Guest Post by Joe Schembri

Stakeholders are critical to the success of any project and should be included in every major assessment and decision. Stakeholders are defined as the ones who are positively or negatively affected by the course of the project and any resulting solutions or conclusions. This article covers a most important aspect of stakeholder management, namely stakeholder analysis.

Because of their influence, stakeholders can create a positive or negative impact on the project or organization, so it is important to identify your project’s stakeholders from the beginning, learn what they anticipate and give them the attention and consideration they expect.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholders are typically categorized into two groups – primary or secondary stakeholders. Those who are directly impacted by the project are the primary stakeholders and secondary stakeholders are those who are indirectly impacted. Primary or secondary stakeholders can also be key stakeholders, a group which includes anyone with the power or position to exert significant influence over the project or the organization itself.

Since stakeholders can have such an impact on the success of a project, proper stakeholder management is essential. Conducting a stakeholder analysis is part of effective stakeholder management. Here are five steps to follow.

#1 Identify

A proper stakeholder analysis allows project managers to identify individuals or groups that are likely to affect, or be affected by, the project and how to best communicate with them.

#2 Sort

During the analysis, project managers will also sort and group stakeholders according to their level of impact. This information is then used to determine how stakeholder needs and interests should be handled during the course of the project.

#3 Interview

At this point in the stakeholder analysis, it’s usually a good idea to interview a sample of people from each stakeholder group to find out what they know about the project, their thoughts on the project, and what is most and least appealing about the project to them. This allows the project managers to have a first-person stakeholder perspective on what stakeholders expect to get out of the project and what they believe the project will do for them or their department.

#4 Analyze

Then, analyze the results of the interviews by recording repeated themes, concerns, and issues for each group and sort them by priority.

#5 Record

Once project managers have successfully identified the stakeholders, developed an understanding of their concerns, and sorted them in order of priority, they can effectively use this information to help gain support for the project. All of the collected information should be recorded on a stakeholder map, which can then be used to develop detailed plans for communication with each stakeholder.

At this point, project managers should be able to identify how they will leverage each stakeholder group to help accomplish the project goals. Of course, gaining the support of stakeholders is just one small part of managing a successful project, but with the influence that they can have on a project, stakeholder analysis is one of the most important things to consider when planning an efficient and successful project.

What are some of your stakeholder analysis tips? Please add to the comments!

About Joe Schembri: Joe is with University Alliance. He writes about various project management topics including stakeholder analysis and PMI’s Project Management Professional certification exam.

April 30, 2012March 31, 2019 Linky

Project Managers are you Twitter Smart?

While many project managers are social media active today, there are still organizations which don’t understand the value of using social media, and specifically Twitter, in the work-place. This is a follow-up article on the previous social media article: 10 Ways to Integrate Social Media with Project Management

The value that Twitter can bring, is a whole new perspective on project management and this article will look at ways for project managers to become Twitter smart.

While Twitter is recognized as a social media tool that can assist with successful project delivery, it is often not taken seriously as a business tool. This is simply because of the vast amount of information that is available on Twitter at any one time–over 250 million tweets per day. To ensure that Twitter is a valuable tool, you need to be able to extract only information which is most relevant for you; otherwise, it defeats the object of improving project delivery. One way to do this is by using the #PMOT hashtag.

#PMOT

For those unfamiliar with Twitter, hashtags are a way to flag something, and “PMOT” stands for Project Managers (or Management) on Twitter. When you combine hashtags with Twitter you have an easy way to locate much of the PM-related content on Twitter in a single place.

How to become Twitter Smart

Here are some recommended practices to help you benefit from #PMOT:

Identify people that you want to follow. Add them to a list. Be cautious not to try and follow hundreds or thousands of people, because you cannot possibly keep track of that volume of Tweets.
Identify blogs, articles, sites that you can bookmark. #PMOT can act almost like an automated Google search for you–bringing search results to you without you having to go and work to find them.
Identify curators – people who make the effort to find the best content and make it available with their own comments. There are plenty of project management sites that have a great daily publication.
Stay current with what’s happening in your industry and profession. There are many industry organizations who actively contribute to Twitter (PMI, for example). Twitter can give you an easy way to stay current with what is happening with them.
Find other activities to become a part of. #PMOT will lead you toward #pmchat, for example–an hour-long, weekly Twitter conversation from 12—1 p.m. North American Eastern time that gives you a chance to interact with other PMs and discuss topics/issues of the day. (If you miss the live chat there is a record of the conversation on Twitter under the #pmchat hashtag.)
You still need to use judgment in consuming this content–there’s no point in bookmarking 100 different project management sites as you can’t possibly keep track of them all while still doing the job that you are employed to do.

Twitter for Organizational use

By now you can appreciate using Twitter as a personal tool for individual PMs, but there is also a lot of benefit for the organization. Consider how Project Management Offices (PMO’s) can use Twitter to improve project effectiveness and streamline processes. A tremendous amount of content is already developed to assist in the continuous improvement of the PMO, and much of it is available within the public domain.

Twitter not only helps to socialize the availability of that content–it can assist the organization in connecting with people who have used it before and share their experiences. It may also be used to initially connect with those people.

For organizations that have a page on their intranet containing links to websites that offer best practices, hints and tips, you can prevent that content to become outdated by using the #PMOT. This will help you find a lot of content that can be applied to your organization and to keep that links page fresh.

Be Twitter Smart by contributing

Twitter is not only a social media tool to consume content, but it also provides opportunities to contribute to Twitter discussions. When you represent an organization, as long as you keep to your company’s social media policies, you can use Twitter to do formal announcements, share information on the corporate website like job opportunities for example, share tips and tools etc.

As Project Managers we can also contribute as part of the PM community. This can be achieved by sharing your knowledge and experiences on Twitter by posting a useful link or a lesson learned. This way you can connect with people who have common interests and goals.

Conclusion

As a PMP and blogger, I’ve been using Twitter for a few years for all the reasons above. It has helped me to connect with project managers from all over the world, to easily find good information and RSS feeds to keep up to date with the Project Management Industry and of course, for exposure so that more people will find me and my blog about project management best practices and tools as well as recommended resources. Please subscribe here.

If you would like a head start on Twitter, you are welcome to follow me: Virtualpm

Here are my lists that I have created over time and lists that I follow:

Projectmanagement – own list (440 members)
Leadership– own list (123 members)
Pmot – Andrea Hammer’s list (380 members)
PM practitioners – Project Manager (137 members)
PM_Pals – Lindsay Scott (304 members)

Don’t forget to use Search #PMOT on Twitter to build your own lists or to find good lists to follow.

About the author: Linky Van Der Merwe is the Founder of Virtual Project Consulting. She is a Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager for the past 12 years and currently working at Microsoft Consulting Services.

February 14, 2012December 22, 2021 Linky

Project Management South Africa Launches Online Recruitment System

Are you a Project Manager based in South Africa? Are you looking for a new challenge in Project Management?

Or do you have vacancies on your project team that you would like to advertise to a targeted group of project professionals?

Project Management South Africa (PMSA) has just launched a new online resource that allows PMSA members to upload their CVs to a searchable database. A CV summary is then viewable by subscribed recruitment agencies and fellow members. If a CV summary sparks interest, the candidate will receive an email request to release the full CV for viewing by the requesting party.

Agencies and companies pay a subscription fee to advertise jobs and search CVs on the recruitment system, while individual members, RETPs and corporate members may upload vacancies free of charge.

To view existing CV’s or to load your CV, go to www.projectmanagement.org.za and click on ‘

February 7, 2012March 9, 2014 Linky

Guide to Becoming a Project Management Professional (PMP)

Are you a project manager who plans to write the PMP exam in order to become a certified Project Management Professional, also called a PMP?

Today I want to recommend a really useful resource that would pave the way for you to prepare and pass the PMP exam easily. It is called: “Short Guide to Becoming a PMP“, by Cornelius Fichtner. If you want to take the PMP exam, but don’t know where to start, then this Guide is for you.

The first Guide will give you a high-level overview of the 8 steps involved with becoming a PMP.

The next Guide is about the 10 Secrets to make it easier to obtain your Project Management Professional (PMP) credential.

Short Guide to Becoming a PMP

10 Secrets to becoming a PMP

Download your Guides today and start reaching for that planned goal of becoming a certified PMP!

For existing PMP’s there is also a step for you about Getting Re-certified, explaining what you need to do to earn your PDU’s as part of your continuing education requirements.

January 23, 2012July 7, 2016 Linky

Leading a PMO to Deliver Better Projects

Are you a project manager, a Project Management Office (PMO) leader or maybe an executive who is looking to establish a PMO in your business?

Do you want to know how to find the right balance between projects and business demands?

If you look for ways to benefit from a PMO within your organization or you want to know how to lead a successful PMO to deliver better projects, then you would love the new book from Peter Taylor:

“Leading Successful PMO’s”

Peter Taylor is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’ and ‘The Project from Hell’. He has recently launched his new book ‘Leading Successful PMO’s’.

Leading Successful PMO’s is a book to guide all would-be and current PMO leaders. This is a book for all project based organizations and for all project managers who contribute to and benefit from a PMO (Project Management Office) within their organization.

It is also a book about successfully leading a PMO to deliver better projects, better business to all the customers of those projects and to best serve the contributing project managers from both a professional and a personal perspective.

This is not a book about managing PMO’s as the author does not believe that they are such a stable business unit at this point in time, but rather a book about leading PMO’s which is a much more complex challenge, especially with the association of PMO activity with business strategy.

This book brings together the experience and views of PMO leaders from around the world and the project managers that work within the PMO’s, as well as those who are now seeking leaders for their PMO’s.

In support of his new book, Peter Taylor (together with some great partners) has launched the PMO Leader of the Year Award, to celebrate the very best of PMO leaders around the world.

This award will be presented to the PMO Leader, nominated by their PMO team, who shows the most excellent leadership and understanding of what a PMO can deliver to a business.

A panel of independent judges will review all submissions to consider how each nominee has led their PMO over at least the last 12 months and how they plan to grow the PMO under their stewardship in the coming months.

The Judges will look as the key PMO leadership skills in the areas of:

Flexibility
Resilience
Setting example
Professionalism
Support

Timescales: All entries should be received by Gower by 31st March 2012. The shortlist for the ‘PMO Leader of the Year (2012)’ will be announced on 31st May 2012. The winner of ‘PMO Leader of the Year (2012)’ will be announced on 29th June 2012.

Prizes: The winner will receive:

A library of Gower project and programme management books with a list price of over £600.00
A written award from the judges underlining the reasons for the award
A ‘PMO Leader of the Year 2012’ electronic icon to use on any of the winners electronic profiles, web pages and so on
An interview with Mark Perry on The PMO Podcast
Publication of the winning submission through the website: http://www.gowerpublishing.com/projectmanagement

Click here to download a pdf document containing all information regarding the Criteria of PMO Leader of the Year Award.

January 19, 2012February 10, 2019 Linky

The Project Manager and Emotional Intelligence

One quality a project manager needs to have to be really successful is Emotional Intelligence.

Your Emotional Intelligence can help make or break you. Emotional Intelligence or EQ is your ability to handle yourself and others. It is all about your ability to get along with others and build relationships. This also means that you can face conflict with the people around you and keep those relationships intact.

Think about it, your EQ is a conflict resolution tool! Here are 3 ways that your EQ helps you resolve conflict.

#1 EQ prevents unproductive conflict

When you are self-aware (one of the five components of EQ) you understand your moods. Who do you think is more likely to engage in unproductive conflict: A person in a good mood or a person in a bad mood? The person who is in a bad mood right? To build on that, imagine the person who walks around completely unaware of their emotions. Who knows what is going to set them off, they certainly don’t know.

Let’s take this even further, to really avoid unproductive conflict you want to recognize your moods and then exhibit self-control (another component of EQ). Yes the person in a bad mood is more likely to engage in useless conflict; but this person needs to be able to control their behaviours while in a bad mood. This is the person who gets that they are cranky and is careful with their words and actions because they know they are easily upset.

#2 EQ helps YOU navigate productive conflict

Sometimes disagreements are a good thing. When you lead your team through issue resolution, not every team member will suggest the same solution. From that productive conflict the best and most creative solution can be designed. Only if YOU and your team can draw upon your self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy and social skills (all components of EQ) to work together.

As you work through the conflict you are drawing upon your awareness of your feelings during the conflict and your self-control to behave professionally. You are motivated to work things out and care about seeing the issue through until the best solution is found. You don’t care if the solution selected is your solution, you care that it is the right solution. You employ active listening (part of empathy) to guide the team through the discussion and you draw upon your social skills to seek participation from all appropriate parties.

#3 EQ helps you repair relationships

Even with your best intentions and best behaviour, not all conflict is productive conflict. Sometimes feelings get hurt. Now what are you going to do about it?

You are going to use all of your EQ skills to repair those relationships. This might involve listening to the wounded parties as they share with you why they are upset and what you can do to help. If could mean that you invite them to lunch or for coffee to show that you have no hard feelings. Whatever approach you take, the fact is that if you were not emotionally intelligent it would not even occur to you that you should work to repair the relationship. If you ignore a damaged relationship, you are inviting additional and unnecessary conflict.

Want to know more about improving your EQ?

Other recommended resources:

Emotional Intelligence as a Project Management and Life Skill

Key Project Management Skills Needed for the Future?

Innovation through Projects

January 16, 2012April 22, 2015 Linky

Leadership and Your Communication Style

To be a successful project manager, it is important to develop your Leadership skills. You need to regocnize the behaviours that define you as a leader. One such leadership skill is to know and develop your communication style.

It means you have a natural style of communicating. This is the way that is the most comfortable for you to communicate, it includes whether you prefer written (email or other) or verbal (on the phone vs. in-person) communication and whether or not you are careful and deliberate in your communications or more comfortable thinking out loud.

This includes how you like to send communication and how you like to receive it. You might prefer to walk down the hall to see someone when you have something to say, but you might want people to email you things when they have things to say so that you have them in writing or so that you can refer back to them later or add them to your calendar.

You also have an adapted style of communication, this means how we communicate when we are upset or under pressure or during a conflict.

It is important to understand your natural approach/style and your adapted approach.

Then you can begin to understand the styles of others and how/when your styles work with others or not.

There is a lot to consider. And the most important question; is your communication style working for you?

Overall how do you know?

Well, to explore these questions; I invite you to attend a FREE Webinar entitled:

‘Mitigate Yourself! What to Do When the Risk is You’.

Margaret Meloni of Meloni Coaching Solutions will be hosting this live Webinar on 24 January 2012 from 12:00-13:00 PST.

Margaret delivers soft-skill, personal development products and coaching for Project Managers worldwide. Her coaching products help make successful Project Manager regardless of their industry. Learn more about her: margaretmeloni.com

Please Register, even if you cannot make it, you receive a free recording and can earn a Professional Development Unit (PDU).

In this Webinar you will learn:

You have a natural and adapted style of communications (meaning; how you communicate normally and when you are upset or under pressure).
Why it’s important to understand both.
How you can begin to recognize and understand the styles of others and understand when your style works and when it does not.

Be there to learn more about your communication styles and how they affect your success in the workplace and the success of your team.

Register today as seating is limited and when you do register please be sure to tell Margaret I sent you by filling in the ‘Who Referred You’ information.

December 7, 2011May 12, 2019 Linky

Scope Management: How to Scope your Projects in 5 Steps

Scope Management refers to all the processes which are followed to ensure that a project includes all the work required to complete it, while excluding all work which is not necessary to complete it. A Scope Management plan clearly defines who is responsible for managing the projects’ scope and how the scope will be controlled.

The project scope will act like the compass of the project that will give direction and will help the project manager to know where “true North” is.

The project scope will include the deliverables which needs to be described clearly so that everyone knows what needs to be produced.

Here are 5 recommended steps to scope your projects:

Step 1: Set the Direction
You set the direction for the project by having an agreed Project Vision, Objectives and Timeframes? Ensure that they are specified and that your customer and project team understand it and agree to it. Only by fixing the project direction can you truly fix the project scope.

Step 2: Scope Workshops
The best way to obtain buy-in to your project scope is to have a workshop with all of the relevant stakeholders to help you define the scope. What you want from them is an agreed set of major deliverables to be produced by the project. You also want to know “what’s out of scope”. Once you have the full list of deliverables, the stakeholders need to prioritize the list, so you know what has to be delivered first.

Step 3: Statement of Work
Now that you have an agreed list of deliverables, you need to define each deliverable in depth. Describe how each deliverable will look and feel, how it would operate and how it would be supported. Include assumptions and constraints. Your goal here is to make it so specific that your customer cannot state later in the project that “when they said this, they really meant that”.

Step 4: Assessing Feasibility
Now that you have a detailed list and description of every deliverable to be produced by your project, you need to determine if it’s feasible to achieve within the project time-frame? Work with your team to break down each deliverable into smaller components to have an indication of time and cost.

Step 5: Scope Acceptance
Present the prioritized set of deliverables to your Project Sponsor as part of a document and ask them to approve your project scope. Ask them to agree to the priorities, the deliverable descriptions and the items out of scope. Obtain formal sign-off to put you in a position to be able to manage the project scope throughout.

In case more deliverables need to be added later on, you will follow a process of doing a Change Request against the agreed Scope whereby new deliverables can either be exchanged with other deliverables, or project time and cost need to be increased. This will form part of Scope monitoring and the controlling function that you, as the project manager, need to perform.

More Resources:

Steps involved in defining project scope – by Grey Campus

Visit our Resources Page for recommended Training, Software and Products.

Please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting not to miss any future updates!

November 16, 2011 Linky

5 Practical Tips for Good Communication Practices on Projects

Most project managers know that communications is 90% of what they do every day. If you understand the importance of good communication practices, shouldn’t you incorporate it in your core skill set?

Here are five practical tips to help you enhance your communication skills and to implement consistently. When possible, try to see the team members often for what I jokingly call “eyeball management”.

Reports: Generate project progress or status reports once a week to see if your project is on track. Then distribute those reports to your customer and management team. Explain any deviations from the plan and what you’re doing to correct them.
Team Meetings: Hold a weekly meeting with your project team, even if it’s only 30 minutes. Plan each meeting against an agenda and any key objectives in order to keep it focused. Communicate the status of the project. Discuss with them the goals, deliverables and timeframes that need to be achieved. Obtain feedback about the progress made in the past week and agree on the planned activities for the next week or two. Obtain buy-in from each team member. It is important to align team members as this will help to keep them motivated, and committed to the project outcome.
Minutes: Always take minutes recording the decisions made and to keep track of actions due. Send the minutes to those people that will be affected by the decisions and actions and then store the minutes in your project folder. When projects involve external customers, minutes can/will be considered as a legal entity if a dispute may arise around certain decisions made.
Email: Use mail to make arrangements en only when something needs to be done or if it’s important. Keep email to a minimum as too much mail makes communication less effective. Also try not to copy the whole team for every mail, but always think who is the message intended for and who else needs to know about it. As a project manager it’s usually a good arrangement to be copied in on team members emails to stay informed of what is going on.
Tools: Collaborate with your team online, using software tools that will allow you to have discussions, share files and send messages (instant messaging). It is also recommended to have a time capturing tool to track the time spent per team member as part of your cost management.

In general you want to be respectful of other people’s time. Agree the communications plan with the team and other stakeholders. Explain your expectations as a project manager so that the team members will understand why they need to attend the weekly meetings and why you want them to read the minutes, as they are used not only for communication, but also as a management tool.

By minimizing email, meetings and discussions and keeping them focused and short, you’re avoiding all of the usual “noise” that project teams usually generate. Find a weekly routine that works for your team and be consistent with your communication practices.

As an effective project manager, it is good to have an approach like: “always be communicating”. This will greatly improve your chances of success.