5 Personal Goals For Every Project Manager

Want to know how to become a 5-star project manager?

By Jason Westland

A Project Manager needs to manage people, budget, suppliers, equipment—the list is never ending. The trick is to be focused. Set yourself 5 personal goals to achieve. If you can meet these simple goals for each project, then you will achieve total success. So read on, to learn…

The 5 Goals of a Project Manager

These goals are generic to all industries and all types of projects. Regardless of your level of experience in project management, set these 5 goals for every project you manage.

Goal 1: To finish on time

This is the oldest but trickiest goal in the book. It’s the most difficult because the requirements often change during the project and the schedule was probably optimistic in the first place.

To succeed, you need to manage your scope very carefully. Implement a change control process so that any changes to the scope are properly managed.

Always keep your plan up to date, recording actual vs. planned progress. Identify any deviations from plan and fix them quickly.

Goal 2: To finish under budget

To make sure that your project costs don’t spiral, you need to set a project budget at the start to compare against. Include in this budget, all of the types of project costs that will accrue, whether they are to do with people, equipment, suppliers or materials. Then work out how much each task in your plan is going to cost to complete and track any deviations from this plan.

Make sure that if you over-spend on some tasks, that you under-spend on others. In this way, you can control your spend and deliver under budget.

Goal 3: To meet the requirements

The goal here is to meet the requirements that were set for the project at the start. Whether the requirements were to install a new IT system, build a bridge or implement new processes, your project needs to produce solutions which meet these requirements 100%.

Ensure that you have a detailed enough set of requirements at the beginning. If they are ambiguous in any way, then what was initially seen as a small piece of work could become huge, taking up valuable time and resources to complete.

Goal 4: To keep customers happy

You could finish your project on time, under budget and have met 100% of the requirements—but still have unhappy customers. This is usually because their expectations have changed since the project started and have not been properly managed.

To ensure that your project sponsor, customer and other stakeholders are happy at the end of your project, you need to manage their expectations carefully. Make sure you always keep them properly informed of progress. “Keep it real” by giving them a crystal clear view of progress to date. Let them voice their concerns or ideas regularly. Tell them upfront when you can’t deliver on time, or when a change needs to be made. Openness and honesty are always the best tools for setting customer expectations.

Goal 5: To ensure a happy team

If you can do all of this with a happy team, then you’ll be more than willing to do it all again for the next project. And that’s how your staff will feel also. Staff satisfaction is critical to your project’s success.

So keep your team happy by rewarding and recognizing them for their successes. Assign them work that complements their strengths and conduct team building exercises to boost morale. With a happy motivated team, you can achieve anything!

And there you have it. The 5 goals you need to set yourself for every project and you will become a 5-star professional project manager.

Jason Westland has 15 years experience in the project management industry. From his experience he has created software to help speed up the management process. If you would like to find out more information about Jason’s online project management software visit ProjectManager.com.

March 24, 2010September 27, 2013 Linky

7 Key Leadership Actions for Project Managers

Fulfilling the role of project manager for any length of time will call upon your leadership skills. Especially in today’s complex world, the project management function is no longer a controlling function, but rather a function of leadership and facilitation.

Project Leadership Skills

It has been said that the true measure as to whether someone is a leader is whether they have followers. Building a following as a leader is a vital component in your success and getting the results that you want. For a project manager your leadership reach is usually the project/program teams that you work with. This means that you don’t have the luxury of earning respect as a leader over time, but you need to establish your credibility as a leader up front at the beginning of project.

So what are the 7 KEY leadership actions you can take to establish credibility as a leader?

Action 1: Demonstrate Competence

As the leader, people need to have confidence that you are a competent project manager. Being competent is not about being the expert in every area but having enough skill and experience to make effective decisions.

Action 2: Show Your Commitment

Project managers move between different organisational departments, different functional teams and sometimes they move between different companies (like contractors). While working with a particular organisation and functional team, it is of vital importance to demonstrate you commitment by working hard on a day to day basis. This will also set an example of the commitment you expect from your project team members.

Action 3: Be Consistent and Only Promise What You Can Deliver

Consistency is by far one of the key actions to establish yourself as a respected leader to be trusted. Consistent leadership requires you to be consistent with how you treat all people. Closely related to this is to only promise what you can deliver (agreed scope) and then to deliver as per requirements (satisfied stakeholders).

Action 4: Be an Active Listener

Most leaders are excellent at getting their points across verbally and in writing. Exceptional leaders are also exceptional listeners. Leadership requires you to pay attention to active listening.

Action 5: Prepare For Meetings and Presentations

You might have heard the statement, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. Running a meeting or making the presentation is the easy bit. The key action is to always be prepared and have specific objectives or an agenda for every meeting.

Action 6: Take Responsibility

You get the rewards of being a leader and at the same time it comes with responsibility. When issues arise (as they always do), make a point of taking responsibility. You are ultimately accountable for the success of the project.

Action 7: Act with Integrity

A golden rule for all project managers in leadership positions is to make sure your behaviours or actions will be authentic and based on integrity.

Leadership is key

Leadership competence is not an optional project management skill, but a key part of being a successful, professional and efficient project manager. Make these 7 leadership actions part of your regular project manager make-up. Credibility will come naturally as a result of applying these actions in your day-to-day management of projects. Your leadership skills will continue to grow stronger with experience; remember to enjoy the ride….

For future project management articles, please subscribe here, as well as to the blog (to the right).

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with more than 11 years Project Management experience.

She consults with business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

March 19, 2010March 19, 2010 Linky

4 Social Bookmarking Tips To Make Social Media Work For You

Social Bookmarking as a Social Media Tool

Considering all the social media tools available today, social bookmarking has probably been around the longest. Initially I only had preference for one social bookmarking tool and I mostly used it to bookmark websites of special interest to me, to help me to find them easily, as well as to share good information.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking

My perception of social bookmarking has now changed completely. I have learned that social bookmarking can give amazing backlinks back to my products and services. It will also increase the number of visitors to my blog. HOW? By submitting all your own blog posts and product sales pages to several social bookmarking sites. Let me share with you 4 social bookmarking tips.

1. Make Social Bookmarking part of your strategy

In order to use social bookmarking as an effective social media tool, you need to make it part of your social media strategy. If you don’t have a social media strategy, click here for a free strategy template.

2. Make Social Bookmarking a system

Next you need to develop your own social bookmarking system that you use consistently to produce favorable long term results.

3. Do Social Bookmarking with Only Wire

Not only can you develop a system for social bookmarking, but you can also automate the whole process with Onlywire. Onlywire is an automated content and bookmark distribution tool. With Onlywire you can auto-submit any information to over 30 social networking sites (including your favorite social bookmarking sites) at once. I am a member who pays $2.99 per month for this service. Now that it has become part of my social bookmarking system, I cannot imagine being without this tool again.

4. Automate Social Bookmarking

Now that you know what automation tool to use, it is time to get started. Here are the steps to follow:

Open Mozilla Firefox (works better with Firefox than with Internet Explorer, although you may use IE as well)
Go to www. Onlywire.com
Signup at Onlywire (the following actions are explained within Onlywire as well)
Install Onlywire addon for Firefox browser
Setup accounts with each website (social networking services) you wish to utilise
Enter username and password for all social bookmarking/ social networking websites you want to utilize
Once logins are stored with Onlywire you can begin submitting content.
Add the Bookmark & Share Button to your website. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog with plugin support, download the OnlyWire plugin from WordPress.org. Alternatively install it from your WordPress Dashboard. At the end of each blog post, the Bookmark & Share Button will appear. For older blog posts, use this button on your own website to distribute the content automatically to multiple social networking sites.
For new blog posts, you will see a tick box appear in the new post Dashboard view, that you need to select before you publish. When the blog post is published, it will automatically be published by the Onlywire plugin to all the social networking sites that you have selected to utilize.
It is good practice to visit your Onlywire account after submission to verify the success or failure of submissions to social bookmarking sites. Some social networks require a final step, called Finalization, before the content is published.

Outsource Social Bookmarking

I am the first one to admit that setting up a Social Bookmarking system and then automating it can be a very lengthy process. However the benefits will outweigh the time and effort spent by far!

If you are a business owner or service professional who wants to put a social bookmarking system in place, I recommend that you implement these 4 tips. Next you follow the 10 steps to automate social bookmarking and make it work for your business. Alternatively, you can outsource the effort to put the automated system in place. Then you continue on your own by bookmarking all your new blog posts.

Click on the Bookmark & Share button below to see Onlywire in action. And bookmark this article to your favorite social networking sites for future reference.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any assistance at: linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

March 18, 2010February 15, 2018 Linky

The Easiest Way To Outsell Other Affiliates

By Jimmy D. Brown

Attention all Affiliate Marketers

If you’re an affiliate marketer, then you’re always looking over your shoulder to see if the competition – your fellow affiliates – are catching up to you. The easiest way to outsell other affiliates is this…

Turn your AFFILIATE offer into a UNIQUE offer!

You see, most affiliates try to sell the product as is. If your prospects are shopping around, they’re going to skip all the “buy from me” offers. Instead, they’re going to focus on those offers that give them an incentive to buy. And that means you can outsell the other affiliates simply by offering a bonus product to anyone who buys through your affiliate link.

I’ve been teaching this concept since 2001 and, all things being equal, those affiliates who put this into practice will outsell those who don’t virtually 100% of the time. It’s a very simple strategy. Let’s break it down into three steps…

Step 1: CHOOSE Your Incentive

Your goal is to make your offer stand out from the crowd by offering an incentive to buy from your link, thereby boosting your conversion rate. And that means you need to offer a bonus that enhances or otherwise complements the affiliate product. Did you catch that? Your bonus should “enhance” or “complement” the product you are promoting as an affiliate. That’s what makes for the best incentive.

Affiliate Case Study

Let me give you a “real” case study (not made up … actually done by one of my customers). A customer – who is also one of my affiliates – recently purchased my Multiple Streams Theme wordpress blog theme. He loaded it to his site. Then, he invested a little time writing a small report that teaches how to customize and tweak the theme. He offered this small report, filled with insider shortcuts and tips for enhancing the theme, as an incentive to anyone who ordered the Multiple Streams Theme through his affiliate link. Brilliant. I’m just guessing, but I bet the report didn’t take him half an hour to write. He just logged his own personal experiences. And yet it has high value to anyone who has plans to order the theme. That’s how you outsell other affiliates. You turn your AFFILIATE offer into a UNIQUE OFFER.

Affiliate Ideas

One way to do this is by reading the sales letter for the product and choosing one particularly enticing bullet point. Example #1: If the sales letter tells prospects they can learn how to get traffic from social media sites, then you can create a report called “27 Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Traffic to Any Website!”

Example #2: If the sales page for a diet book promises a month of low calorie recipes to customers, you can create a supplementary low calorie recipe book and give it away to those who buy from your link.

Example #3: If you’re promoting a dog training book and you see a bullet point about eliminating bad behaviors such as jumping, incessant barking, digging in the gardening, etc. You can create a report or even a video called, “The Secrets of Training the Perfect Dog: How to Keep Your Dog’s Paws Off Your Guests, Off Your Counters and Out of Your Garden!”

The point is, your freebie should be directly related to the affiliate offer. You want your prospects to buy through your link just because the incentive is so enticing. What kind of incentive? You can do videos, software, coaching, advertising, installations, services, etc. But, “pound for pound”, the best and easiest incentive to create is a small report.

Step 2: CREATE Your Incentive

Once you decide on the topic, your next step is to create the bonus product. If you’re creating a short report or video, you can probably finish it in one day. Otherwise, you can hire a trusted freelancer to do it, which frees your time to focus on marketing the offer! Tip: You find ghostwriters on sites like WarriorForum.com, Elance.com, and GetAFreelancer.com. You can also ask for recommendations from your colleagues via your social networks or on business forums.

Step 3: CIRCULATE Your Incentive

Finally, your last step is to promote your offer by letting prospects know that anyone who buys the affiliate product using your link will get the bonus product. Let your list know. Tell your blog readers. Tweet about it. Purchase advertising. Distribute free marketing materials such as ezine articles. Mention it in sig files at forums. You know the drill.

Now, there are a few ways to deliver the product: 1. On the download page. If you’ve developed a relationship with the product vendor, he may agree to set up a special sales page that promotes the bonus plus a special download page so that customers can download it instantly after purchasing. 2. Manually. You can have customers forward their receipts and then you send them the link to the bonus. 3. Automatically. You can also set up a special email address with an auto-responder, so that anyone who sends you a receipt gets the download link automatically. (Naturally, some people will try to “cheat” this system.)

There you have it – the simple three-step strategy you can use to outsell your competitors and put more money in your pocket. It’s so easy you could be making more money by tomorrow… if you get started today! Speaking of “making more money”. If you have a blog, how would you like to have ten “built-in” ways to increase your affiliate commissions from your blog?

Visit Infoprofitshare to learn more.

NOTE: The offer mentioned at the website will no longer be available after Friday, March 19, 2010 at 10PM. Jimmy is “retiring” it then and discontinuing all sales.

March 14, 2010November 9, 2019 Linky

Small Business and Social Media Adoption

Social Media adoption by U.S. small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the last year. If you are a small business owner or service professional this is a must read. These are the results from a study that was done by University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business by conducting a telephone survey of 500 small business owners in December 2009.

How Small Business is using Social Media

Small businesses are increasingly investing in social media applications including blogs, Facebook® and LinkedIn® profiles.

Small business owner, Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and founder of Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care, was forced to consider alternative options to keep his business visible during the tough economic conditions last year.

He said: “With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google® ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city and our new visitors to the site have increased. My blog has been picked up by different news sources and led to media interviews. I am now recognized as a thought leader in social networking within my profession and lastly but most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80%.”

Social Media popular sites

Facebook and LinkedIn were the most popular social media sites. In fact, 45% of surveyed respondents even believe their social media initiatives will pay off financially in 12 months or less.

Another interesting notion is that small business owners now believe social media can help them on the lead generation front, and that is the primary motivating factor for engaging in these new customer service channels. So while half of surveyed respondents found the time it takes to use social media sites more daunting than expected, 61% are still putting in the hours and making active efforts to identify new customers.

Clearly social media has become a valuable tool for small businesses. While we expect more small businesses to use Twitter as a customer service channel in the year ahead, as it stands, Facebook and LinkedIn have become the predominant platforms for small business owners.

Social Media sources and usage

As the graphic below details, the small business owners who are using social media are primarily engaging in social media through company pages (75%) and status updates (69%) on Facebook or LinkedIn. What’s especially intriguing is that a much smaller percentage of respondents — just 16% — are using Twitter.

Conclusion

Social media has become a valuable tool for small businesses. Small business owners mainly use social media to identify and attract new customers. As validated by this Small Business Success Index, social media can be the best friend for small business owners who constantly seek new ways to maximize productivity while keeping costs low.

If you are a small business owner interested in finding out how your business can start using social media marketing, use our Social Media Starter Project kit to become social media active and to maintain your online presence for return on investment within a few months.

About Robert H. Smith School of Business:

The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. A detailed copy of the report can be found at www.growsmartbusiness.com

March 7, 2010 Linky

Find Your Passion and Purpose in Life

Passion from vision

Good leaders have passion. Passion is derived from a leader’s vision and the passion will power and sustain you on your vision quest. True or not?

As human beings we all look for meaning in our life. We conjure up dynamic visions for our life and hope that the vision will stir up our passion, adding meaning and purpose to our existence. In fact, vision has been described as “a picture of the future that produces passion in you”.

However, if this is how you hope to identify or stir up your passion, then your passion will eventually die out. You see, when passion is created from the outside-in, it can cause a momentary flash of emotion, but it won’t be enough to move you very far or for very long. As soon as things get tough along your journey, you’ll slow down, back up or walk away and look for something else. The embers of passion stirred by your vision won’t draw out the tenacity, mental toughness and resiliency you need to bring your vision to fruition.

Vision comes from passion

This is why a leader can’t cast a vision and count on it to create the passion necessary to be successful. Rather, your vision must be birthed from your passion! Did you get that? In order to be effective, vision must come from your passion rather than hoping your passion will come from a vision. This fact begs the obvious question: where does one discover this inner passion that so many people never find or tap into?

Find your inner passion

Where does inner passion come from? It comes from where all true passion comes from; it comes from anguish. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Nehemiah of the Bible all had bold visions that were birthed from their passion. And their passion was rooted in their anguish.

Anguish is defined as an agonizing mental pain or torment brought about by conditions in or around you. What torments you? What keeps you awake at night? What moves you? What burns inside of you? What thoughts, purposes or dreams consume you? What do you agonize over? What brings you before God in tears? That’s where you’ll find your passion and that passion will birth your vision.

Leaders don’t miss the following fact: it’s not enough to be concerned. You must anguish! Concern creates interest, whereas anguish creates movement, resolve and makes you unstoppable. Stop ignoring your pain and start celebrating your torment and you’ll zero in on the passion that can become a channel to your vision, your purpose, and eventually, your legacy.

Inspiration for this article was found from Dave Anderson, President of Learn to Lead and Author of How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK. Find his blog at www.learntolead.com

If you want to read more about my PASSION, I am sharing it in About Project Management Passion.

March 4, 2010April 6, 2010 Linky

How To Use Myers Briggs Personality Types As a Project Manager Tool

Following from the previous post on using Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator as a project manager tool, this article will give even more clarity on how you can use the Myers Briggs Personality Types as an effective project management tool.

1. Recognize the components of the Jungian Indicator types

As a project manager you need to recognize the 8 components of the Myers Briggs Personality Types. Based on Jung’s observations, the starting point is that when people’s minds are active they are involved in one of two mental activities:

Perceiving: Taking information in
Judging: Processing information to reach to conclusions

He identified two ways in which people take in information, based on:

Sensing: Real time tangible data
Intuition: Holistic,”big picture”, pattern/connection data

He identified two ways in which people process information, based on:

Thinking: Analytical logical, objective, “tough” evaluation
Feeling: Empathic, subjective, “tender” assessment

Jung also observed that people tend to be energised by one of two orientations:

Extraversion (extroverts): People, experience, activity, external focus
Introversion (introverts): Ideas, memories, emotions, inner focus

Finally, Jung observed that people use these different functions in a form of hierarchy of preference, described by Jung as functions, namely: Dominant, Auxiliary, Tertiary and Inferior. The Myers Briggs model brings these components together into 16 very different personality types.

2. Accept that fewer than 1 in 50 people think like you do

The practical ramifications of all this are considerable, and especially in a project management situation. Given that the typical Myers Briggs type of a business leader, ENTJ (it is short for Extrovert; Intuition; Thinking; Judging) is only shared by approximately 1.8% of the population, then chances are that less than 1 in 50 of your team members will think in the same way you do. Yet as a project manager, you face the difficult challenge of getting your project team to deliver the project objectives and achieve the business benefits that you anticipate.

But the reality is that people process information in very different ways. They also interpret life in different ways and are motivated by different things. Although they will hear what you say when you outline your vision and strategy, and will probably agree with you, most of them are not able to translate all that into productive purposeful action.

3. Communicate your project vision and goals into actionable steps

This means that during the early stages of a project, the project team needs detailed management in the attempt to improve their commitment and working towards the same goal and objectives. As the project manager it is your responsibility to make no assumptions, and to communicate those actionable steps.

By taking account of team member’s individual differences, you need to spell out the actionable steps you wish them to take. By doing this you will stand a far higher chance of building a strong committed team who is motivated to achieve the project goal.

4. Achieve Leadership Success

An integral aspect of successful leadership in project management lies in understanding:

The drivers of human motivation
The difference in individual motivational drivers
Individual differences in mental processing functions

And also, in realizing that not only are their motivational drivers different to yours – their thought processes are different as well. Subscribe to my RSS and blog (to the right) not to miss future project management articles and tips!

If you are based in South Africa, and you would like to have your team assessed with the MBTI instrument, please contact Willem Conradie & Associates – Assessment, Learning and Development Consultants, for a professional service at willem@willemconradie.co.za.

Thanks to Stephen Warrilow for permission to use information from his Meyers Briggs article. Stephen, based in Bristol, England, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Take advantage of his 7 FREE “How to Do It” downloads that will take you through all of the key stages of “How to manage change” – and show you how to manage change successfully.

March 3, 2010April 6, 2010 Linky

Myers Briggs PersonalityType Indicator – A Project Manager Tool

Myers Briggs for Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management is one of the key knowledge areas that project managers need to be efficient in. When you are leading and managing people on projects and you want to make the most effective use of people involved with the project, an understanding of the Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI) tool is essential.

The purpose of this article is to educate and equip project managers with a thorough understanding and appreciation of the Myers Briggs personality type indicators. It will explain how people process information in very different ways. They also interpret life in different ways and are motivated by different things. By recognising the differences in people, the project manager is empowered to be a more effective leader who in turn will have a more motivated team.

What is Myers Briggs Type Indicator?

The Myers Briggs [personality or psychological] Type Indicators are based on the theories of Carl Jung, which he developed to attempt to explain the differences between normal healthy people. Based on observations, Jung came to the view that differences in behaviour are the result of innate tendencies of people to use their minds in different ways.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. Source: Wikipedia. The MBTI instrument is called “the best-known and most trusted personality assessment tool available today. The publisher, CPP (formerly Consulting Psychologists Press) calls the MBTI tool “the world’s most widely used personality assessment”.

More blind to this than we realise

I have a friend who I connected with instantly from the moment we met. We thought the same way about many things and we shared similar strong points that we used in our very different careers. Co-incidentally, when we both did the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator questionnaire, we discovered that we shared exactly the same personality type. This explained why we got along so well and why our friendship flourished.

At the same time, while managing many different projects, I came across team members who were typically classified (by colleagues) as difficult people. Upon taking a closer look, I discovered why! It was due to a very specific Myers-Briggs personality type. Being aware of the person’s personality type had made me much more effective in dealing with them in such a way as to gain their full trust and commitment to the project.

If I was blind to the existence of Myers-Briggs personality types, I would probably not know how to get past the perception of dealing with a difficult team member in order to achieve the results that I as the project manager wanted and needed.

Not to miss the rest of the article: How to Use Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator as a project manager tool – where I explain the different components of the personality types and how that will help you achieve leadership success (next blog post), please subscribe to the RSS feed.

Also subscribe to my blog to receive more project management articles and tips in your inbox.

February 27, 2010September 27, 2013 Linky

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools

Essential skills for stakeholder management

Stakeholder Management Best Practice Tools audio

Stakeholder management requires getting commitment from stakeholders as the cornerstone of success in projects. The needs and concerns of stakeholders define the project plan. As a follow-up from the previous stakeholder management best practices article, I want to share with you a best practice communication tool as an essential skill for stakeholder management.

How to communicate

The tool that I have used successfully in projects before, is called “Conditions of Satisfaction” or COS. As soon as the project manager identifies who the key stakeholders are, he needs to have a discussion with the customer(s) to determine what their conditions for satisfaction are. It is necessary to make the COS statements specific, measureable, attainable, realistic/relevant, time bound (SMART).

These conditions are then communicated back to the project team, partners and vendors. Once the conditions are determined, they must be agreed and summarised in writing for the customer(s).

Once documented, add any agreed-upon actions to meet them, as well as the planned completion dates. Post the COS to the project repository.

Examples of conditions of satisfaction (COS) are:

Sponsor expects external consultant to be on-site, during core hours
- Action: consultant will be on-site between 9am and 4pm and log this on his time-sheet for the duration of the project
Sponsor expects skills transfer between specialist and team members who will do roll-out and support
- Action: put skills transfer actions (workshop & presentations) as activities on project plan to track them before end of planning phase
Minimize extra cost
- Action: Try to reduce travel costs, by developing estimates and travel schedule, by having more tele- and video-conferences during execution phase of the project

Communicate the Conditions (COS) to the entire project team and ensure that everyone on the team knows the COS and has plans for how they will help achieve / exceed the COS in the role they play on the project.

Conditions of Satisfaction

At all project meetings, both internal and with the customer, you need to address progress against the COS and identify plans to address any problems. During project closure, the COS will again be discussed to evaluate whether the customer’s conditions were met by the project. This stakeholder management communications tool leads to a satisfied customer, a happy customer and ultimately a more successful project.

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder management and engagement is an essential skill that project managers need to develop. A successful project needs to satisfy the triple constraint of time, cost and quality/performance, but it must also meet requirements of functionality, reliability, maintainability, efficiency, integration and operability.

How to determine your success

To determine if the project was successful, you need to assess the following:

Did the project provide satisfactory benefit to the users?
Measure whether value has been added.
Did the project completely meet predefined objectives?

For success the project experience should have been positive and the project will have added value. The project would have satisfied the needs and concerns of the stakeholders, as well as the project team members and would have allowed the team to acquire new skills.

If you know of other stakeholder management skills or tools that you have used successfully in your projects, please share those with us in the comments section.

Please click HERE to listen to a recording of this article. If you wish to download a free copy of this audio file, please right click on the link and select “save link as” to save to your desired location.

About the author: Linky van der Merwe is a former Microsoft Project Management Consultant and an IT Project Manager with 14 years IT industry experience and 11 years Project Management experience.

February 21, 2010September 27, 2013 Linky

Stakeholder Management Best Practices

Are you actively managing project stakeholders?

Stakeholder Management Best Practices audio

Stakeholder management is as key to a successful project outcome as communications management. Today I want to focus on best practices relating to managing stakeholders on projects.

For complete clarity about stakeholder management, let’s look at it from the angle of:

What a stakeholder is
Who stakeholders are
Why you must do stakeholder management
When to communicate

Stakeholder definition

What is a stakeholder? Stakeholders are people who are actively involved in projects, who exert influence on projects and whose interests may be positively/negatively affected by projects. Source: PMBOK

Who are stakeholders?

The key stakeholders on projects are the project manager, project team members, the project sponsor, the customer and the performing organization. Other stakeholders could include:

Internal and external owners and funders
Sellers and contractors
Team members & their families
Government agencies and media outlets
Society at large

Why do stakeholder management?

On any project a project manager needs to identify project stakeholders in order to determine their requirements and to manage and influence the requirements. Identify stakeholders during initiation phase of Project life cycle.

Throughout the project you need to actively manage the stakeholder’s requirements and expectations. Influencing the organisation involves the ability to ‘get things done’. This requires from a project manager an understanding of both formal and informal structure of the organisation involved, for example the customers, partners, contractors, office politics etc.

One golden rule to remember is when there is a difference between stakeholders, it should be resolved in favour of the customer. Finding appropriate resolutions to such differences can be a major challenge of project management.

The reason why you need to do stakeholder management is to drive stakeholder satisfaction. This requires reliable, dependable, repeatable effort from your side. You need to know the needs and expectations of stakeholders and invest in those needs. A frequent investment (weekly, ever daily) in the needs of the stakeholders helps projects to be successful.

When to communicate with stakeholders?

You need to communicate with your project stakeholders a number of times as documented in your communications plan:

Beginning of a project
Weekly at progress meetings
Regular Reviews and reporting
At the end of a project

In summary a project manager needs to manage and influence stakeholder requirements to ensure a successful project.

In the next blog post about stakeholder management, I am going to share some best practices tools that you can use to really ensure customer satisfaction.

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If you liked this article, please subscribe to my blog (to the right) and receive more project management tips and articles.

She consults with small-medium business owners and service professionals about project management and project processes, best practices and successful delivery through projects. She is most experienced in corporate infrastructure projects (upgrades, migration, deployment etc) and process optimisation. She can be reached at linky@virtualprojectconsulting.com

February 16, 2010 Linky

Benefit Your Business with Twitter Marketing

Are you using Twitter as an online marketing tool yet?

Are you a business owner who does online marketing? Whether you sell a product, or offer professional services, internet marketing is a must in this digital age. To find clients and generate a sale, you must first drive traffic to your website or blog. One effective way to do so, and FREE, is to use the social networking tool, called Twitter.

Understand what Twitter is

Before highlighting the benefits of marketing your business with Twitter, understand what Twitter is. It’s a social networking website that also acts as a micro-blog. After signing up for a Twitter account, you develop a list of contacts. These are individuals you want to follow or receive updates from. Many will return the favor, becoming followers of your updates. There are no limits on how many messages you can send; however, there is a 140 character limit. Updates, otherwise known as Tweets, are sent through instant messaging, mobile web applications, RSS feeds, Twitter website and the many Twitter tools available today.

Twitter in a nut shell

When you use Twitter as a marketing tool for your business, you want to go to Search.Twitter.com and look for tweets that are applicable to your website, blog, product or service. Occasionally send updates to your friends. Highlight your new blog post, by giving a short summary and provide a link. Summarize a product/service you are selling, or provide a discount code. You can also reply to members that you follow. This is Twitter in a nut shell.

6 Benefits of Marketing your Business with Twitter:

1. Generate interest in your business

In addition to generating traffic to your website or blog, you can also generate interest. First, create catchy Tweets. For example, do you sell a new eco-friendly product? If so, don’t just instruct people to buy your product, but ask for their feedback. Ask how it can help the environment. Then, ask your followers to forward information on your product to their contacts. When you have a catchy message and product or service, it is easy to generate interest on Twitter.

2. Make a sale

Regardless of whether you sell a product or a service, a sale will generate income. By increasing visitors to your website, you increase your chances of making a sale. Go a step farther by making contacts that are within your targeted market. For example, do you sell children’s clothes? If so, your target market is parents. Perform a search on Search.Twitter.com to find posts that focus on parenting. You can offer a response that leads to your website, increasing your chances of making a sale.

3. Obtain feedback

A great way to subtly increase traffic to your website or blog is to ask for feedback. By providing a link, you will not only get website traffic, but you will also get what you asked for, feedback. For example, do you sell great products, but are your prices too high? Twitter members will let you know.

4. You can update customers

When connecting with customers, invite them to opt-in for your newsletters. Or, give your customers the opt-in for Twitter updates. You can share promotional codes, new product releases, and so forth.

5. Use Twitter to hire help

Whether you want to hire a full-time employee or outsource a project or two, you can use Twitter to find qualified individuals to do the work.

6. Build relationships with future customers or business partners

Most importantly, use Twitter as a means of connecting with prospects, customers and possible business partners. Treat Twitter connections like you would network with other people at a social or professional networking event. Allow people to get to know you and offer help before offering your products and services.

For more practical help on using Twitter as a social networking tool to grow your business, try out our social media starter project kit!

February 11, 2010 Linky

WEB 2.0 Other Popular Technologies You Must Know About

Are you using these popular technologies?

Today you will become acquainted with other popular technologies that you must know about for you business.

What is Tagging?

A commonly used term with Web 2.0 is tagging. Tagging is a way users can classify or organize and categorize data, and is common on many sites including social bookmarking. How it works is users attach tags to data items like web pages, their blog entries or even photographs they want classified and categorized. When you tag a blog page, you may tag it with terms like, “internet marketing” or “small business marketing”.

Web 2.0 is a client-sided application, meaning end-users, people sitting at their computer, can categorize, tag and store data on the Web and share it with others. For example, let’s say you bookmark 3 of your favorite sites. Usually, when you visit another computer, your bookmarks will not show up when you log in. When you use Web 2.0 technologies however, you bookmark your favorite sites to public forums, so you can access them from anywhere. At the same time, anyone else can access your favorites from any computer anywhere in the world. This is a powerful and intelligent way of sharing data.

What is RSS?

This is another WEB 2.0 technology that rapidly gained popularity. RSS technology, or “Really Simple Syndication” is a tool anyone can use to tell the world at large about new blog entries or web entries. What you do, is set up your site content using RSS tools or content aggregators. What happens is any time you post new information to your page, that information is fed to people that are linked to your feed. For instance, you can subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting RSS feed and choose to read it through Google Reader so that you can follow all your favorite blogs in one place.

Other Applications

Many applications allow readers to interact with the Web pages they browse. These applications are all part of Web 2.0 technology, and include SOAP, XML, and AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript) which allows websites to communicate with the browser behind the scenes and without human interaction. These technologies allow you to interact with a web page that is live in much the same way you would interact with a page from your own computer, a page you created.

In conclusion, even though WEB 2.0 is not new anymore, people are finding new and innovative ways to use it. Strategically, you can use Web 2.0 to market your products and services and promote your business or site to millions of people around the world. Everywhere, people are taking an active interest in becoming members of a global community. You need to do this in a politically correct and decent way.

Thus, Web 2.0 has become a lot more popular than it had been in the past. Sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube are all growing at a rapid pace and are being used by collaborative types interested in linking and information sharing on the Web.

And if you’re convinced by now that you should become part of this exciting WEB 2.0 world full of opportunities, please have a look at Virtual Project Consulting’s Social Media Starter Kit. It will help you become active on the top 4 social media tools in a way that will grow your business exponentially.

Please share with us some of your favorite WEB 2.0 technologies that you use that makes a difference in your business?!? LEAVE A COMMENT