Author: Linky

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.

As part of our Mission at Virtual Project Consulting, consistent delivery of Professional Project Management Consulting Services, Linky provides consulting to small to medium business owners and service professionals and supplies a Solid-as-a-Rock project management toolkit to help you be efficient in managing your business projects! Try it out now for only $27.


Linky

5 Social Media Tips

Tips To Optimise Your Use Of Social Media

Since I discovered social media in 2008, I went on a mission to learn how to use it, what it can do for my business, how to use it to drive traffic, which tools to use to automate it, how to connect with others and so on.  As most of you know, social media is a powerful tool for increasing the traffic to your blog, and there are many different social media tips.  Here I have selected five of the best tips that have worked for me so far.

1. Befriend power users

Power users are the users that exert the most influence on social media sites.  These users regularly submit content that gets popular and they have many people that follow them. Check out the popular content in your niche and see who is submitting them.  You’ll often find a select group of people who submit the bulk of the popular content.

Some ways to become friends with these power users are to vote for their stuff, send them interesting links, link to their site if they have one, leave comments on their blogs, interview them. Once you’re developed a relationship with them, you can send them your best material or products and ask them to submit it if they like it.

2. Create more comprehensive content

One of the things I have discovered through my own research is that the typical social media users have a great appetite for learning. For this reason the content that does well in social media is pretty comprehensive and often educational.  The content is longer than your average post and it covers a subject with depth.

Therefore, it is worthwhile to creating longer posts filled with much value as you will do better on social media sites as a result.  Now each of your blog posts doesn’t have to be 1,500 words, but try to regularly publish longer, in-depth posts that stand out and add value.

3. Add images and video to your best content

Another thing that works well, is adding multimedia to content.  This is another thing I noticed about viral content. Much of this content is highlighted by images and video. It only takes a little bit of time to go to flickr.com and google images to find relevant images that will improve your content.

Video seems to be the next big thing in blogging.  More and more people are making web video a part of their routine.  Therefore, if you have any video skills, use them!  Also, the cost and learning barrier for producing videos has come down with discount equipment, software, and training courses.  I’m definitely planning to add video to my sites soon to test how well it works.

4. Try niche social media sites

Instead of just focusing on the big general subject sites like Facebook and Twitter, there is a lot of opportunity in niche social media sites.  Here’s a great list of niche type of sites.  These sites won’t send as much traffic as the big general subject social sites, but the quality of their traffic is often much higher.  You’ll get a higher percentage of repeat visitors, a lower bounce rate, and more time spent on your site because of the more targeted traffic.

5. Use social media widgets at the end of each post

Widgets are a great way to encourage your visitors to submit your content to social media sites.  Visitors may like a post but without the prompting of a submission button, they won’t think to submit your content. I use ‘Share This’ at the end of each post to encourage readers to share content.

PS: Please feel free to add your own tips to this list as the whole point of social networking is to share, participate and learn from one another!

PSS: Related Social Media articles.

For the Top 10 questions that will answer how and why Social Media marketing will grow your business, read this FREE REPORT.

Linky

10 TIPS TO BECOME SUPER PRODUCTIVE

These Time Management tips will work for any-one, especially busy entrepreneurs, business owners, service professionals, project managers and online marketers.

1. Use self-imposed discipline

In other words, put yourself in a position where you have to get XYZ done. For example, instead of waiting until you have the Power Point presentation done to schedule the webinar… schedule it today and announce to your list, so you then MUST get the presentation done.

2. Every project, task, milestone you work on should have a deadline

Periodically throughout your workday, ask yourself… “does what I’m working on have a deadline”. If not, put one on it. If it’s not worthy of a deadline, dump it.

3. Only check your email 2x a day… and never before getting at least one hour of focused work done.

Work out the times each day that are best for you to check your email.

4. Have the least amount of unscheduled time each day

In other words, try to schedule every hour of your work day. This is one of the most effective productivity tools.

5. Have productivity goals, along with your financial and business goals

In other words, have goals for focused time and completion of tasks.

6. Have rewards at incremental stages of your goal achievement

Far, far off goals tend NOT to motivate us. Close goals, that we can see, tend to be a lot more motivational.

7. Pre-schedule repetitive tasks into your calendar in advance

If there are certain things you do every week, they should get a permanent place in your calendar and they should be treated just like an important appointment.

8. Monitor the time it takes you to go from idea to implementation; and try to speed up the process

Once you know how long a task or project takes, try to speed up the process next time.

9. Try to estimate the amount of time every task will take, then put it in your schedule with a start and stop time

This will force you to work faster and more efficiently. Think… the day before vacation.

10. Regularly consider the consequences of not doing something or of procrastination

Source:  Todd Brown from Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs

Linky

Startups – Entrepreneurs and Project Management

Entrepreneurs and FoundersSTARTUPS

Startups begin with entrepreneurs who have ideas about how they can create new organizations of products and services. They have the capacity to be great!  They just need some oversight, planning and a little project management direction.

(Source: Mike Donoghue – Gantthead)

The Founders of a new company have to be able to do almost everything.  Everyone takes out the garbage, all staffers do technical support to some degree. There is pride in ownership and responsibility in actions.

When Startups Become Successful

If an organization is successful, more people are then brought in to handle more specific tasks. A consequence of this is that categories gets formed that more clearly identifies duties and qualifications.

For those people who learned skills from previous firms that help support and define the operation by developing new processes and departmental structures, there is potential for them to have a great future with the startup.

Skills Diversity

Managing a startup requires a diversity of skills. To perform project management in a newly created company is a similar endeavor, but one that requires dedication to incorporating best practices, building activity plans and developing analytics that help a corporation figure out how to progress.

Operating with the skills of project management means developing a discipline–something sorely lacking in many startups because of deficits of the right personnel or missing skills. Often startup companies are full of talent and energy for the moment, but with literally no plan for the coming day. Being too busy becoming productive and profitable, many don’t include project management in their startup scope.

An Ideal World

Ideally, two or more of the company founders should have project management experience. Putting the pressure on one person to have the knowledge to develop processes and procedures is flawed and creates a probable situation for vulnerability. Bringing in other project-savvy people as the firm expands is helpful. Otherwise, those skills must be taught in the atmosphere of the startup, which can be difficult. Project management is also about strategy and planning. This is another missing component from startups that usually get to a point where they are working hard to tread water just to stay afloat in the business.

The person that makes a difference in a startup uses their forecasting and scheduling abilities to foster a healthy work environment. They are the ones who can take a business beyond a two person operation and set their sights on a horizon where significantly more contributors are part of the plan. The shortsighted unfortunately only have the capacity to run an organization that is an extension of themselves and cannot get beyond that number of employees.

Keeping projects under control through project management principles is essential to long-term success and goals for the future. However, the special spirit that entrepreneurs epitomize can be quickly squashed if it is too severely administered through these guidelines.

I invite entrepreneurs to leave comments about qualities required from founders of new companies especially with regards to managing projects.

Linky

Project Management Is Fun!

40 Rules of Project Management

1. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.

2. You can con a sucker into committing to an impossible deadline, but you cannot con him into meeting it .

3. At the heart of every large project is a small project trying to get out.

4. A user will tell you anything you ask about, but nothing more.

5. Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the least convenient is the correct one.

6. What you don’t know hurts you.

7. There’s never enough time to do it right first time but there’s always enough time to go back and do it again.

8. The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of making a date is forgotten.

9. I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.

10. What is not on paper has not been said.

11. A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

12. If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven’t understood the plan.

13. If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

14. There are no good project managers – only lucky ones.

15. The more you plan the luckier you get.

16. If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

17. A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

18. Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

19. Everyone asks for a strong project manager – when they get them they don’t want them.

20. Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager’s imagination.

21. Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.  Metrics are learned men’s excuses.

22. For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

23. Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

24. Fast – cheap – good – you can have any two.

25. There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.

26. The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

27. A two year project will take three years, a three year project will never finish.

28. When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.

29. A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected – a well planned project only twice as long as expected.

30. Warning: dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.

31. Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

32. There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

33. A project gets a year late one day at a time.

34. If you’re 6 months late on a milestone due next week but really believe you can make it, you’re a project manager.

35. No project has ever finished on time, within budget, to requirement – yours won’t be the first to.

36. Managing IT people is like herding cats.

37. If you don’t know how to do a task, start it, then ten people who know less than you will tell you how to do it.

38. The person who says it will take the longest and cost the most is the only one with a clue how to do the job.

39. The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

40. The nice thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

Linky

10 Ways To Make Projects Fail

Reasons Why Projects Fail

Project Failure
Project Failure

Even though Project Management has become a respected and well-known profession in modern times, in some circles, the belief still persists that getting work done through projects is a waste of time. This is especially true for people who have seen many projects start with a bang only to fail miserably later on.

Let’s look at some causes for project failure that leads to or re-enforces the belief that projects and having a management-by-project approach is a waste of time and money.

Failure can easily be the outcome of a project if you ignore some core principles.

The 10 ways to FAIL projects are:

  1. Don’t analyse the precise Business Needs for a project. Just start the work.
  2. Don’t bother to define Business Benefits as derived from business needs being met.  This way no benefits are realised as none were expected in the first place.
  3. Don’t waste time with Detail Planning. A high level plan, or a graphical picture of the end result, is good enough to show people what the goals are and to get them going.
  4. Don’t bother identifying Tangible Deliverables for a project. Too much documentation is a waste of paper and who will read it anyway? Just fix your attention on the end goal.
  5. Use any available Resources (people), as long as the work gets done. Don’t waste time on precise role descriptions and finding the right people to do the job.
  6. Don’t make the Project Manager Responsible and Accountable for the project outcome. Accountability should come from the project team members. Keep them responsible to make the project happen.
  7. Once a project plan is in place, don’t bother to Follow-up. Each person should commit to what they need to do and that’s it.
  8. Communication should be just enough to keep the project on track, don’t over-complicate things by communicating too much or too often.  Stakeholders (people with a vested interest in the project) can ask if they need more information.
  9. When a project team starts working together, they will build their own momentum without the project manager facilitating the process. Teams will work together without Team Building and Team Development.
  10. As long as the project manager is technically competent, the Leadership abilities can always be developed later.

Surely, you will recognize some of these symptoms of failing projects that you have witnessed or that you may have been a part of.  As stupid as it may sound, if even 3 or more of the principles are lacking (not present) in any project, it is doomed to fail. A failed project is recognized by the fact that it is late, over budget and/or it lacks quality, which means it did not deliver according to requirements and expectations as agreed up-front.  Worst of all, the project was never finished! (Have you ever heard of sunk money?  This is usually how projects are referred to when they are cancelled half-way).

Project Success
Project Success

Now go and re-read the 10 ways to fail projects. See if you can recognise the CORE PRINCIPLES that you need to follow to ensure a successful outcome for your business projects.  Please feel free to add principles or give comments on your experiences of project failures…..

For more Project Management articles, click here

Linky

Leaders Must Adapt To Change

Leaders Must Balance The Temperature

Thermostat

By Tom Atema

Leaders deal with the future, they see a better tomorrow, so they care for today.

This kind of mind and purpose means leaders must adapt to the temperature of today in order to meet the new challenges tomorrow. Today’s leader has to set the leadership thermostat so they are able to adapt to the fast-paced challenges that come their way almost hourly. Today’s challenges bring us into unchartered territory, a place where no one has ever been before.

However, two things are becoming very clear. This is where leaders must take note.

First, any organization that is built on/or operates solely from top down (you do as I say) leadership risks failure. Today, the rules of how an organization is led have changed, like it or not. Today organizations have to move, adjust the organization thermostat to meet the challenges of today. As the thermostat of the organization is moved, change will be needed; a dumping of old habits and the reshaping of how people interact with each other inside the organization has to change or be reshaped. Today the role of each employee has been redefined; each one is a leader and has to be allowed to lead. Top leaders must equip employees with character, skill and thinking formation. All three are needed because they set the environment of the organization. If the heat is too low people get very comfortable and will not make difficult decisions on their own. If the heat is too high, they will jump ship for cooler water.

Second – any organization that believes they can do what they do in a vacuum is done. The truth is we must hit the thermostat and balance the temperature of the organization with others and get out of the “one organization can do it all,” which has placed way too many in the “auto-pilot” mode. Some organizations that have done so have seen some parts of their organization die. And probably the parts that die should have done so years ago! In today’s world, if organizations do not partner, drop their egos and logos, and change the way they operate, they will not last.

After all, if we do today what we did yesterday, we will stay in the mess tomorrow because of the mess we created yesterday.

These are the best of times! Why? Because without the high temperature and the urgency this worldwide crisis has produced I don’t think we would have the heart or the stomach to make the necessary adjustments, the very hard calls that will make us more effective tomorrow.

So LEADER, keep your hand on that thermostat –keep adjusting it to the times.

Related article on Leadership, “Vision Requires Logic And Emotion”

Articles on Project Management: “Project Management’s Golden Ratio“

Linky

Vision Requires Logic And Emotion

Emotion Plus Logic

By Dr. John C. Maxwell

Clearly defined goals are a key component to team success. If employees don’t understand their company’s goals and its game plan, these goals won’t be achieved. Vision determines the direction of the team.

When it comes to casting a compelling vision, I believe that there are two critical elements: emotional and logical transference. This is where many leaders go wrong. Some are great at explaining their vision logically, but they lack the emotion necessary to carry it forward. Others are very emotional when casting a vision, but they lack the logic to sustain it.

If you want to cast a vision that will send your team in the right direction for the long haul, you must do it with logic and emotion. It’s not an either/or situation. You must have both. To transfer a vision emotionally, five elements are needed:

1. Credibility. This is the most important ingredient for successful emotional transference. The person casting the vision absolutely must have integrity. His team must know—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that he walks the walk and talks the talk.

2. Passion. It’s very difficult to pass a vision on to someone else if you don’t believe in it yourself. Half-hearted vision-casting simply doesn’t work.

3. Relationships. The closer a leader is to the members of her team, the quicker they’ll buy in to her vision.

4. Timing. There’s a right time and a wrong time to cast a vision. A good vision presented at the wrong time will fail.

5. Felt need. It’s hard for people to catch a vision when they don’t feel the goal is necessary.

On the other hand, to transfer a vision logically, these seven components are necessary:

1. A realistic understanding of the situation today. If you’re not realistic about where you are today, people will know that you don’t have a clue about tomorrow.

2. An experienced team. It’s tough to keep a vision alive without seasoned players who comprehend why it’s important to the success of your organization.

3. A sound strategy. The step-by-step process of how you’re going to achieve your vision must be well-reasoned and watertight; otherwise it will fall apart.

4. Acceptance of responsibility by the leaders.  The success of a vision nearly always is based upon the buy-in of the leaders who are willing to sign their names to the bottom-line number.

5. The celebration and communication of each victory. Such recognition provides an infusion of enthusiasm and gives your people something concrete to hold on to as they continue to move toward the ultimate goal of fulfilling the vision.

6. Evaluation and communication for each defeat. Be as open about explaining the defeats as you are about celebrating the victories. After each setback, tell your team, “Here’s what we did wrong; here’s why we did not accomplish what we need to.”

7. Time. This is interesting, isn’t it? To emotionally transfer a vision, you need proper timing. To logically transfer it, you just need time.

What happens when emotion joins logic in the transference of a vision? People unite around the goal and start working to achieve it because they believe in what they’re doing and they understand why they’re doing it. That’s how teams win!

John C. Maxwell is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold over 16 million books. His organizations have trained more than two million leaders worldwide.  To find out more, go to www.johnmaxwell.com

Linky

Project Management’s Golden Ratio

Golden Ratio for Project Management   Golden Ratio

“The Golden Ratio is a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all forms striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art” Wikipedia.

The Golden Ratio is also defined as divine proportion, divine section, golden proportion or golden number. The golden ratio is often denoted by the Greek letter phi, usually lower case (φ).

The Golden Ratio finds its fullest realization in the human form.

Examples:

Hand Mona Lisa

The human hand and Mona Lisa’s face is a perfect golden ratio.

According to a recent Oprah Winfrey show, cosmetic surgeons use the Golden Ratio as measurement when they perform cosmetic surgery to people’s faces.

What Does The Golden Ratio Have To Do With Project Management?

Every Project has characteristics and requirements that set it apart from others, in other words, that makes it unique. Each project needs to be responded to with a fresh approach, with the intensity of effort and with the care and attention to detail that every project deserves.

The methods, processes and best practices used to deliver projects, are like the 3 parts of the Golden Ratio. You need to find the ‘golden proportion’ for each project.

What Is A Methodology?

A methodology is “a set of methods, processes and practices that are repeatedly carried out 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.

What Is A Standard?

A standard is “a collection of knowledge areas that are generally accepted as best practice in the industry”.  Let’s try to understand 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 (Project Management Body of Knowledge) and Prince2.

Here are 5 things that should be included in a Project Management Methodology?

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

Here is the one thing that a Project 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 use to ensure that it perfectly fits your project management environment – to find the ‘golden proportion’.

The biggest mistake in project management is not using a Methodology. Here is what you will gain from using a project management methodology:

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

Of course, you will need to use the elements of the methodology that are most suitable to each project you undertake. When managing smaller projects, you will only want to apply lightweight processes to your project 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.

A simple way to organise your business projects, is to use a Project Management Methodology or at least a standardised approach to manage projects.  This will greatly enhance your chances of finding the Golden Ratio and deliver successful projects – projects that finish on time, within budget and with quality.

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

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

She consults with small 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

Linky

Build Your Reputation With Social Networking

Five Ways To Build Your Reputation With Social Networking By Bob Jenkins

Are you using social networks to build your reputation online? Whether you already are or you are just getting started with sites like Twitter and Facebook,  building your online reputation is your biggest responsibility. Here are five ways to make sure you do it right.

#1: Be Proud Of Being You The first thing is, you have to be yourself. You have to be who you are. Because although you can get away with being fake for a little while, as soon as one person realizes that you’re not who you say you are, your reputation is destroyed almost instantly because of the power of social networking. So be yourself. And don’t be afraid of being yourself. Realize that you have some gifts and some knowledge that people need to know about, and those that want to learn from you are going to gravitate towards you. Those that don’t think you’re worth listening to are basically going to ignore you. And it’s at their peril, so don’t worry about them.

#2: Transparency – Never Hide From Your Audience The second thing about your reputation is you should try to be transparent at all times. This means you keep everything real with your audience. For example, I pulled back the curtain to show what it takes to run a product launch. When I did my last product launch, I was Twittering every day what I was doing to get ready for this site. Most of the gurus out there would keep everything under lock and key, and I was being very clear, saying, “This is what I’m doing to get ready for this launch.” It actually helped me have a better launch, even though I told everybody exactly what I was going to be doing. They didn’t think that they had some surprise or whatever like most people teach; they just were excited to be part of it and part of the story. So be transparent. Let people know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and they’re going to learn how to trust you.

#3: Be Positive For Positive Results The third way to build your reputation is to be positive. There are folks out there who generally can do a good job of being negative. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find that to be a very long-term profitable strategy. It may get you some attention at first and spark some controversy, but that’s not the way to go. Be looking forward to the optimistic of your industry, of your business and what the results are going to be. It would be easy for you to go onto Twitter or onto Facebook and talk about how you’re having a bad day or this product sucks or this week sucks or this relationship sucks. But you’re not really there for a support network, per se. You’ll find some of that. If you have something bad happen in your life, sharing it with your followers will be very therapeutic for you and you will get a lot of support back. But when you’re just blasting negative things out, you’re going to get negative things in return, usually. So try to be positive as much as possible and look for the opportunities that are out there and look at them from that positive perspective.

#4: Build Your Reputation And They Will Come The fourth thing you must do is to be patient. This is because, initially, your reputation is going to be built only by yourself and the first initial people who get to know you. But as time goes on and you get more followers and you build a larger network of friends and peers, your reputation will solidify to allow your business to grow. Once it hits a tipping point, your reputation and business accelerates at a very quick pace. So be patient and let it happen. Don’t try this stuff out for a week and then come back to me next week and say, “Well, it didn’t really work. I didn’t really get any results yet.” You’ve got to let social networking play out over a few weeks and then a couple months and so on. A year from now your business is going to be tremendously different compared to where it is right now.

#5: Contribute To The Conversation – Every Day! The fifth thing about your reputation is you need to be someone that people look to as a contributor, not as a leech, not as a mooch, as a contributor. You have to be willing to be involved in the conversation, and you have to be willing to give as much or even more than what you’re going to get in return. The people who do that are growing so fast it makes my head spin. I feel that I’m a pretty giving person but I see some other folks out there that just keep on giving, giving, giving and they just build up a huge following and that social capital is a real asset to your business. So you need to make sure that you’re contributing as much as possible to the conversation. I don’t mean that as just go around randomly and try to help people. Within your specific task, your specific industry, the things you know well, you need to be at the forefront of letting people know how to do what you know how to do without charging them money at first. They’ll come and find your site and your products and they’ll pay you for that as time goes on and their needs grow. With social networking you need to be building your reputation up first. If somebody has a question, you should be one of the first people who answers and you need to answer without reservation not just, “Oh, I answered that in my eBook; go buy it”. They’re going to find your eBook if you just talk to them and give them solutions to the problem they are struggling with at that moment. Give people your input, your encouragement for them to get better at what they are trying to do. Any little quick free advice you can give, give it.

Actively Build Your Reputation With Social Networking And Reap The Rewards You’ve got to be in this for the reason of having fun and really building that relationship. But first, connect with people and really help them out. Understand that they’ll become loyal followers of what you do and see you for who you are. Follow these 5 steps to building your reputation online and you’ll not only beat your competition, you’ll have more fun doing it!

Bob Jenkins teaches business owners how to use internet marketing strategies effectively to attract more customers and get more sales without spending a fortune on advertising.

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Public Speaking Tips for Project Managers

4 Tips for Public Speaking

Many people may not realise it, but speaking in front of an audience of 15-20 people, like when you do formal project feedback, is as close to public speaking as you can get. This is not a skill that comes naturally to many people, even experienced Project Managers. According to that great journal (The Readers Digest!), speaking in front of a group of people is still the number one fear in the world today!

The following four suggestions may help you deal with that fear. These will assist you when speaking to 2 or 20 or 200!

  1. Preparation compensates for a lack of talent! Prepare the talk (feedback) in advance. Organize your visuals, handouts, and material. Practice and rehearse not only the content but also the delivery. Analyze the audience by asking yourself these questions: In what are the attendees interested? What is important to them? How do they want to feel or think at the end of my presentation?
  2. Your “first burst” is important! You should practice, rehearse, memorize, and/or choreograph your “first burst.” This is your opening sentence or paragraph. The purpose of the “first burst” is to grab the attention AND the interest of your audience. Using hilarious humor, quotable quotes, startling statistics, topical stories, and/or a focusing question can accomplish this. Use your imagination when creating your “first burst.”
  3. Your audience is more forgiving than you are! Loosen up, lighten up, have fun when making a presentation. Don’t take yourself too seriously. The audience is not expecting perfection and neither should you! Remember: angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
  4. Stick to the goal of the speech (feedback). Ensure that you deliver the main message that you set out to give, nothing more, nothing less.

This post is written with input from an article of Bryan Flanagan about: “How do I give an effective speech”