Project Management

Recently I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. If you’re ever visiting Sydney, or if you live here and have never partaken, I thoroughly recommend the experience. I was equally delighted to find that climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge taught me some new lessons and reinforced some existing ones about how to manage projects to achieve success. Here is what I learned on my big adventure: 1. Be...

Stakeholders have the ability to make or break projects, if they put their minds to it. This makes them a risk to the likelihood of completing the project. The stakeholders of any project should be pinpointed, understood, and managed to increase project success. In this article we will look at who stakeholders are and their interests to understand and manage them effectively. To give a...

Undertaking projects and programs needs to bring about benefits. This is to ensure that return on investment is achieved. This has led savvy organizations to start focusing on benefits realization. Benefits realization management is a process that is undertaken to get ready for and manage planned benefits through change. The fundamental reason for doing this is that it is possible to...

Acommon question that arises is whether the Project Manager should be a Scrum Master. Project Managers are sometimes expected to take up the role of Scrum Master when their organization moves to take an agile approach. This may well occur without providing the Project Manager any training to take on this new and quite distinct role. However, a recent survey by Scrum.org found that fewer...

The right project manager can be the real difference between your project’s success and failure despite the governance structures. Unfortunately, even the most experienced managers often make blunders when hiring. The wrong PM will drain your time, money, and resources. Even with the best intentions, hiring managers still miss out on too many things during the hiring process. Look...

With so many expectations, a project manager is such a prominent position. The never-ending demands and grind make it a critical designation that not everyone is cut out for. It requires preparedness, execution, accountability, and leadership ability.That’s why choosing the right candidate for the job is an inherently complex task with no easy solutions. Even an hour-long screening...

With strict budgets, short deadlines, new processes, and a plethora of management decisions to be made, life is never easy for a first-time project manager. An efficient PM is also expected to have a deep understanding of personnel management, risk management, and data-driven progress analysis. Even though this seems like a lot to do all at once, these challenges gradually become easier...

The Project Management Office (PMO) is facing challenging times. As pressure mounts to deliver projects at speed, some of the more traditional PMO types are struggling. They, in some cases, fail to deliver what the business needs. This has led to increased scrutiny of PMOs. While some believe the PMO is in its demise, it appears more likely that PMOs will evolve to meet business needs...

Discussion of PMaaS is growing online and in project management communities. Smart PMaaS providers have begun marketing very effectively to firms looking for project management services. But are PMaaS providers all they are cracked up to be? What do PMaaS solution providers offer, and what are the benefits and drawbacks of engaging in such an arrangement? Are some project types better for...

The way that projects are managed and executed has a direct relationship to organisational successPaul Oppong Everything that people do in a business should be linked back to its strategy. A strategy is a plan of action that allows achievement of long-term goals. In fact, it will cost the organization time and money if a project fails. The organization will not achieve its short-term...