Sunday, June 30, 2013

Smart Managers Coordinate Flair with Planning


Talent management
Quality is always better than quantity. Many companies today are still obsessed about headcount, rather value the right people for the right jobs. Managers must position the right people and coordinate them with appropriate roles to make organizations foster. The induction can be major, according to PMI, around 72 percent of business goals actually meet the business objectives at companies with major or better harmony between their talent management and strategical planning of organizations. This can be viewed in a contrast with organizations having only 58 percent with average coordination. Besides the probable Return on Investment (ROI), merely 10 % of organizations report important alignment. That means being a manager you can assume what is the main reason behind the flair crisis.
According to a keen observation, organizations complain complexity in locating educated project management employees to fill vacancies. There are few organizations which are steaming up seriously. You can observe the examples of Silicon Valley, Google, and Yahoo! And Apple. Managers who are capable to align the flair or talent of the employees with the strategy development and edge over others and complains less difficulty in filling up vacancies. Organizations that synchronize with this aspect are also more successful at executing structured career paths. It requires about ten years of extensive experience which includes five years of project management for managers who are capable to manage extremely high strategic and difficult projects that expand three or more organizational limits.  Developing a professional path not only creates employees  feel like the company has a profound interest in them, but it also supports the organization point  and close and talent gaps that may prevent  it from performing on its business objectives.
Hiring and sustaining superior talent will only get organizations ahead. Managers need to judge the outcomes, too. Across the organizations with bold coordination are more likely to judge results such as employee turnover, learning growth, and employee involvement, retention and performance.
One brilliant example would be of NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The organization tracks the success of its career growth courses by measuring enrollment quantity and reaction from higher leadership. There is no doubt that developing a flair management course comes with expensive fees. However, consider the peril of not attempting. So, managers need to think about making that investment which can transform their organization’s best talent into its success.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Smart Managers Coordinate Flair with Planning

Quality is always better than quantity. Many companies today are still obsessed about headcount, rather value the right people for the right jobs. Managers must position the right people and coordinate them with appropriate roles to make organizations foster. The induction can be major, according to PMI, around 72 percent of business goals actually meet the business objectives at companies with major or better harmony between their talent management and strategical planning of organizations. This can be viewed in a contrast with organizations having only 58 percent with average coordination. Besides the probable Return on Investment (ROI), merely 10 % of organizations report important alignment. That means being a manager you can assume what is the main reason behind the flair crisis.


According to a keen observation, organizations complain complexity in locating educated project management employees to fill vacancies. There are few organizations which are steaming up seriously. You can observe the examples of Silicon Valley, Google, and Yahoo! And Apple. Managers who are capable to align the flair or talent of the employees with the strategy development and edge over others and complains less difficulty in filling up vacancies. Organizations that synchronize with this aspect are also more successful at executing structured career paths. It requires about ten years of extensive experience which includes five years of project management for managers who are capable to manage extremely high strategic and difficult projects that expand three or more organizational limits.  Developing a professional path not only creates employees  feel like the company has a profound interest in them, but it also supports the organization point  and close and talent gaps that may prevent  it from performing on its business objectives.
Hiring and sustaining superior talent will only get organizations ahead. Managers need to judge the outcomes, too. Across the organizations with bold coordination are more likely to judge results such as employee turnover, learning growth, and employee involvement, retention and performance.
One brilliant example would be of NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The organization tracks the success of its career growth courses by measuring enrollment quantity and reaction from higher leadership. There is no doubt that developing a flair management course comes with expensive fees. However, consider the peril of not attempting. So, managers need to think about making that investment which can transform their organization’s best talent into its success.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Basic Skill For An Effective Learning Session



Image
Project management experts play many roles. As authors, they arrange the project’s contract to begin the project task. As leaders, they organize project groups. And as a financial accountant of many forms, they check and balance the project execution within the budget. With so many diverse talents, a project manager must adhere to the project conveyance, they should also be aware of the fundamental skills they required at the time of commencing the lessons learned discussions.
Managing Time
The time management session must be organized with a particular discussion along with specific beginning and ending time. The group members will have different projects and jobs to work on, so it is very important to regard the time the project managers allocate during the entire session of learning. The meeting must begin on time while maintaining the pace of the meeting. Always remember that time is running and it has to be a perfect utilization of this learning phase while maintaining the length of the lessons.
In this way, the discussion finishes when it was organized to finish. For keeping the meeting on the right track, managers may have to convey team members when to shut on a note or inquire them to discuss it with more deeply at some other time. If required, plan an additional discussion to ponder about that specific point, or add it to the list of meeting notes  and ask for feedback when the manager moves the intimation document.
Encourage Participation
The project manager is a great facilitator. They are meant to convince every team member to participate. They work as a team leader to database manager. They never attract from ranking the participants by their position titles, as the aim of a lesson learned meeting is to gather information  and feedback on a project’s work and decide what might or might not be appropriate to the upcoming project, no matter what the team member’s position or title is.
 Easy Jargon
There are times when project managers speak jargon that is familiar to themselves only. For instance, when they say “call,” it refers to the programming term or just to explain a customer service way. If the project manager has not been a part of the task all along, they should create a point to know themselves with a few of the special terms that may have been utilized on the project or might be showed in the discussion.
Let us know what other skills you prefer for conducting successful learning lessons.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Grow Your Network To Grow With It, Professionally.



Grow with your network
Our professions survive in the background of that complex mesh of family, and peers that we term as our network.
I mostly drained an equivalence between that network, as a system of kinds, and our own minds. For instance, when our intellect creates more bold associations, our network of cells converts “intelligent”. Similarly, we become more skillful at matters that we utilize our intellect relations for and our network becomes more talented as we employ the associations we have developed.
In the similar way that we as project experts are flooded by an awesome quantity of incentives, so too is our business network. And similarly, the network can only get perceive of a very tiny number of objects. The mainstream of what it faces plainly has to be overlooked. Many writers wrote about how we can feel the element of our intellect called the Reticular Activating Systems ( RAS ) to assist us obtain professional motives. If this correlation sustains ( and I assume it does), we should be able to feel our network to assist in moving ahead with project management professionals in the similar method that we can feel our own understandings.
Basically organizing an aim mentally cause the intellect to phases that can support us obtain that objective. Likewise, eloquent an aim of our network, specifically in writing, makes our colleagues’ minds, developing points of emotions within the network. The network transforms and can relate new interpretations to the same matter that has been occurring all around it. All at once, everything looks to become synchronized to your aim.
For instance, if you express career association that you are finding for a job, it becomes a matter about which your colleagues know. When they see an unwrap project management status, other than overlooks it, they consider of your job hunt. As a contribution participate of this association, you can perform an activity with others to balance your mind to their aims. You will grab an attention to things that you otherwise would have disregarded that will support you to help them acquire their professional goals.
As I have mostly commented, networking is munificent task. When you offer without considering of getting in return, you will explore that the association offers back more than what you actually invested in. Don’t be suspicious about it, not even for a single second.
Have you ever got such advantage from your networking?

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Three Ever Green Project Management Rules


hree project management rules

We  all look forward to having our personalized project management regulations. We bank on them over and over again to assist and guide many managers to get through successful project outcomes, regardless of the kind of project, technology or context.  Years from now, I read something really impressive about best practices that made sense for any project. I excerpted the three best ideas to make up my own personalized project management rules to follow.
Rule # 1 : Restrict The Number Of People Associated  With The Project
In my observation, it is quite familiar to have people look for an association to a project, specifically if it had a greater extent of administrative appearance. Project managers who put precious efforts in bold stakeholder administration – that is stopping unnecessary roles and responsibilities –have more direct conversations in their projects and better elaborated roles, which also assists fresh group members understand their role associate with others in the group.
Rule # 2 : Reduce Reporting, But Make It A Quality Content
I have noticed some projects where the endeavor puts into stand reporting roughly surpassed the endeavor put into project tasks. Too much in the process of project reporting is just as harmful as too little. Dependent on the kind of project, the most flourishing project managers concentrate on a little number of necessary measurements ( agenda, finance, target, attainable variations, etc.) that are simply fathomed by both the project group and the stakeholders.
Rule # 3: There must be a periodic review expanding not only what has been exhausted  and assigned, but also predicted costs to the end of the plan. It is conventional for project managers mass discussions to review before project spend as outlook spend prediction. The important term in this practice is “what has been assigned” to the project, both in terms of financing and assets. Most of the times, project managers fall short to comprise financing and project asset assignments during a financial analysis.
Even if I read these rules long before, these best practices still reverberate today. As these rules and practices have been compiled after greater exposure and experience in various contexts. Which makes them even more reliable and suitable for almost any type of project tasks.
What are your robust rules for managing project in your own style?
Share your valuable inputs with us to make the best practices even more enriching for each one of us !

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Utilize Project Management Techniques Accurately



Project Management Context

Earlier I encounter a promotion for a project management technology software. It was an expression of seven pre programmed robots in a team, which represented humans. The tag line expressed that if your group is similar to this, any project program management should work.
It gave me surprise how many companies really suggest that commendable technology software do the task and yield prosper outcomes –not us. Guess how many organizations and project managers adequately realize their project requirements and the suitability of the latest technology to their organization’s current setting and procedures?
Organizations sometimes purchase costly project management software and the coax groups to be conventional and settle into the software rather than personalize the software to the requirements of the persons and the project. However, purchasing applications because other companies utilize them does not naturally mean you too, will transform a leader. Similarly with the best practices, knowledge has trained me that technology and gadgets are precious – however only if they complete breaks and require successful.
Scientific expertise is crucial and can boost effectiveness, but in the right setting and situation. The project is programmed and implemented by humans –hence technology need to balance and be unstated by the humans who utilize it. Previous to investing in a new project management software  you must think about factors like training, prices and your group mate intentions to utilize the techniques. Or else, it could sum up to a costly lumber.
What learning can you share of fading to involve customers prior to investing in technological applications? What aspects should be taken prior to investing in new software?
Your experiences will be the part of learning

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Being pushy? Or not?



Assertive Manager
People do not bother how much a person know, until they know how much the person care for others.
Have you ever noticed your project manager saying something which makes you feel like a machine? These are signs you are working with an extrovert manager.
In opposite,  few project managers supervise more as a shy person. They are less  belligerent and more submissive in their behavior.
There is a level of being pushy and assertiveness, which be fathomed as a person’s inclination to aggressively protect, convince and express out for his individual benefits.
Being pushy is an important factor for a leader’s skill to attain outcomes, according to a 2006 research made by Daniel Ames and Francis Flynn. They realized that our normal inclination to concentrate on optimistic data tells that the value of low or high extents of being pushy may sometimes overshadow the positivities in the perceptions of those who watch.
So what is the ideal behavior to boldness in the situation of project management? My answer would be, it actually depends on the kind of project.
May be the crux is to create our abilities to expand a broader range of pushiness and maintain our attitude to the situation of the project.
For example, on short term projects, being assertive to a greater extent will offer us the skill to gain outcomes. But on a long term project, the ideal attitude would be more reasonable in pushiness to develop healthy bonds with our team members, which enables us to coordinate positively in the future.
Which type of project manager you think you are? And which kind of project manager you fancy to be ?

Monday, February 11, 2013

The Rhythm of Communication in Project Management


Image
The basic purpose of communication is to split information or convey an alteration of behavior. This is a specifically real for the communication with the project members. The confront of the effective communication is sustaining a persistent aim and altering your presentation and rhythm to prevent becoming uninteresting.Successful communicators utilize a known approach to make it melodious. It doesn’t matter if you concentrate on Beethoven’s Symphony or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. You realize continuation and diversification in both of them. Traces of high pitch intensity with calmer surroundings create an outstanding triumph.
The same outcome can be obtained in your communication by harmonizing optimistic and negative aspects of a code or message, altering the course of the data flow.
For instance, if you desire somebody to halt an unwanted attitude, realize the issue, but also emphasizes the advantages of the alteration you desire to happen. Or else than expressing the group they are following the agenda, alter the route of the data flow and inquire them for concepts to retain the mislaid phase. The tip you are developing is stable, but the diversifications in expressing takes to involvement.
One more important aspect is to compete on a high intensity. Unforgettable rhythm does not die away. It creates a climax!
Effective communicators like Martin Luther King Jr, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and many others, all had a stable, dedicated message they transformed in a manner that would develop a burly effect in their spectators.
All had dissimilar vocal styles, but each had an actual feel of music and presentation. Their communications are meticulously designed for response, but the performance adds great mass to the message.
Project managers need to consider upon the effectiveness of communication to create a rhythm in your work and to create an impact on your team.

Do you make the most out of this art of communication ?

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

How Cloud Computing Benefit Project Management?



Cloud Computing

Projects works as catalysts in performing major roles in fostering a prosper future of business. But this can only be possible with sound and really effective project management base, without which, it would just be a pipeline dream.
A project management foundation is comprised of systems, process, paradigms, laws and guidelines, incorporated project management, techniques, best practices implementation, project resources, learning tools, and future practices.
There are so many small firms, legal organizations or those with budding economies recurrently don’t have the sufficient finances to spend on complicated data technology in constructing and sustaining a project management podium of their own.
This big division in the job of project management, can be minimized with the help of cloud commuting. Through which business opportunities arise, individuals and  legal officials can gain access to a trustworthy project management forum online at reasonable cost, according to their utilization or on rent. This whole system is known as the Project Management Cloud or PM Cloud.
There are a number of analytic PM clouds that can be noted as:
• Engineering & Building PM Cloud
• IT PM Cloud
• Research & Development PM Cloud
• Administration PM Cloud
• Edification or Education PM Cloud

Managers that prefer using cloud computing, are able to shun key capital investments and can also resist the continuing difficulty of administering the expertise confrontations.
When the PM Clouds are accessible at reasonable costs, when required, they can affect project management in the subsequent ways:
v  A major step ahead in attaining the opportunities to budding finances and small firms capable to accomplish internationally by influencing superior quality PM clouds.
v  Grooms the novelty as firms controlling more reasonable PM cloud choices to trial.
v  Reduces the division between small and big firms. It also offers identical opportunities as project management clouds develop into at a reasonable cost.
v  It enables for international cooperation with project skills all over the world.
v  It aids worldwide and dynamic training and learning at a reasonable price.
However, we are still in the emerging state of offering complicated incorporated project management podiums in the cloud, but ultimately, cloud computing will affect the approach the project management is completed in the prospect.

How do you believe cloud computing is affecting project management? Share your views with us!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Project Threat + Precautions = Project Victory


Risk management

Risk management under the umbrella of best practices, is crucial in the project victory. It compels the project team to think about the deal breakers on a project, and to proactively arrange and execute solutions.
Below are some example of managing risks that could have accumulated a project.
A project manager looks after an electrical team who is responsible for mounting electrical and audio visual machinery. The civil engineering and building teams conveyed the completed and well furnished location, all set for the final stage of the project. To the project manager’s alarm, the team member does not synchronize with the screens, depict them not good for the function.
Where was the problem?
The civil and building teams had changed the measurements of the rooms, the clients botched to correspond the alterations to the electrical team. Pretentious the project was accelerated according to the preparation, the project manager organized and submitted the electrical designs based on the authentic measurements of the room. These designs were made outmoded when the room measurements altered, which distressed the machinery’s placing.
How to resolve?
To rectify the problem, the project manager designed and submitted new drawings for electrical team. The location’s walls and roofs had to be reopened to house the alterations, which caused setbacks and greater costs, amendment and irritation.
Had there been a vigorous risk recognition and executing plans, they would not be in this problem. There were so many pretentious that were left open and risks pertaining to many exterior addictions were ignored.
As part of this risk management, precautions and proactive correspondence with the clients and other teams should have been programmed. For instance, the project manager should have thought and inquired questions about how the contractors and locations be observed and controlled. What would the incidence and form of communication be like with clients?
There should have been an evaluation of what if  situations. What happens if the results are not as predicted or calculated? What are the threats if there are issues with contractors? What is the result of not having keen assets to the team?
These forms of discussions and inquiring would have changed the project manager and team to precautionary program to administer the quality of contractor task and assign the necessary asset on the project team.
So, as a project manager, do you practice risk management? How does its planning and organizing transforms your projects into a victory?
Share your views with us.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Develop The Inclined Approach In Project Management



Inclined Approach to Project Management
The ability to think lean, leads to the maximized productivity and Return On Investment, which organize the projects in a way to ensure maximum project success.
What is the Inclined Approach and How does it Affect the Project Management process, is the question in focus.

The inclined approach or lean thinking is the adoption of that particular attitude in all the areas of project management, right from the start and until its completion.
The fundamental purpose of the approach is to increase the worth of the project while decreasing the wastage. In other words, the project manager boosts the ROI with minimum input while the maximum value of the entire business sustains.
Adopting an inclined approach in the project management supports the project to be completed on time and within the limited budget. Less input, greater output. For the kick start with this approach, here are some useful hints to help you get along with it at first:
-          Eradicate Unexpectancies – To do this, it is highly important to evaluate the current situation regularly. It will help the manager to boost the project tracking and you would know when to switch the track to avoid any uncertainty. As you know, project management is a continuous process and requires regular evaluation too.
-          Be smart- before starting off with a project, ask first if it is really important and worth the effort? If not, then it would be a waste of your business efforts. The second question is what resources are available to you already as it would be stupidity to reinvent the wheel. Lastly, evaluate the factors which need to minimize the waste.
-          Make at Least Practical Product- Head your project at a very small level and continue to learn and evaluate the progress. When you would reach to the highest point, you may have lots of useful information regarding your project to help you in optimizing the process.
-          Authenticated Knowledge- the project manager needs to incorporate practical experiment in order to authenticate the learning and evaluate your assumptions. You cannot rely on any idea until you prove it valid with necessary experiments.
-          Develop-Evalutate-Discover – For a project manager it is crucial to never miss any chance to gather valuable information regarding the project. Make sure that you utilize all the data you have collected so far for your project and make it valuable and a complete success.
-          Standardized Projects- Project manager needs to maintain project consistency with vital aspects as decision making and fine execution. Make sure that everyone gets the standardizes rewards after the project completion. In this, the working ethic and morale plays a crucial role in lean thinking for success.
-          Spin Around- The ability to pivot the project when it is needed is always extremely practical. Sometimes the Plan A doesn’t work, stress is a must in this situation, but can be handled if the project got B,C, or D plan ready to be executed. This will help the project manager to avoid falling into the challenge. Apply the new horizon to your project that might also lead it to new heights.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Top 10 Challenges Of a Change Leader


Change Leader

There are certain challenges and tricks that has to be followed by the managers in order to flourish and move forward by maintaining a healthy change in the organization. An important question for managers is that are they actually developing a social network of practice or excellence origin? Below is a list for change leader and managers which sets top agents for change management. Take a look.
The Challenges!
  1. Perseverance and determination. The manager needs to adhere to the way  and must be able to intervene himself with complex and difficult situations.
  2. Knowledge is Power. The manager needs to be poised and organized even in the toughest of times. He must be able to manage change with structured thought and a calm attitude. And of course, use  the power of knowledge.
  3. Be Positive and Be Real. Don’t just hope for the best. Prepare to make it the best and always keep an eye on the ground realities in achieving the goal.
  4. Think strategically. For managers, it is crucial to set a clear path towards their goal. A plan which has to be navigated.
  5. Supervise. There may be numerous ways to manage change process for a leader. But I think the best among them would be to like one for whom the whole team would willingly like to follow. The manager needs to be an example, rather than just being a boss.
  6.  Think Wisely. When the change is accepted, there are obvious confusions and resistance at many levels. The managers must have an integrative thought process for this.
  7. Know the organization’s cultural values. It is really important for a manager to know well about the organization’s culture. It will help him in making plans for change.
  8. Be an inspiration. A good and successful manager leaves a trail behind him to be followed.
  9. Great decisions. The skill to be a good decision maker is in fact very rare and that is why so much valuable. They say , good decision making comes from profound experience.
  10. Relevancy matters. The change has to be relevant with every asset and resource. The smooth transition is the key to have a successful change process.
Catch you up with more! Till then share your views.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Direct the knowledge spaces



Bridge the knowledge gaps
One thing is for sure, to be a successful project manager you cannot just be recognizable with the roles of project manager. You must be well aware of other responsibilities as well. But in the most common observations, a project manager mostly does things which they are familiar with and not the ones that they must do which contributes a lot to the overall success of the project.
Beside the fact, that a project manager does those tasks which they like the most or they know the best. To overcome the knowledge spaces with the team work specialization. It is essential because in order to get the real path to success, the manager must have an expert and specialized set of team members.
But nobody can be a master of everything. For this the best practice is to acquire feedbacks from the team members on a daily basis. This is a way to make them realize that they are important and are well accepted with their contributions which make a project excel and more productive.
Share with us, how do you tackle with your knowledge with that of your teammates?

Saturday, January 5, 2013

The Five Core Targets of a Project Manager



Targets of Project  Manager
The targets mentioned in today’s post are all generic and can be applied to all types of projects. No matter on which experience level of management are you, these goals will help you attain your objectives.

Target # 1 : Completion on time

Time is money. This is the oldest yet the trickiest tip for all types of organizations. Completing a goal in time, is the most difficult of tasks and require several changes and alterations to be managed effectively in order to achieve the scheduled job. To be able to succeed, the manager needs to optimize the goal very cautiously with a practical system to control changes which occurs during the project. Keeping the project up to date with total control is the key to achieve the first and the most important target.

Target # 2 Keep it in the budget

A good project manager completes his project within the limits of the project budget. To be certain that the project doesn't cost higher than the budget, the manager has to plan everything including people, resources and all types of project materials to be completely tracked to avoid any deviations.

Target # 3 Deliver what was expected

The next target is to meet the expected outcome for which the project was started in the first place. To achieve this, the manager need to make sure that all the requirements are clear and available before the beginning of the project in order to achieve the desired goal without vague and confusing set of details that hinders the attainment of the main aim. So make sure that all the pre-requisites are at your disposal.

Target # 4 Keep stakeholders content

A manager can achieve all the targets well but still faces unhappy stakeholders. Why? Because sometimes there expectations fails from the project due to many reasons.
To make sure that the end user is content and satisfied with the whole project, the manager needs to concentrate on their level of expectations and manage them with equal interest. Keeping them posted about the project details and progress and get their inputs more often.

Target # 5 Build a happy team

Last but not the least, a happy team is the only strong source of all the targets to be achieved. Being a project manager it is better to know the entire team, their requirements and issues. Remember your team satisfaction is the first step in a project’s success.
A proper rewarding structure for employees to motivate them of their best achievements is always a good way to boost their morale and to create a sound relationship with them.
Let me know if there is anything else in your mind.