From the category archives:

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In the know: managing project assumptions

January 21, 2009

Need some help managing assumptions on your project?  Assumptions assist with risk management and planning, although you do need to keep on top of them.  I’ve just written a basic guide to project assumptions at PM Majik, so check it out!

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A podcast on peer reviews

November 9, 2008

I’ve just listened to me on the Project Management Podcast talking about peer reviews.  Thankfully Cornelius wasn’t videoing – in real life when we were recording this interview (in the exhibition hall at the PMI Congress in Denver) I was waving my arms around!  It was fun doing the recording ‘live’ – we were talking [...]

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A glossary of terms

June 9, 2008

I came across this recently. If you are new to project management you might find it interesting. It’s TechRepublic’s glosssary of PM terms, which you can use as a starting point for getting to grips with a whole new language. It’s not complete but it’s a useful springboard.

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Working smarter, not harder

April 23, 2008

Did you know that an individual typically works overtime in a year equating to not being paid until 22 February? That’s nearly two months of ‘free’ work we give our employers because overtime is unpaid. As project managers, we are generally quite a well organised bunch, and I didn’t think I’d learn a lot at [...]

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Tackling the issues of cross-border projects

April 21, 2008
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Cross-cultural teams

This is the last in a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams. Missed the earlier posts? Read the first bit here, and the second bit here. The biggest issues for international projects are cultural understanding and communication. The former isn’t something that can be neatly tackled by a software package. It relies on [...]

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Challenges for the project manager

April 14, 2008
This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Cross-cultural teams

This is part 2 of a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams. Missed part 1? Read it here. Project managers taking on international projects face a variety of practical challenges. For example, time zones are important. How will you conduct real-time team meetings? Who is going to be the person who gets up [...]

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Cross-border projects

April 7, 2008
This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Cross-cultural teams

This is the first in a 3-part series about managing cross-cultural and international teams. The world of business is continually shrinking: we work in an environment with real-time audio visual communication with colleagues on the other side of the world and online translation tools. Even small companies can operate internationally with outsourcing agreements and partners [...]

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Back from the brink

February 12, 2008

Andrew Ball, head of IT Performance Audit at the Audit Commission, was one of the speakers at last week’s BPUG Congress. He spoke during a session in the strategic project and programme management strand about how to cope when projects go wrong. The main thrust of his argument was trying to avoid projects going wrong [...]

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Project management search engine

February 11, 2008

If you are new to project management, or just don’t want to wade through pages of irrelevant search results, try Jack’s latest addition to PMConnection. The project management search engine searches around 80 dedicated project management websites and blogs, like Gantthead, PMHut, Projects@Work, Raven’s Brain and of course, this site. That means that when you [...]

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Career know-how from people who’ve done it

September 6, 2007

This time last week I was at a BCS young professionals group event in London, listening to Owen King, Mark Bloodworth and Marc Holmes talking about how they got to where they are in their careers. Marc’s route meandered into software architecture, Owen knew what he wanted before he even graduated and Mark moved around [...]

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