Key Findings on How to Succeed in Managing Internet Marketing Projects
Want to know what it takes to successfully manage online marketing project? Rich Byrd, the President of Fast Forward Marketing, Wrike’s new client, and Nic Bryson, Wrike’s VP of Customer Care, are sharing their key findings and long-term expertise on how to best keep projects and your team organized: Break a project down into discrete, clearly defined tasks, instead of having one complex task. This will sharply reduce the chances of team members misunderstanding what they were supposed to do on a project. One project is to have neither too many nor too few tasks. Divide your project into subprojects with 5 to 15 tasks to detail just enough things that go into its successful completion. Put all tasks in one place. This way, you’ll make sure the areas of responsibility aren’t blurred, and two people aren’t both working on the same task on some days, while on other days, no one is. Assign tasks whenever possible to a single team member. So there will be no question as to who is responsible for it. To back the assignee up and make task completion easier, use the descriptions and comments. Request a status update on uncompleted tasks with approaching deadlines – this is a one-click action in Wrike, so it won't take long, and it will help you to avoid neglecting tasks. Set up dependencies and reasonable durations for tasks to easily see when a project is getting stuck on something. I love the ease of seeing what’s holding the project up and adjusting these things on Wrike’s timeline! Work backwards from the hard deadline. If your project has a strict due date, start from that and move back on the timeline to when various tasks must be completed in order to meet the overall deadline. Big thanks to Rich for his excellent input. Experiences are best when shared, so if you too would like to share your best project management practices and tips with other Wrike users, let us know, and together we’ll think of a creative way to feature it in our blog. ”— Rich Byrd, President of Fast Forward Marketing Boutique marketing company, specializing in websites and Internet marketing for small businesses and startups
Tips for Introducing Granular Workload Organization to Your Project Team (Inspired by the Discussion at PMI LA Chapter)
Meet-ups with fellow project managers keep bringing up thought-provoking discussions and interesting ideas on how to maximize the efficiency of project teams. This time, I want to share some notes from the February dinner meeting of the PMI LA Chapter. After my presentation that focused on the ways of making distributed teams efficient, one of the most interesting questions that I heard from the audience was how to introduce a team to a granular work breakdown. No matter how talented and experienced your remote worker is, it might still be unproductive to assign him a huge, month-long task. There’s always some risk in thinking that he’ll do just fine figuring it out all on his own. This way, you severely limit your visibility into the work progress, and if the course goes wrong, you might discover it too late to clear things up. When you can’t discuss things with some of the team members directly and frequently, having more granular assignments might be a helpful tactic and make life easier for both parties. So how exactly do you make it work? Making a sliding scale work in planning First, you could use a sliding scale in planning. Your weekly plan for this week could focus on 5-10 things, just like your quarterly plan, but the scope of those things will obviously be quite different. You don’t have to build a detailed, upfront plan for 52 weeks on January 1st of the new year. If your only concern is visibility, then a weekly plan that only includes the current week is enough. As a new period of time comes, be it quarter, month, week, or day, you plan it, thus the term “sliding scale.” The closer this time period is to today, the more detailed your plan should be. You should however be aware of scope leap when using a system like this. When possible and reasonable, you should also delegate the planning to the employees who are doing the work. Most people feel more moral responsibility for getting the work done on time when they have promised the dates, not when the dates were imposed on them. This not only makes them more responsible, but also makes them happier. By the way, in our recent research on working habits, we discovered that sense of responsibility is the No. 1 productivity trigger: People feel stressed out when they feel no control over their life and work. By returning that feel of control back to them, you empower them. Did I mention that it also saves you from having to do the initial planning?:) It’s hard to come up with a better win-win. Of course, you should also review the plans and align them with higher-level objectives and other employees. Steps to building a new habit within the team Sure enough, it’s easier said than done, as some employees prefer murky schedules, so that they don’t need to report very often. Here are the steps that helped me introduce sliding scale, bottom-up planning: - Make sure to communicate your vision. Why exactly are smaller tasks a better option than bigger assignments? Make sure your team clearly understands the benefits and doesn’t see it as their leader’s new micromanagement whim.- Seed it by your own example. For instance, if you use a collaboration system with a newsfeed, when your workers see how you complete tasks one after another, this might give them a good deal of motivation. They wouldn’t want to lag behind. - When you want to implement some change, making it happen in one big swipe is often hard. Instead, support from a group of “pioneers” might be really helpful. Some employees are more open to new methods. Also, some might be more productivity-oriented than others. Form the “core team,” build the right productivity habit there, and it’ll be easier to later plug in others through peer pressure. - You can blend it into your team’s other working habits. For example, if you have weekly virtual meetings to discuss the work progress and the plans, how big is the difference between these two ways of phrasing the agenda? “Last week, we got 40% of the project completed” or “Last week, we got 10 tasks completed on the project, namely …” To me, the second version sounds way more concise, but it still plays nicely with the habit of discussing work progress every week. - In his awesome best-seller “Good to Great,” Jim Collins said, "Sustained great results depend upon building a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action.” If, after some time and persistent efforts, the new habit still doesn’t stick with certain employees, you need to look deeper into the reasons. Are they your best performers who try to set up their own rules, or are they your worst performers who try to hide that behind ambiguous schedules and obscure “percent completed” updates? Do they simply need some extra motivation, or do they drag and slow down the whole team? Motivation and other benefits of granular tasks The advantages of slicing work into smaller parts are supported by psychologists. For instance, Joseph Ferrari, a professor from DePaul University, says that when the scope of work looks overwhelming, you get captured by the feeling of “seeing the forest and forgetting that it’s made of trees.” In the opposite situation, we can get valuable small wins. Quoting another interesting book, “Small wins are something people can experience pretty regularly if the work is chunked down to manageable pieces” (from “The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer). By the way, “small wins” have become a behavioral term, and they’re often discussed in literature. In “The Power of Habit,” Charles Duhigg concluded that a “huge body of research has shown that small wins have enormous power, an influence disproportionate to the accomplishments of the victories themselves.” What else is there in the habit of granular work organization? In addition to the benefits of clarity, visibility and easier tracking, this approach to distributing workload might also be an efficient way to eliminate procrastination. Another revelation of our survey on work styles was that 21% of workers see procrastination as one of the most dangerous productivity killers. So they’ll most likely thank you if you give them a good weapon to fight this enemy :)
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Selected tasks are at your hand
Dear fans of Wrike, Sorry for the long silence. Now we are ready to please you with several new tools. The best ones are filters. In a couple of clicks you can create a list of tasks for which Mary Smith is responsible and that are overdue; or select tasks that were created by you, and that Rob Brown is currently working on. Now you can quickly display and work on lists of tasks that are chosen by several criteria. It might be done by date: those tasks and folders that are due today, overdue or due this week. You can also select tasks by people: by the author or responsible party. Of course inside of any filter (or filtered folder) you can filter tasks in the traditional way in the horizontal top panel by responsible party, status and due date. The filters are in the bottom of the left panel. By the way, the system now works faster then ever before.
#PMChat: Join the Conversation About Project Stakeholder Management
The success or failure of a project can depend on efficient stakeholder management. Stakeholders include the project team getting work done, the project team's managers providing resources and directions to the team, and anyone and everyone who could be impacted by the outcome of the project — whether they are the client, or a different team whose work depends on successful project completion. If these people aren't in constant communication, the entire project could be delayed weeks or even months. A project manager is the glue bringing all the different stakeholders together. Their greatest challenge is efficiently juggling all these people without the power to "lay down the law". They manage everything laterally, and that means they're asking instead of telling. Sometimes projects go off without a hitch. Sometimes it seems different stakeholders live to make project managers go crazy. We want to have an open discussion with the project manager community (and anyone else who is interested) around the challenges about working with project stakeholders, and some best practices for managing those relationships. This Friday, March 13th, two members of the Wrike team will be hosting #PMChat, run by Robert Kelly. Our two hosts bring a wealth of experience working with various project stakeholders: Errette Dunn, Productivity Coach at Wrike (previously with Airbus and Toyota) and Tom Treanor, Director of Content Marketing at Wrike (previously in project management at HP and PwC Consulting). Accredited and accidental project managers from around the world join in the #PMChat every week, so take this opportunity to get ideas and feedback from your community. Jump in to talk about challenges, successes, and suggestions related to project stakeholder management. How to participate in our #PMChat: Join our #PMChat on Twitter on Friday, March 13, 2015 at 9AM PST (12PM EST). Never participated in a Twitter chat before? It's easy — and you don't have to sign up in advance. Enter #PMChat on TweetChat, and authorize the app for your Twitter handle. This tool will help you follow along with live conversation in a chatroom format. You can easily respond to our questions, retweet others' answers, and talk to your fellow PMchat-ers. Every time we ask a question, we'll start with Q1), Q2), etc. That's your cue to share your thoughts. Questions we plan to cover and learn about during our #PMChat (subject to change): Q1) Who are the different stakeholders that project managers need to keep on the radar during a project? Questions about project team members: Q2) How do you motivate or lead project team members who don’t report to you? Q3) How do you get the managers of those people to provide enough of their time for your project? Questions about project sponsors: Q4) How do you keep sponsors championing the project vs. being passive observers? Q5) If you have multiple sponsors, how do you avoid scope creep? Questions about people impacted by the project: Q6) How do we identify those people who might be impacted by the project? Q7) How do you proactively identify potential issues that will come up and diffuse them early? Q8) What are the best ways to communicate with these people regularly during the project? Q9) What other stakeholder issues do you see in projects? How do you address those? When you're sharing, start your response with A1), A2), etc. to match our question. If you use Tweetchat, it will automatically add #PMChat to the end of your response so that it shows up in the #PMChat feed. Otherwise, if you're adding a tool like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or the Twitter app, add the #PMChat hashtag on your own, so everyone can see your response. Check out this blog post for more general information and an example of how to use Twitter chats. Looking forward to talking with you on 3/13! Image credits: Designed by Freepik
Do Agile Project Managers Need to Be Certified?
Agile Project Management Certification Other organizations, like the Agile Alliance, have offered their own Agile certifications before. But the Project Management Institute, with more than half a million members and credential holders in 185 countries, is definitely the most influential organization in the project management space, so it’s pleasing to see PMI now officially recognizing the Agile mindset as a significant and undeniable trend in project management. Indeed, Agile project procurement management has come a long way from a novel approach to a mainstream project management methodology. It went beyond its mother field, software development, and is used in an increasingly broader set of industries nowadays. This certainly increases the demand for Agile professionals, and employers want to make sure that they are hiring the right person for the job. This is where certifications prove useful, and for those wondering how to become a certified project manager, they should consider becoming certified in Agile for future job prospects. That said, there are still lots of opponents to the whole idea of Agile certification. For example, one of the main arguments for Michael Dubakov, an author at the Edge of Chaos blog, is that there are so many factors influencing the management process that they make any certification impossible. “Your company is special. You have special people on the development team. You have special conditions, rules, and other external factors,” writes Michael. What do you think of PMI's Agile Project Management Certification? What do you think of the new PMI certification? Will you consider it for yourself or your employees? Please post your thoughts in the comments below.
What It Takes to be a Project Portfolio Manager
While there are several types of project management roles and methodologies out there, they all overlap in some way. All project management roles, including project portfolio management, require extensive organizational and time management skills, with experience in resource allocation and budget management.
Wrike and Crescent Sock Company
Learn how Wrike helped Crescent Sock Company double their efficiency by replacing as many as five other apps that they previously used for project management. Customer Crescent Sock Company is the oldest operating hosiery mill in the United States with over a century of expertise in knitting socks. It’s a family-owned business, and some of its employees are following in the footsteps of their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Today, the company produces socks under its own FITSTM brand which is designed to be the world’s best-fitting sock, using materials, processes, and quality controls that far exceed industry standards. Vendor Wrike is a full-featured app for work management and project collaboration which features an interface that is extremely intuitive and fast. Thousands of teams choose Wrike for its seamless integration with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, as well as its real-time updates and interactive Gantt charts. With Wrike, you can keep all data organized in one place and selectively share it with co-workers, contractors and partners. Challenge Prior to discovering Wrike, Crescent faced a situation that is all too familiar with many small and midsize companies. Their project management “system” consisted of disconnected spreadsheets, countless paper notes, impromptu meetings and several clusters of employees working as patchwork groups to solve problems. The team spread news and updates via e-mail or word of mouth, shared documentation via DropBox or OneNote, and occasionally communicated through Google Chat or conference calls. This method of organizing projects and work often resulted in confusion, so the team desperately needed a tool that could help them collaborate more efficiently while being easy-to-use for all team members. “We considered other project management tools, but the learning curve and complex functionality of those programs turned out to be rather frustrating!” complains George Ervin, Business & Tech Consultant at Crescent. Solution “Wrike was clearly a simple, yet welcomed, answer to our broken attempt at project collaboration,” says Ervin. By adopting Wrike, the team now has an efficient project management system that helps them synchronize all of the team’s efforts so that they achieve their project goals. The team previously had to switch between numerous tabs and windows to find the required files and tasks; now they just open Wrike to find all the tasks, documents, discussions, and schedules in one place. The team does still continue working with some of their other favorite tools, as Wrike is integrated with Gmail and Google Docs. Apart from the obvious convenience and significant time savings, being integrated with Gmail and Google Docs has practically eliminated the previous hassle of e-mailing dozens of attachments to other team members just to stay updated on document changes. Now they just attach the Google Doc to the task, and Wrike automatically creates sharing rights for everyone who follows that task, allowing the whole team to stay on the same page. All of the task updates and file changes instantly appear in Wrike’s real-time newsfeed, so everyone on the team can contribute to task discussions and make their opinion count. “We’ve had many opportunities to collectively create project plans in a few short hours with Wrike when it previously took several e-mails and days waiting for responses to accomplish similar tasks,” says Ervin. Along with real-time updates, Wrike provides the team with an excellent means to respond and update project tasks from their favorite gadgets, making remote collaboration even more efficient. “A few of our employees utilize smart phones, and the added convenience of simply answering an e-mail to apprise other team members of new developments is priceless,” says Ervin. Results Being a pioneer in adopting Wrike, Ervin is definitely the best person to tell you about the results his team has achieved, so let’s see what he says about his experience with Wrike: “We’ve halved our time spent on project administration. We now conduct work in one (cool!) application as opposed to previously switching between 5 different programs to accomplish the same result.” And what is the main time-saving effect of adopting Wrike, according to Ervin? “Overall time savings connected with getting rid of multiple e-mail attachments is considered the biggest productivity improvement for our group. Thanks to Wrike and Google Docs, we’ve seen a 60% reduction in e-mail traffic involving attachments! Even beyond the numbers, it allowed us to change the way we collaborate and create a solid project management system almost effortlessly,” concludes Ervin. Download pdf
Level 5 Leadership with Project Management 2.0
In my last post, I raised the question of how a new type of leader that emerges with the development of collective intelligence looks like and what his/her role is. We concluded that Project 2.0 leader’s role is to motivate his/her team and make the team members more productive, in order to complete the project on time and on budget. He or she needs to be able to guide the collective intelligence of his or her team and leverage it to the benefit of the whole company. Now I hope to enrich my initial idea with thoughts taken from a well-known Level 5 Leadership concept, introduced by Jim Collins in his “Good to Great” book. . Read on and you’ll see why. According to Collins, a Level 5 leader utilizes several simple, but powerful, strategies. Here I’d like to highlight only three of them: Confront the brutal facts: A Level 5 leader must create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard. Culture of discipline: Level 5 leaders rely on: Disciplined people – you don’t need hierarchy, Disciplined thought – you don’t need bureaucracy, Disciplined action – you don’t need excessive controls. Technology Accelerators: Level 5 leaders avoid technology fads and bandwagons, yet they often become pioneers in using carefully selected technologies that help them to gather momentum. All these concepts are reflected in the idea of Project Management 2.0: Opportunity to be heard The collaborative environment provided and maintained by Project Management 2.0 tools lets everyone on the team share knowledge and relevant information. Thus everyone on the team can be heard and can introduce ideas about the development of the project. Culture of discipline In Project Management 2.0, the collaborative environment is a perfect incubator for the culture of discipline. Project Management 2.0 relies on emergent structures, not on a hierarchy. In Project Management 2.0, people can update their parts of the project plans by themselves. Thus, superfluous reports and documentation are eliminated. That means less bureaucracy. Project Management 2.0 supports free-form collaboration; at the same time, it lets managers keep control of what is happening on the project and who is busy with what. Still, the control is not excessive, and it does not damage the collective work. Gathering momentum Project Management 2.0 can be executed only with the help of special tools -- Web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information-sharing, emergence and integration capabilities for the team. These technologies include linking, tagging, building project views and tasks hierarchies. Project Management 2.0 tools are empowered by collective intelligence and emergent structures. Thanks to these two powerful practices, Project Management 2.0 tools can make companies more agile, projects more controllable and people more productive. As a conclusion, I’d like to say that Level 5 leadership and Project Management 2.0 are two great concepts that can be followed simultaneously. Project Management 2.0 amplifies with Level 5 in many ways, some of which I tried to explore in this post. In both concepts, the team and its collective effort and efficiency are the focus, not the leader. A Level 5 leader, as well as Project 2.0 leader, aims at success and creates superb results, while inspiring and motivating his/her team. A Project 2.0 leader’s role, just like a Level 5 leader’s role, is to empower his/her people and guide them toward achieving a common goal, be it successful project completion or greatness of the whole company.
Looking forward to MLab Roundtable on Evolution of Management Innovation
. Today the discipline of management is pressed by numerous factors, like globalization and shortening strategic lifecycles. Management is developing and embracing the benefits of openness, emergence, adaptability, and many other principles countering those of the management status quo (e.g., hierarchies, command control, bureaucracy) that companies have institutionalized over the past century. Organizations like Management Innovation Lab help to create “tomorrow’s best practices” today. I’ll be happy to add my 2 cents.
What Can We Learn from Project Failure? 5 Lessons from Project Management Experts
When you run a project, there are a lot of components that need to be managed together: information, people, time, as well as specific challenges and threats. Speaking of threats – even if you’re a seasoned professional with extensive experience, you’re never immune to the smaller or bigger dangers of project failure. If you browse blogs and online communities, as well as glance at the agenda of offline events, you’ll see what a stirring discussion it brings up in the PM space. It’s usually analyzed from the “why” side – i.e., what are the reasons for project failure? But there is another equally important question that seems to be rarely discussed: How do we learn from it? When you run a project, there are a lot of components that need to be managed together: information, people, time, as well as specific challenges and threats. Speaking of threats – even if you’re a seasoned professional with extensive experience, you’re never immune to the smaller or bigger dangers of project failure. If you browse blogs and online communities, as well as glance at the agenda of offline events, you’ll see what a stirring discussion it brings up in the PM space. It’s usually analyzed from the “why” side – i.e., what are the reasons for project failure? But there is another equally important question that seems to be rarely discussed: How do we learn from it? Back in the 19th century, a Scottish reformer named Samuel Smiles said something that still holds true: “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.” So, what discoveries should we make, and what’s the wisdom in project failure? To find the answers, I invited fellow project managers to outline one key practical lesson they’d recommend taking from such a situation. Lesson 1: Understand your stakeholders Bob Tarne, the voice behind the “Zen, Project Management and Life” blog and currently executive project manager at IBM, shared a valuable lesson on avoiding failure caused by misunderstandings with project stakeholders: “I thought of an example where I didn't take the impact of change on my stakeholders and ran into a roadblock. My project had executive support, so I was moving forward with the implementation. However, one stakeholder group wasn't on board. At first, I didn't take the time to understand their concerns... I tried to push the work through, but they kept resisting. I finally took the time to understand their particular concerns and was able to work out a way to meet their specific needs. So the lesson was that, even when you have executive support, you still need to take the time to understand all of your stakeholders.” Lesson 2: Ensure constant communication The lesson from Terri Griffith, Professor of Management and the author of “The Plugged-in Manager,” covered the communicative risks that may lead to project failure: “My key lesson is – ensure constant communication to avoid poor situational awareness. People want to do a good job and sync with other aspects of their project, but if they don't have situational awareness, then those good intentions are just intentions. At extremes, the lack of communication then results in misinterpretations of why things aren't syncing – Psych 101 teaches that if something is going wrong, it's the other person's fault; if it's going well, it's to my credit. With poor communication, root causes can be misunderstood, adding to a downward spiral.” Lesson 3: Share Elizabeth Harrin, who regularly shares her PM wisdom in A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, highlights how important your experience might be for fellow project managers: “My lesson would be: share. There is no point in not sharing. It is better for everyone if you are honest about the failure and what happened, and tell as many people as you can. Often we don't institutionalize lessons about project failure, and the same mistakes are made time and time again.” Lesson 4: There should be no project failure As for Peter Taylor, best known for his bestseller “The Lazy Project Manager,” the advice dives deeper into organizational reasons of project failure and gives a good deal of motivation: “I think the one, big lesson we should all learn from project failure is that there should be no such thing as project failure! Projects should deliver. Now they may not deliver what was intended originally, but they should follow one of three clear paths: Deliver the expected business benefits, Be adjusted to deliver some business benefits, or Be stopped because they are not expected to deliver the business benefits originally intended, at any level of success, or they are focused on business benefits that are no longer relevant. So project failure has nothing to do with individual projects not delivering, but more an indictment of the organization that allows such projects to ‘just keep going until the bitter end’ for some business reason.” Lesson 5: Discussion -> Root causes -> Actions -> Codification When I asked the question myself – there is something to learn in any failure. There are actions to take to prevent it from happening again, and as Terri and Elizabeth brought up, there’s a lot to communicate. Here’s how I’d put it into a simple, four-step process: Have an open and constructive discussion within the team about the failure. That serves both to communicate the lessons and leverage their collective intelligence. Analyze root causes together. Work out an immediate action plan to minimize the impact of the project failure. Codify the lessons learned into processes and practices: “The next time this happens, we do that.” This could be viewed as a long-term form of communication. We could call it DRAC for fun. :-) Discuss – Root causes – Actions – Codify. If you’re in the mood for creating acronyms, feel free to come up with your own. If you thoroughly analyze the mistakes, make conclusions and take lessons for your onward journey, a failure in one project might become a step toward much better results on your next one. Project failure is an abundant source of professional wisdom, albeit an expensive one. You can get a good discount on that price, if you carefully manage your risks through prototyping, pilot projects, smaller iterations, and studies specifically built to prove or disprove your key assumptions. Something that is a failure if it breaks an operational assumption of a big project instead becomes a data point if it’s an experiment by design. To wind it up with another great quote: Malcolm Forbes wisely noted that “Failure is success if we learn from it.” Big thanks to Elizabeth, Terri, Bob and Peter for sharing their great lessons.
23 Project Management Books for All Experience Levels
You only have so many hours in the day, and precious few of them are your free time. So while you want to learn more about project management — either to pick up new skills or sharpen the ones you’ve already developed — you don’t have unlimited hours to read every book on the subject. Which project management books are best for your experience level? Which are actually relevant to the work you do every day? And most importantly, will they put you to sleep mid-sentence? While we posted some of our team’s must-read project management books in this article, we’ve since expanded our library with a few new favorites. From project management software professional services to team leadership, take a look and pick up a few to add to your work bookshelf. 23 Project Management Books for All Levels Beginners & Accidental Project Managers 1. The Project Management Answer Book - Jeff Furman, PMPThis quick reference guide is in question-and-answer format, so you can easily look up solutions to common problems and find the full answers you need right when you need them. This book is also useful as a supplement to formal PMP exam prep. 2. Project Management for Non-Project Managers - Jack FerraroThis book decodes project management terminology and techniques to make the topic accessible to complete beginners — useful even to experienced managers who simply don’t have formal training in project management and need an intro to the language and theory. 3. The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management - Eric VerzuhProject management is a broad field with many different approaches and applications. If you're looking for a thorough yet high-level overview of the discipline, pick up a copy of "The Fast Foward MBA in Project Management." It's used in many graduate-level courses and within larger corporations to train project managers internally. 4. Project Management Absolute Beginner's Guide (3rd Edition) - Greg HorineCovers every aspect of project management, from the responsibilities of project managers to planning and executing the project itself. You'll learn about Work Breakdown Structures, defining a project schedule and budget, controlling deliverables, managing issues and risks, leadership and communication skills, working with stakeholders, and more. 5. Project Management JumpStart - Kim HeldmanFor beginners just getting their feet wet (or getting thrown straight into the deep end) this book explains core project management principles in the context of typical issues and real-world scenarios. It also contains an overview of PMBOK, the bible of project management. 6. Project Management Lite: Just Enough to Get the Job Done...Nothing More - Juana Clark CraigWant a no-frills introduction to basic project management? This book presents the foundation of the field in plain English for those who just want a quick primer before learning more. Advanced & Experienced Project Managers 1. Strategic Project Management Made Simple: Practical Tools for Leaders and Teams - Terry SchmidtProjects fail all the time, whether due to faulty strategies or uncontrollable circumstances. Use the strategies in this book to build a strong project plan that sets your team up for success. You'll start by asking four questions: What are we trying to accomplish and why? How will we measure success? What other conditions must exist? How do we get there? 2. Neal Whitten's No-Nonsense Advice For Successful Projects - Neal WhittenPacked with useful insights, tips, and best practices, Whitten encourages readers to take ownership of their projects in order to distinguish themselves as capable and reliable project managers. Take advantage of Whitten's 30 years of experience to set yourself apart and accelerate your career. 3. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management - Tom DeMarcoLearn about project management and enjoy a fun read with this fast-paced novel. Follow the story of Tompkins, a project manager who’s kidnapped and presented with an impossible deadline. His solution is unconventional: with a huge staff of software developers at his disposal, he splits them into eighteen teams. Each team uses a different method, testing different project management assumptions and approaches. Pick up tips to effectively manage your projects while enjoying an entertaining page-turner. 4. The Lazy Project Manager: How to be Twice as Productive and Still Leave the Office Early - Peter TaylorLaziness is a virtue? Peter Taylor shows how laziness can translate into greater efficiency, increased focus, and better project outcomes. Apply the Pareto principle to find out which 20% of your workday really matters, and learn how to work smarter to achieve sustainable work/life balance and optimum productivity. 5. Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure - Todd C. Williams, PMPAt some point in your career, you’ll find yourself managing a project that’s floundering. Whether or not you’re able to pull it out of a tailspin is one thing, but learning from what went wrong — and learning from others’ mistakes — is the key to continuous improvement and future success. When you’re in crisis mode, reach for this book to assess the core problems and create an action plan. 6. Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews - Norman L. KerthThe best project managers make constant improvement a top priority, conducting retrospectives at the end of each project to identify lessons learned. Follow the roadmap Kerth outlines to identify what went well and what you can improve to make your processes and teams even stronger. 7. Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (11th Edition) - Harold R. KerznerAt 1,200 pages, this is not a book you’ll read in one sitting or casually peruse during a quick work break. But it is recognized as an in-depth, go-to reference for all things project management, from measuring project ROI, establishing business justification, managing project sponsorship, and more. 25 case studies in a variety of industries illustrate the principles in real-world situations. When you’re in the middle of a project and a problem arises, reach for this book to find a diagnosis and possible solution. 8. Death March (2nd Edition) - Edward YourdonAt some point in your career, you’ll be tasked with a “Death March” project: an initiative that's sorely understaffed and underfunded, with unrealistic deadlines. While you won’t be able to completely avoid these types of projects, this book will help you survive them with your sanity intact. By understanding the underlying factors, you can find ways to address the root issues, manage expectations, and alleviate pressure on your team. Although it’s written with IT projects in mind, the principles are invaluable for anyone involved in a “Mission Impossible" project. Managing IT & Software Development Projects 1. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules - Steve McConnellDon't be fooled by the title: this book isn't about churning out more lines of code each day. It's about finding best practices for your project to achieve faster results. You'll learn how to avoid common mistakes, wrangle project schedules to make them predictable, and achieve greater control over projects. The last section of the book outlines best practices, along with the risks and benefits of each one, so you can pick and choose which are best suited for your specific situation. 2. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.Author Frederick Brooks Jr. draws from his experience as a project manager at IBM to offer wisdom for leading huge projects and large teams. Although first written in 1975, this newer, expanded version is still considered a classic must-read for anyone managing large projects, especially in IT and software. While the technology Brooks references is outdated, the underlying insights into the common pitfalls of software development and project management remain as relevant as ever. 3. Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects - Tom DeMarco & Timothy ListerNot all risks are bad! Sometimes bigger risks mean greater rewards, and playing it too conservatively means you could be left behind by bolder competitors. On the other hand, being reckless or ignoring possible consequences can mean failure for your project — and your business. This book shows how to identify and take advantage of worthwhile opportunities, recognize common risks, and determine your acceptable level of risk. 4. Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams - Mickey W. Mantle & Ron LichtySoftware developers have a reputation as a quirky bunch, and Mantle and Lichty explain which management strategies will work with developers and why. They'll teach you their tested techniques for managing high-performance and distributed software teams at some of the largest companies in the nation and share what worked and what didn't. Leadership & Management Techniques 1. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition) - Tom DeMarco & Tim ListerWith a perceptive look into the how and why behind personal motivation, DeMarco and Lister share tips for assembling a great team and making the most of their time and talents. Rather than defining managers as overseers, DeMarco and Lister stress that a successful manager's main job is removing barriers to productivity so their teams can excel. 2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable - Patrick LencioniTelling the story of a newly-appointed startup CEO and her troubled executive team, this book outlines 5 common disruptive team dynamics: Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results. You’ll probably recognize bits of yourself and your team in the story, and you’ll find steps and strategies for improving your teamwork. 3. The Essential Drucker: In One Volume the Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management - Peter F. DruckerNearly ten years after his passing, Peter Drucker is still famous as a leading management expert. This title collects what the man himself considered his essential teachings. Get Drucker’s take on making good management decisions, the difference between efficiency and effectiveness, focusing on contributions over results, and more classic leadership advice. 4. Berkshire Beyond Buffett: The Enduring Value of Values - Lawrence A. CunninghamHow do you become a great leader and establish a company culture where success is sustainable? This book looks at Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s $300 billion conglomerate, to show how managers can generate real economic worth from abstract values like frugality, integrity, drive, and independence. 5. Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams - Alistair CockburnAuthor Alistair Cockburn understands that successful projects come primarily from people, not methodologies or tools. Although the book is on Crystal Clear, a lightweight software development methodology, this book also focuses on how to set up and support your team so they can do their best work. In addition to providing an Agile roadmap, this book will teach you how to free your projects from heavy processes that slow you down and ransack your budget. What's on your bookshelf? Share the titles you've found most valuable in your project management career in the comments! Tip: If Amazon happens to be your bookseller of choice, try ordering your new books through Amazon Smile. Amazon will donate a portion of the price of your items to a charity of your choice. 6 Best Books for New Project Managers Read next:5 Best Project Management Books for Beginners and Accidental PMs15 Books Every Manager Should ReadThe Ultimate Guide to Project Management Credit: Image at top designed by Freepik.
How to Complete Your Student Projects on Time with Wrike's Timeline
If you're a university undergraduate or graduate student, you should know that we recently announced our Wrike for Students program. We want to give you a Wrike account to keep track of all of your assignments, group projects, and random to-dos completely free — because you're already spending enough on your education. Student projects, especially group projects, have unique requirements. You have to figure out how to collaborate effectively, which is even harder when you can't meet in person every day. Using the Timeline in Wrike is one way to make sure you're getting all your work done on time. Basic Organization for Your Group Project To get started, create a new Project and share it with all the members of your team in Wrike. Inside that project, create individual tasks for every piece of work required to reach your end goal. Assign each of those tasks to the responsible group member(s) in your Wrike account, and set the durations and due date for that piece of work. For example, say your project is to write a group report. If you want to finish basic research six weeks before your final deadline, your task called "Complete basic research" should be due six weeks before the task, "Print & submit the final report." Check the Timeline to Review Your Project Schedule Once your group project is in Wrike, with due dates set and individual assignments doled out, everyone can use the Wrike Timeline to view and track the overall progress. The Timeline will show you what tasks are completed (green), overdue (red), and what deadlines are coming up (blue). Set Key Dates as Milestones Any project-related date that absolutely cannot be shifted should be set up as a task with a milestone date. Examples include final deadlines from your professors and presentation dates. Once you set a milestone, that date cannot be automatically adjusted by the rescheduling of other tasks. Create Dependencies to Automate Task Rescheduling If you have a series of tasks for your project that depend on one another (e.g. You can't start "Write first draft of paper" until "Complete basic research" is done), set them up as dependencies on your timeline. There are four common types of dependencies: Task B can't start until Task A is completed. (Most common scenario.) Task B can't start until Task A has started. Task B can't be completed until Task A is completed. Task B can't be completed until Task A has started. By linking all your tasks together as dependencies, you'll be able to reschedule everything (except milestones) with one drag-and-drop movement on the Timeline. This is helpful if work gets pushed back or moved forward. When you drag one task three days either direction, every dependent task will be shifted accordingly. Add Missing Tasks in the Schedule If you've built your project but missed a key step, you can create a new task right from the Timeline to set the due date and dependencies immediately. Then, click to open your task and you can assign the new task to a group member. More on How to Use Wrike for Student Projects If you want to learn more about how to use Wrike for your student projects, check out these other helpful articles: The In-Depth Guide to Using Wrike’s Online Gantt Chart Maker Achieve fast, easy, efficient project management using Gantt charts 4 Common Mistakes New Wrike Users Make, and Tips to Avoid Doing the Same If you're a student and you'd like to take advantage of Wrike to manage your classwork, sign up for your free student account now.