7 Things a CEO Can Learn from a Project Manager (Part 2)
In the previous post, I touched upon useful skills a CEO may want to adopt from a project manager. So here are 3 more to bring you a fresh look at the CEO’s routine: Quite often, there’s a need for the CEO to quickly adjust strategic priorities, reacting to competitors moves or changing market conditions, not to mention the daily adjustments of the personal meeting schedule. So here’s another opportunity to turn to the project manager who has perfected flexibility at the daily and hourly scales. The ability to quickly re-prioritize things and revise the decisions made not only within separate projects, but also at the strategic level, is challenging enough, but it will make your company more agile and thus more successful. #6 - Accountability up and down As a CEO, you are accountable only to your company board that is mainly interested in the share price, not in your daily behavior. On one hand, no accountability in your business routine gives you more freedom; on the other hand, quite often you may lack feedback on your actions. And without honest feedback, it’s hard to evaluate your performance and prevent mistakes. By contrast, the project manager is normally accountable to the CEO and other senior managers, the customer, his own project team, and perhaps the end users of the solution to be implemented. Accountability makes jobs hard, but it makes projects, decisions and actions better. The best way to measure your efficiency as a CEO is to ask your employees how they see their work in the organization. Simple questionnaires will help you see if your team shares the company vision and if they try their best to fulfill it. #7 – Develop team member relationships Your team’s results depend deeply on the relationships between its members. A good working environment makes people eager to work and unwilling to leave the company. It’s definitely one of the CEO’s major roles to establish the right relationships. And yet, it’s not an easy thing to do, due to your position of authority in the company. A good project manager is an expert at developing relationships. She or he does it on a regular basis with each of his or her project team members in order to get the most out of collaboration and gain their following and trust. A good project manager also will tell you that when it comes to relationships, every single detail matters. How often you talk to your employees and the way you do it, your reaction to their mistakes and rewards for the extra time spent in the office – all these are the bricks in your corporate culture. Putting more regular efforts into building good and sincere relationships in your team will be rewarded greatly with your people’s enthusiasm. What are your thoughts here? What areas do you think CEOs need additional skills in – where could they learn more from skilled project managers who survive in the trenches every day? Please feel free to join the discussion.
7 Things a CEO Can Learn from a Project Manager (Part 1)
and important problems your team is facing. Of course, no CEO can possibly be aware of all the operational details at the same level as her employees. Nevertheless, it is important to stay connected with the workers and to stay up-to-date on the real state of things. I’d take a liberty and outline that here a CEO may turn to the experience of a project manager who is always right in the middle of the project whirl. If you are one of those successful CEOs for whom it’s 101, I honestly applaud you and hope you don’t mind if I share this advice with the rest. Hopefully, it will make some companies become more efficient for the greater good of CEO, employees, customers and shareholders. In my opinion, seven key things that CEOs can learn from project managers - in no particular order - are: #1 – Strong Customer focus CEOs’ schedule is normally overfilled with meetings. But most likely, you aren’t usually in a position to deal with the day-to-day customer – the end user in the trenches. You may think that’s the project manager’s role, but that’s also where the real customer satisfaction is developed. If you were able to take the time and interact with your daily customers, you would be surprised at the number of useful insights they can provide you about your service (especially if they are angry or upset with it!). The practice of CEO regularly talking to customers provides you with versatile and objective picture of their needs and also helps establish a very positive image of the company. The customers’ confidence and satisfaction won’t take long to appear. #2 – Delegate to survive Generally, CEO is responsible for everything. In other words, for company’s success or failure. No wonder that it is vital to pick up the high-priority goals and handle them by yourself. However, learn to delegate the rest to other chief officers (be it CIOs, CTOs, CMOs or COOs) and your administrative assistants. That’s exactly the killer skill of any project manager who delegates to survive. She must know the skills of their project staff (which differs from project to project) and must know what to pass of to whom and when to do it. So does an efficient CEO at the senior team members’ level. #3 2-way Communication as a tool The ability to communicate your vision to the employees in a clear and persuasive way is critical for any CEO. At the same time listening to your team’s feedback is no less important, as it can be a source of useful insights based on their day-to-day problems that you are not always aware of. Here, once again, you may take a look at project managers who find themselves between their team and the top management and develop both skills perfectly. They ceaselessly communicate important management’s decision to the team and at the same time pay great attention to team’s feedback to change their roadmap accordingly. Adopting the same efficient two-way communication, you will be impressed to see how eager your team members are to make your vision come true. #4 - Digging to understanding the real need As a CEO, you are guided by the vision that makes the product unique. But probably you’ll agree that amending this vision according to customers’ needs, will bring the success much closer. What is more, this should be real customers’ needs. The good project manager knows best that it’s highly likely that what customer considers being his own need is only a symptom of it. CEOs can learn lessons here from project managers to ask questions and dig deeper into the real needs of their own organization rather than take information at face value. This will help avoid piles of corporate money spent on the wrong projects and processes due to lack of detailed evaluation of the real issues. Don’t miss three more must-have skills for CEOs in our next post! Brad Egeland has 25 years of high-level, professional IT and Business Management experience, including 19+ years of enterprise Project Management experience. He has developed and implemented systems for start-ups and their customers as well as $100 million long-term contracts. His experience is in the industries of Manufacturing, Aviation/Airlines, Gaming, Government Contracting, Retail Operations, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. Brad is a father of nine and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can visit Brad's professional website at www.bradegeland.com.
Online Project Management Courses for Beginners
With the global economy navigating a new normal, businesses around the world need project managers who can think strategically and execute successfully. As a result, the project management field is growing quickly, with increased demand and rising salaries drawing more people to the profession. If you’re interested in breaking into project management, you’re probably asking a number of questions: How do I get started? Is there a simple guide on how to become a project manager? Do I need a project management certification? What kind? Where can I learn how to become a certified project manager? What can I do with a project management certification? Where can I learn the essentials of project management to start leading projects and gain valuable experience? What is the best project management certification for me? These five project management courses online are great options for beginners, all offered by reputable Project Management Institute-registered education providers. Get the knowledge you need to be confident in your new role, whether it be an IT project manager or a digital project manager, with one of these convenient online courses. You'll also find great preparation material for certifications, including the Project Management Professional certification and much more. These courses would also be great for an assistant project manager working toward being a fully-fledged project manager. What to expect from project management courses online Project management courses cover all the things you need to know to successfully pitch, plan, and carry out a project. Whether you’re a complete beginner or you find yourself knee-deep in a project you need help with, these flexible project management courses are available 24/7. The majority of online project management courses are self-paced, meaning you can participate in the lessons whenever you have time for them. The format typically includes on-demand video, downloadable worksheets, and access to one or more teachers who can help mentor you or answer questions along the way. If you meet for live classes, they’ll likely be virtual and take no more than one to two sessions per week. On average, project management courses last from four to six weeks, assuming you move through at least half a module per week. Students who take project management courses may be working full-time, raising a family, or going to school for another degree. Whatever the situation, there’s a project management course for your needs and level of experience. When you sign up for a project management course, the provider will likely give you required reading materials, worksheets, and message board access to connect with other students. For the most part, all you need is an internet connection and a computer. If your course includes an exam, you may need to coordinate a test date and time with the school. Learn creative skills, upgrade your project management resume, and network with experienced professionals through any of the courses we’ve highlighted below. Can you get free project management courses online? While there aren’t many free project management courses, there are plenty of free educational resources immediately available to you. For example, Wrike offers the Project Management Guide. It’s a comprehensive survival manual for everyone, from professional project managers with years of experience to people suddenly asked to take on their first project. Our guide includes all the basics, must-know methodologies, lifecycle management tips, software tools, and techniques for managing teams you’ll ever need. One key thing to know about free project management courses: they provide great information, but they may lack hands-on exercises and mentorship opportunities. But the biggest and most important difference is certification. Whether it’s an official certification from an accredited school or a validation from an established program, an exam is typically a feature that paid classes offer that free ones do not. Project management courses for beginners: 1. Project Management Basics - An Official PMI Online Course Provider: Project Management InstituteCost: $400Duration: On-DemandWhat you'll learn: This 23-hour education series covers the foundational concepts of project management, including key terminology, an explanation of the project lifecycle, project constraints, a three-hour practice exam, an introduction to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK), and prep for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) exam. 2. Project Management FundamentalsProvider: Ed2GoCost: $149Duration: On-demand course accessible for six weeksAccreditation: PMI Registered Education ProviderWhat you'll learn: Get an introduction to essential project management techniques and the PMBoK, and prepare for the Project Management Professional (PMP certification) and CAPM certification exams. Participants will learn how to prepare for, plan, and complete a project successfully, from holding an effective project kickoff meeting to risk management and quality assurance.3. Improving Your Project Management Skills: The Basics for Succes Provider: American Managers' AssociationCost: $2,445Duration: Three DaysAccreditation: PMI Registered Education ProviderWhat you’ll learn: This hands-on project management workshop covers project management techniques, tools, and best practices. Get a comprehensive overview of core project management concepts and terminology, from Work Breakdown Structures, Gantt charts, determining critical path, estimating project timelines, managing stakeholders, and defining project scope, schedule, budget, and risk. 4. Successful Project ManagementProvider: SkillPathCost: $199 for a yearly membershipDuration: Six self-paced modulesAccreditation: PMI Registered Education ProviderWhat you’ll learn: This course is designed for beginner and accidental project managers trying to manage projects on top of their regular job responsibilities. Learn how to initiate, manage, and execute any project using one of the many project management styles taught in this class. Resources for new project managers Find introductions to core project management concepts, terminology, tools, and processes with our project management advice. And if you have any books, courses, or other resources you found helpful as a new project manager, share them with us in the comments below! Read Next:23 Project Management Books for All Experience Levels20 Online Training Resources for Project ManagersThe Ultimate Guide to Project ManagementThe Project Manager Shortage is Coming: 3 Ways to Prepare
7 Leadership & Mindset Tips for Extreme Project Managers
If your team experiences high-stress, anxiety, low morale, and burnout from continuous, fast-paced projects, you may wonder: what can I do to escape this situation? Before you go looking for a new job, know that all is not lost. As a leader and manager, there are steps you can take to fix the poor mental health of your team. These tips are based on advice from an extreme project management expert, and should help restore the health of your team. But wait! Did you read our first post discussing the basics of the fast-paced, extreme project management, and how to decide if it's right for your team? Go read it now and come back to this post when you're ready to learn how to be a great leader for your extreme projects. Leadership and Management for Extreme Projects For extreme projects, being a great leader and manager is even harder because the projects you lead change constantly, which means you must change constantly too. In his book eXtreme Project Management, Doug DeCarlo gives an in-depth overview of extreme project management. According to him, this methodology does not begin and end at managing work in a flexible environment; it also includes adapting your mindset to a new way of thinking and developing a new set of leadership skills. If you are a leader of extreme projects, and you want to work on improving your leadership and management skills, we have some tips to help you be a better leader for your team. Tips to rework your management style: 1. Set priorities. Set project priorities, tell the team why they've been prioritized that way, and if the project is cancelled, give them sound reasoning. If you have standards for determining project priority, your team will feel less frustration when project priorities shift. 2. Communicate constantly. In a flexible environment, projects change a lot. Do not keep your team in the dark. If there is an update, tell them what has changed and why — immediately. Waiting means there is a higher chance someone will have to redo their work in order to match the new requirements. Avoid high-stress situations by communicating every project change quickly and clearly. 3. Set clear roles & ownership. Extreme project management means that there is less hierarchy and time involved in decision-making. That means everyone needs to know exactly who has the knowledge (or ability) to make decisions. Ensure that roles and responsibilities on your team and within management are crystal clear. And give your individual team members the confidence to make their own calls if they see something that needs to be done. XPM is about spreading and sharing responsibility, not locking it into the hands of a few people. 4. Reward your team for a job well done. If you're working on a fast-paced project with changing requirements and ever-increasing scope, chances are you'll be awash in relief when the project is finally complete. As a manager, make sure you recognize the great effort it took to get from day 1 to the end. Celebrate the skills, problem-solving, and high energy your team exhibited during the project before moving on to the next. If your team knows you appreciate and recognize them, it will fight low morale and burnout, and motivate your team for the next challenge. Tips to adapt your leadership mindset: 1. Study your own temperament. Your temperament is a good indication of your behavior during projects. Great leaders learn how to remain calm under pressure, even when their extreme project team is stressed — which will certainly happen with these types of projects. Are you able to be the voice of reason in a difficult situation? Practice soft skills to create a good atmosphere for your projects; read books on better communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and influencing people. Check out our list of books every manager should read. 2. Learn to accept change as good. Humans like stability; it's in our nature. With everything constantly changing, extreme projects put a lot of emotional strain on the people involved. But you can't resist changes to project plans if you want XPM to work for your team, so learn how to get comfortable with last-minute scrambles. If you can't fully get comfortable, at least be aware of your own resistance so that you can fight your tendencies when they rear their predictable heads. Remember: if your project is changing, it is probably for the better. Don't shoot down new ideas without considering how they can positively impact your final outcome! 3. Trust your team to be responsible, capable adults. If you come from traditional management styles, where all decisions are made slowly after being reviewed by countless people, XPM will probably make your head spin. Decisions are made faster, and without the red tape that comes with big companies and complex hierarchies. Trust your team (and yourself!) to be intimate enough with the project that they will make the best decisions for your project without requiring extra input each time. If you have communicated the project goals clearly and thoroughly, then everyone should be able to make informed decisions for the team. Leadership is a Constant Work-in-progress I argue that leadership and management skill sets are not the kind you can master — they are the kind that you constantly work to improve. People look to you to make the best decisions, to always know what is going on with every aspect of every project, and to remain calm under the pressure of intense project environments. You have to be a hero among heroes, and that is hard. In order to be the best leader and manager you can be, it requires constant vigilance and education. Are you leading an extreme project team? What tips can you give for being a better leader? Share your wisdom with us in the comments. Related Reads: 3 Lessons on High-Performing Teams from TED Talks 15 Books Every Manager Should Read Why Employers Value Emotional Intelligence Over IQ (Infographic)
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.
3 Project Manager Headaches and How to Cure Them
Project management is a highly complex and complicated job. Because there are so many factors that come into play during every single project, project managers must be extremely versatile and skilled. Unlike developers, engineers, or architects that work on the technical side of projects, project managers, in addition to being familiar with all the technical details, also need to deal with the social and corporate aspects. On top of all that, they are often juggling several projects at once. In addition to all this, project managers need to ensure that lines of communication between different departments stay open so that teams coordinate with each other and any potential risks that can sideline the project don’t go unnoticed. Naturally, all this complexity is a fertile breeding ground for a myriad of problems. Here are three major headaches almost every project manager faces, along with some practical solutions. Headache #1: Project Schedule Updates It goes without saying that every project needs a schedule, so that everyone involved can keep track of their progress and responsibilities, including milestones. It is up to the project manager to monitor all the activities of the team, update the project status, and act as the link between the team and any stakeholders, including upper management. However, all of this is an incredibly time-consuming activity for project managers, when their skills and expertise could be put to better use by having them do actual work on the project, instead of administrative tasks. Solution: Automate schedule updates whenever possible, so that you don't have to waste time collecting them manually. Meeting with your team and asking each member for task status is time-consuming, especially when there are project management and collaboration tools available that allow your team to simply mark a task or milestone as finished and provide real-time status updates and reports. By saving time on administrative busywork, you can focus your efforts and expertise where it really matters. Headache #2: Multitasking With so much on your plate, multitasking may seem unavoidable. But it turns out that it actually impedes your productivity, negatively affects the quality of your work, and can create massive delays. A setback in one area will inevitably cause problems for any dependent tasks, which can't begin until the first task has finished, and so on. It quickly compounds and creates further delays. Solution: Do what you can to limit the number of projects that are in progress at the same time. Try to keep no more than 25 to 50% of your projects running simultaneously to result in fewer delays and a higher quality of work. As a project manager, you will have a much easier job with fewer projects demanding your time and attention at once. You should also take advantage of the many online tools that can help you shoulder some of the burden. An instant message app like Slack allows for real-time communication, message archiving, and easy search, in case you need to recall specific conversation details. Headache #3: Project Duration Estimates Unless you have a working crystal ball on hand, (in which case, can we borrow it?) you simply cannot know how much time it will take to complete a particular task. However, you will need provide an estimated project duration to stakeholders and clients, based on all the relevant information you have at your disposal. And you will be held accountable to that estimated completion date. There are several different methods you can use to estimate how much time it will take your team to complete a project. But even if you assign proposed durations for each task, you may come up short with your estimate—which means your team will have to pick up the slack and make up for lost time. And aside from the stress, that can mean sacrificing quality, going over budget, or potentially slipping deadlines. Solution: Instead of asking your team members to provide a single estimated deadline for their individual tasks, try a two-point estimation method. The advantage of a two-point method is that it allows you to miss your estimate, while providing enough of a buffer that you can still deliver the project before the final deadline. Note that this method still doesn't guarantee that you’ll be able to deliver every project on time, but it's still a safety net of sorts. With these helpful strategies and tools, you’ll be able to plan and execute your projects better, and allow yourself and your team to function more productively, under less stress, and still meet (or exceed!) your client's expectations. Author Bio: Diana Clark is a Digital Marketing Expert and Marketing Operations Project Manager works with her talented marketing team at Aussiewriter. She loves guiding people though their business practice and shares her ideas as a blogger.
