Cognitive biases can be the unseen architects of failure or success. These mental shortcuts often lead us astray, from overly optimistic timelines to underestimating risks. Today, we'll explore how biases like overconfidence, sunk cost, and anchoring affect project outcomes, team dynamics, and strategic planning. Understanding these invisible forces can transform how … [Read more...]
Social Media as a Project Management Tool
In today’s digital age, social media is not just for sharing personal updates or marketing products; it's an incredibly powerful tool for project managers aiming to improve project delivery. When used strategically, social media can enhance communication, collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and even project marketing. Here are six ways that project managers can … [Read more...]
Project Management in 2040: A Journey Into the Future
In the grand tapestry of human endeavor, project management has always been the thread that weaves chaos into order, the alchemy that turns plans into reality. As we stand at the threshold of 2040, let's embark on a speculative voyage to explore how this ancient art has evolved in the face of technological change, societal shifts, and the unquenchable human desire to … [Read more...]
How to Develop a Stakeholder Engagement Plan
A Stakeholder Engagement Plan is a formal strategy to communicate with project stakeholders to achieve their support for the project. It specifies the frequency and type of communications, media, contact persons, and locations of communication events. It is created at the beginning of the project and updated frequently as stakeholder communication needs change. Parts … [Read more...]
Guide to Stakeholder Engagement
All projects have stakeholders. Like any area of life, no projects exist inside of a bubble. Although some come close, every project must have a project sponsor (as a minimum) who created the project and expects some sort of deliverable. But most projects have so many stakeholders that they must maintain a list in order to manage them all properly. In project … [Read more...]
How Election Campaigns are Projects
Election campaigns are intricate and dynamic endeavors that bear striking similarities to large-scale projects. Both are characterized by defined objectives, deadlines, a plethora of stakeholders, complex logistical requirements, and an extensive need for meticulous planning and execution. Indeed, the definition of a project is a temporary endeavor that produces a … [Read more...]
Who Decides if a Project is a Success?
Project success criteria are sometimes fickle and elusive things. On paper, the budget and schedule feature prominently in every project. After all, a project is defined as a temporary endeavor to create a unique product or service. But most projects have a host of other criteria, like product quality, third party stakeholders, or end user evaluation results. And to … [Read more...]
A Project Health Check
When a patient is first wheeled into the emergency room, the first priority of any doctor is their vital signs, that is, pulse, breathing, body temperature, and blood pressure. Regardless of the injury, if the vital signs are not stable the patient is dying and all efforts must be directed toward stabilizing them prior to treating the original injury. Project management … [Read more...]
The 6 Parts of Project Portfolio Management
The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines a portfolio as a collection of projects, programs, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives. Portfolio Management, then, is the discipline of managing this portfolio to achieve organizational goals. The components of the portfolio can be projects, programs (series of projects … [Read more...]
The 5 Parts of Program Management
A program is a group of interrelated projects, subsidiary programs, and program activities that are managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. Program management is often confused with Portfolio management. The main difference is that a program has a defined end point, since it is a series of related projects each … [Read more...]