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Branding is a more sophisticated form of marketing communication. The purpose of branding a project is to associate an emotion or a feeling with your project. This is exactly what marketing people try to do when they brand a product. For instance, The Coca-Cola Company hopes that you feel good about its products and that you will choose its products from a crowded store shelf because you like the image and emotion associated with it. Maybe it works. The purpose of branding a project is to associate a positive image and emotion with your work. This is not something most projects need to be concerned about. However, ask yourself some questions regarding the impact your project will have on the organization. Does it impact a large number of people or maybe the entire company? Will it require a culture change or a change in the way people do their job? Will your project make people nervous or afraid? For instance, will it result in efficiencies so that less people are required to do ...

Branding is a more sophisticated form of marketing communication. The purpose of branding a project is to associate an emotion or a feeling with your project. This is exactly what marketing people try to do when they brand a product. For instance, The Coca-Cola Company hopes that you feel good about its products and that you will choose its products from a crowded store shelf because you like the image and emotion associated with it. Maybe it works. The purpose of branding a project is to associate a positive image and emotion with your work. This is not something most projects need to be concerned about. However, ask yourself some questions regarding the impact your project will have on the organization. Does it impact a large number of people or maybe the entire company? Will it require a culture change or a change in the way people do their job? Will your project make people nervous or afraid? For instance, will it result in efficiencies so that less people are required to do ...

Start Your Project with a Kickoff Meeting The purpose of the kickoff meeting is to formally notify all stakeholders that the project has begun and make sure everyone has a common understanding of the project and his role. Like all formal meetings, there should be an agenda. There are a number of specific things you want to cover at this meeting: Introduce  the people at the meeting. Recap  the information in the Project Charter, including the purpose of the project, scope, major deliverables, risks, assumptions, etc. Discuss the important  roles and responsibilities  of the project team, clients and stakeholders. If there is confusion about the role of any person or organization, it should be discussed and clarified now.   Go over the  general approach and timeline  of the project. This gives people a sense for how the project will unfold. In particular, you will want to ensure that people understand what they need to be doing in the short-term to support the project. Ans...

Four Benefits of Project Management Training The following are five reasons training is invaluable to you as a project manager. #1 – Training Keeps You Engaged Are you feeling a little sluggish on the job? Do you dread the ride into work each morning thinking about the long and boring day ahead of you? Training dispels the monotony. Take a course about an aspect of project management that really interests you. It may be risk management, agile methodologies, or root cause analysis. Deepening your knowledge in areas of interest will shake up your otherwise normal routine and get you excited about your job again. #2 – Training Helps Your Career Most professional certifications require an ongoing commitment to training and education. While this takes time, the upside is that it comes with real financial value. For example, a PMP certified project manager will make an average of $10,000 more per year than their non-certified counterpart. Keep your training current and an eye on your employm...

Four Benefits of Project Management Training The following are five reasons training is invaluable to you as a project manager. #1 – Training Keeps You Engaged Are you feeling a little sluggish on the job? Do you dread the ride into work each morning thinking about the long and boring day ahead of you? Training dispels the monotony. Take a course about an aspect of project management that really interests you. It may be risk management, agile methodologies, or root cause analysis. Deepening your knowledge in areas of interest will shake up your otherwise normal routine and get you excited about your job again. #2 – Training Helps Your Career Most professional certifications require an ongoing commitment to training and education. While this takes time, the upside is that it comes with real financial value. For example, a PMP certified project manager will make an average of $10,000 more per year than their non-certified counterpart. Keep your training current and an eye on your employm...

Perhaps the place to start is to understand whether there are employees available in the timeframe needed for your project. It usually doesn’t make sense to hire contract people when you have employees that are available and otherwise would have nothing to do (assuming the employees have “close-enough” skills). Let’s assume that you do not have current employees available to staff your new project. Let’s also say you work for an organization that is open to utilizing contractors or hiring employees depending on the needs of the specific project. Let’s look at some of the criteria that you can use to make the hiring decision. Urgency. If you need to get started very quickly, you may need to hire contractors. In most organizations you can put a call out to the local contract companies and be interviewing people in a couple days. Most organizations can’t (and don’t want to) hire employees that quickly.      Length of the need . If you need a resource for a short, finite duration...

Most people understand that the days of the five-year, monolithic project are over - and have been for some time. The better approach is to break large projects into a set of smaller, easier to manage projects. Short projects are easier to manage than large projects. There are fewer things that can go wrong, fewer people involved, less time for scope changes, etc. Characteristics of Agile Iterations The Agile model takes this to an extreme by stating that even the days of the six-month development cycle is over, as is the three-month cycle and maybe even the one-month cycle. Partial solutions should be up and running in a very short time, with very short iterative cycles designed to deliver working code that is built up to a final solution. Implement Complete Functionality Agile iterations implement complete functionality for a set of selected customer requirements. This includes the complete mini-lifecycle of analysis, design, construct, test and implementation. The selected functiona...