Conspire focused heavily on project management in April, with posts covering everything from mistakes to avoid to the right questions to ask. Check out five of our favorites below.
1. Help! I’m an Unofficial Project Manager
Project management is something for everyone, not just those officially called Project Managers. Anyone in a management role within any organisation will have responsibility for ensuring their teams get a project done successfully. What then, do us unofficial project managers need to bear in mind, given most of us have never received formal project management training?
2. Five Ws and an H: 6 Questions All Project Managers Should Ask
You don’t get much of anywhere in business without asking questions, but strangely enough, a lot of people are pretty bad at it. Maybe they don’t ask questions at all, or they do, but only after something’s gone horribly wrong. Typically, though, the problem lies in asking the wrong questions — questions that are too broad or acute are often met with single-word answers that don’t capture useful details or address key issues.
For project managers, this can be especially detrimental and lead to hastily done work and a lot of wasted effort. My suggestion? Do like the journalists do, and check out these 6 questions all project managers should ask — every time.
3. 6 Common Project Management Blunders
Project management is as necessary a skill for anyone in agile business as is the ability to collaborate without getting HR involved. We’re working in a world dependent on transparency, shared responsibility, and autonomy, and the truth is? We’re all project managers now.
Here are 6 common project management mistakes and how you can keep them from happening to you.
4. Behind Enemy Lines: Project Management Secrets Revealed
Expertise-specific tasks usually get left up to the person bearing the title, right? Writers write, salespeople sell, marketers market. But as corporate hierarchies flatten out into a pancake of shared initiatives and collaboration, there’s at least one role that’s sneaking its way into everyone’s responsibilities: project management.
So, what do you do if you haven’t been formally trained? Where do you even start? Luckily for the rest of us, old-school PMs have spilled some of their best secrets for managing projects, encouraging communication, and keeping teams on track. Here are a few of our favorites.
5. Project Management Offices in 2013: 4 Best Practices from Dell, IBM + More
Instead of just certified PMs, workers of all types are suddenly finding themselves in and out of the driver’s seat as projects shift and change. And while that’s all well and good (and super exciting), it’s important to note that this adjustment doesn’t lessen the need for upper management. In fact, it hones the project management office (PMO) by filtering out smaller tasks and allowing official PMs to focus their experienced attention on the parts of the job that need it most.
In a recent study from APQC, a leader in knowledge management and bench marking, some of the biggest names in the game–Dell, IBM, and the United Illuminating Company included–revealed how their PMOs are functioning today.
Want to learn how Mindjet can help your team achieve better project management? Join us for our next webinar: Mindjet Helps Solve Project Management Challenges for Teams, taking place May 7th, at 10:00AM PDT.