What they don’t teach you in project management training?
What's included in PM training? When you attend traditional training you might learn how to identify and manage issues, estimate and manage budgets, identify and treat risks, schedule tasks and resources, manage project quality, and identify lessons learned. You might...
The Importance of Project Sponsorship
What is a sponsor? The oxford dictionary defines a sponsor as simply someone who "makes himself or herself responsible for another". In a project sense this means taking on responsibility for the success of a project in an organisation. It means commitment to...
Project Managers – What is the nature of “experience”?
Gone are the days where just anybody can be a project manager. Lack of project management experience can be disastrous for organisations as recent high profile failures have demonstrated. Former AIPM CEO Peter Shears said at a Canberra conference a few years ago:...
Great project managers can manage anything!
Good project managers have skills that apply in every management profession. Most people understand the traditional view of project managers. They establish a project's scope, prepare budgets and schedules, plan communications, monitor and report on all the distinct...
Staff Development – Not Just an Obligation – A Key Success Factor!
How many times have you read the term ‘Staff Development’ in a duty statement and sighed or rolled your eyes and then set about identifying the right “buzz words” to say at interview to secure you the job? The thing is – a great project team leader is one who takes...
Project Management Breeds Innovation
Projects are fundamentally all about innovation. Project Managers are ‘agents of change’ – facilitating what hasn’t been done before. They solve problems to get things done. Taking a project management approach to business is about changing the way things have always...
Traits of Successful Project Managers
Managing projects can be both a stressful and rewarding experience. What makes a good project manager? Is it a blend of understanding people and the right level of pressure to apply and when? The skill to read between the lines and carefully negotiate relationship...
Great project management skills are needed in every profession
Whilst technical are hard to find people, it's even more difficult to find subject matter experts who also posess the business skills to deliver outstanding project results. A great project manager is able to articulate business and technical needs solve problems and...
How Do You Recruit Skilled Project Managers?
A 2006 Department of Employment survey on the skills shortage found that across industries the most frequent reason for not employing job applicants was "insufficient experience". Michael Young of award-winning project management consultancy ‘Transformed’ says that to...
Why have a project sponsor?
Many organisations mistakenly believe that it is up to the project manager to solve the organisation’s problems and make the project happen. Others just hire a project manager to be the scapegoat if things go wrong. But these strategies really just miss the whole...
