project management

Leader asking an employee a question Superior Leaders Ask the Tough Questions

Inspiring quotes can be motivating, but there's more to good leadership. New leaders may feel compelled to find clever and memorable things to say, when in reality, they should probably focus less on what they’re saying and more on what they’re hearing. The best leaders ask good questions and listen to the answers.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Person browsing at a bookstore Are You Forgetting a Stakeholder?

Technology allows amazing innovations to optimize business and deliver new and better services, but if you don’t carefully consider your entire user community, innovations may cost you business. When designing for stakeholders, don't stop at the obvious cases—or else you may find that you forgot an important customer.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Basic multiplication quiz Are Your Fundamentals Malfunctioning?

Every objective has certain elements that are fundamental to its success. These include the supporting tasks or systems that we take for granted but without which our “real” work could not get done. In order for any organization or team to meet its primary objectives, these fundamentals need to be functioning properly.

Richard Estra's picture
Richard Estra
Software project estimation Deception and Estimation: How We Fool Ourselves

Research suggests that humans are biased, not-very-rational decision-makers. We believe we see things clearly when the evidence shows otherwise. Throw in a big dose of optimism, and it's easy to see how estimating software projects can be problematic. Our best hope is to construct diverse groups with varied viewpoints.

Linda Rising's picture
Linda Rising
Third rail of a train track The ‘Third Rail’ of Project Management: Cutting Quality

Scope, schedule, and resources: Whether you’re using agile or more traditional project management approaches, this triple constraint is the law of the project universe. The unmentionable “third rail” of project management trade-offs is compromising quality to deal with the other two aspects. Don't make that an option.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Project manager going over the project objectives with the team 7 Habits of Highly Effective Project Managers

Project managers are in charge of planning, supervising, and verifying the work of the project team to ensure the project’s goals and success criteria are met. The challenge is to achieve all this within project constraints. The best project managers know how to keep it all balanced. Here are seven of their top skills.

Frank Hamilton's picture
Frank Hamilton
Man scuba diving underwater Sunk Cost: Knowing When to Call It Quits

Acknowledging that a product isn't ready to ship may seem like a simple call—if it isn't the desired quality by the target date, why not pull the plug? But when you start considering all the effort, time, and money you've already invested, it becomes harder to make that decision. Here's a story to help you remember.

Payson Hall's picture
Payson Hall
Hand holding a globe 5 Steps to Successful Remote Project Management

As the workforce gets more distributed, project management is becoming a challenge. Managing a group of people sitting in the same office is hard enough; the increasing trend of remote work is making everything even more complicated. But if you take these five actions, you can have successful remote project management.

Vartika Kashyap's picture
Vartika Kashyap