Entries by Bonnie Biafore

Less Well-known Benefits of Risk Management

Project management disciplines such as risk management bring control to a project. In addition to the well-known benefits of these disciplines, they provide other benefits that aren’t often discussed or recognized. Here are a few additional benefits that risk management provides: Encourages optimism. Thinking about what could go wrong increases optimism? It seems counter-intuitive, and […]

Less Well-known Benefits of Cost Management

Besides controlling the spending for a project, cost management delivers some additional benefits. Here are a few rarely discussed benefits of cost management:  Filters out wannabe stakeholders. Project managers should embrace the phrase “you gotta pay to play!” In other words, if stakeholders want their requirements considered for the project, they need to provide funding […]

Less Well-known Benefits of Schedule Management

Besides bringing control to your project schedule, schedule management delivers additional benefits. Here are a few rarely-discussed benefits of schedule management.  Defines elephant bites. The adage about eating an elephant one bite at a time works with projects, too. However, the phrase doesn’t mean much unless those bites are defined and are seen as reasonable. […]

How to Recover From a Mistake

Even the most experienced project manager will occasionally make a mistake – a flaw in the project plan, misinterpreting business directions, or overlooking an issue or risk. Here are a few tips on how to recover when you make a mistake in a project: Take ownership. The quicker you take ownership of what happened, the […]

You Don’t Have to Feel So Alone

As a project manager, you have to make decisions, resolve conflicts, manage aggressive timeframes and make the most of small budgets. It can feel like you have to deal with these responsibilities all alone. Yes, your responsibilities are monumental. You won’t feel so alone if you follow these tips: Work with your team members. Take […]

The Fine Art of Documenting Lessons Learned

Crafting lessons learned can be tricky. Lessons learned should help future projects without criticizing anyone publicly. Here are a few guidelines for achieving those lessons learned goals.  Identify recurring issues. Issues that are likely to re-occur if they aren’t addressed are significant lessons learned because they will help many future projects. Conversely, issues related to […]

Must-have Hard Skills for Project Managers

A solid team can contribute to the broad range of skills needed to complete projects successfully. However, project managers must possess several skills to ensure project success: Construct risk response plans. Although team members can identify risks, the project manager handles building and managing sound risk responses. Because the PM is the project liaison to […]

Tips for Launching Projects Successfully

The fate of most projects is determined by how they’re launched. With a proper launch, the project has a good chance of succeeding. Botch it and the chance of delivering value is almost zero. Here are my top tips for nailing the project launch: Develop a shared understanding of the project. You and your project […]

Improve Your Leadership Skills with Emotional intelligence

As project managers, we don’t simply manage work, deliverables, and documentation – we lead and support the people on our project teams. Emotional intelligence (also known as Emotional Quotient or EQ) helps us do that. Here’s how enhancing your EQ can help: Relate to people working from home. Working with others is challenging even when […]