Entries by Bonnie Biafore

Developing a Productive Project Culture

A productive cultural environment is critical to delivering successful project outcomes. Here are tips for managing a productive project culture whether your project has a unique culture or is an extension of your organization’s culture. Plan cultural development tasks. Effective project culture doesn’t happen by accident. The best project managers are purposeful about developing a […]

Renewing your passion as a project manager

It’s easy to succumb to the pressure of a steady parade of project challenges and forget the plusses of being a project manager. To regain your project manager passion, consider the contributions a project manager makes: Driving your business’s success. Projects don’t succeed without project managers and businesses don’t move forward without successful projects. For […]

Life management = project management

I manage my life like one long project. Quick review: It’s a project because my life is a temporary endeavour (I don’t want to live forever) that is unique and comes with a budget. Life is messy so it really needs managing! Here’s why I project-manage my life and you should manage yours, too. Priorities […]

Things going badly? Have More Meetings!

When your project isn’t going well, you and your stakeholders need information. FAST! As counter intuitive as it sounds, the best thing to do is to have MORE meetings. Not just any meetings, however. Here are a few effective meeting strategies when things are rocky: Run short, focused data-sharing sessions. Project conditions change rapidly when […]

How projects fail and what to do about it

You don’t have to look far to find project failures. While many circumstances contribute to project failure, a few common circumstances often are the culprits that make good projects go bad. Here are the most prevalent management failures that lead to failed projects: A lack of proper management. Projects without professionally trained —and supported— project […]

Top 5 team building tips for PMs

Project managers set the tone for their project teams. The best team building occurs when you take advantage of everyday opportunities to boost your team’s morale. Here are some project management team building tips: Use your kickoff meeting to shape your project team. Anytime you get your team together is an opportunity to build team […]

The Top 5 Skills of Senior Project Managers

Senior level project management is more than competence. The myriad responsibilities that come with this role require broader skills. Razor-sharp business focus. Senior PMs understand and manage their project priority against other active initiatives in the portfolio. Senior PMs clearly articulate this information to negotiate with stakeholders. They also keenly leverage their sponsor’s strengths to […]

Stakeholder Management: 5 Ways to Resolve Conflict

This week’s article comes from my fellow LinkedIn Learning author Natasha Kasimtseva. Projects are the vehicle of change, and a key project manager competency is leading the team through rough waters of learning and evolving. Resource constraints, competing priorities and requirements, differences of opinion – these are a few examples of the sources of conflict […]

5 Ways to Increase Project Quality

A big part of project success is meeting business objectives. Project quality is the degree to which a project meets its objectives. Here are five tips to ensure the quality of your project outcomes. Don’t jump to the solution too quickly. The foundation of delivering quality is ensuring that your project solves the problem or […]

Project sponsor and project customer: what’s the difference?

In a recent LinkedIn Live session, someone asked, “What exactly is the difference between a project sponsor and a project customer? Sometimes, the sponsor is also the customer, but the roles have notable differences:  Authorizing or terminating the project. The project comes about because the project customer has a problem to solve or opportunity to […]