Your Guide to Project Management Best Practices

Author: Mary Levinson

pm mentoring

Teamwork & Leadership

PM Mentoring – The Importance of Project Staff Training

Perhaps you can hardly find organizations that do not try to follow the practice of successful project management mentoring and project staff training, because the modern competitive environment dictates to business organizations to have educated and skilled employees who can do daily tasks and perform projects with less time and money consumed. Through practising project management mentoring and training, any organization can direct and coordinate its human and material resources throughout the project life-cycle to accomplish established goals within the scope, expected quality, time and budget, while meeting expectations of the stakeholders. Excellence in planning and implementing projects will be achieved if the organization owns training personnel that has earned online project management certifications and accomplished project management certificate programs. In this article I would like to describe a definition of project management mentoring and list its benefits so that you would see the importance of project staff mentoring.

team building tips

Teamwork & Leadership

Several Tips on Building Effective Teams

To put the goals in line with the team competencies and find the balance, you should plan your activities for group building in advance and assemble team members which have required skills and abilities to meet your project goals. The success of your team building leadership will depend on the success of your team to perform project tasks and deliver the project. Group management, team building and personal motivation should be considered as the basis for developing and supporting an effective team and establishing teamwork.

project initiation glag

How-to Guides

How to Initiate Projects Successfully (Part II)

When the project is defined and the project chart is developed, it is time to acquire and assign the team. At this step of the project initiating phase, the project board is to be established and the project manager is to take responsibility for acquiring the project team and assigning it to project tasks and activities. The project manager needs to recruit the team leader(s) who will assist the project manager in initiating project by selecting and recruiting required project staff (members of the project team). The team leaders take responsibility for making team assignments and the project manager approves these assignments.

During the project initiating phase, the core activity for making right team assignments refers to developing job descriptions. A project job description is a formal project initiating document that states and explains what project roles are required to complete the project work and produce the deliverables, what targets each role is assigned to, and how to measure the targets and to access the performance of each role. Every team member should be assigned to a detailed project job description which defines personal role and responsibilities within the project. When initiating project and developing project roles, the team leaders need to consider the project initiating documents (Project Charter, Feasibility Study).

project initiation phase

How-to Guides

How to Initiate Projects Successfully (Part I)

A recent study conducted by the competent US agencies specializing in project initiation researches has shown that a large percentage of projects [of any kinds] are dismissed before they even reach the planning phase. The study investigates that the most common reason of project initiation phase failure refers to improper definition of project scope which results in the lack of sponsorship and investments required to ensure success of those projects. Therefore, it’s critical to understand the importance of the project initiation phase and know which steps can be taken to successfully go through this phase and initiate your projects as quickly and efficiently as possible.

sow

PM Tips & Ideas

Statement of Work (SOW) – What It Means and Who Writes It

Writing a statement of work (SOW) is an arduous task, and many projects were failed because of too vague, broad or generic SOW. The failure to properly develop and execute a statement of work is also the reason why project parties end up in a dispute. Let’s try to understand what SOW means and how to develop it properly.