Project Office

By Steve Wilheir

Behind every business card and every skyscraper is a leader; A leader who brings efficiency and progress. Yet, these kinds of leaders are hard to find. If you were a hiring agent looking for prospective employees what would you look for? Well here are the top 10 characteristics of truly effective leaders.

By Justin Mountford

There is no denying that in 2012 the competition for a project manager's job is intense. If you've decided that this is the year your going to get into project management or upgrade your current job here are 12 suggestions that will help your resume leap of the desk ensuring you get the recruiter's attention.

Planning your project is one of the most important aspects of sucessful project management. These steps will guide you through the project planning process.

You may have heard the phrase "Project Management is all about people". If you are a Project Manager or part of a project team you will be reliant on people. You will need your team to work together, complete tasks on time and to present a positive message about your project.

If you Google '10 reasons projects fail' you will find many different opinions on project failure, but all of lists will contain something about stakeholders, communication, people or teams. To dramatically improve your chances of project success follow this four step process.

Any activity that has already been given the name of "Project" is likely to involve considerable amounts of resources, whether that is time, people, money or all three. So it is fairly obvious that whoever has authorised the project will want to be certain that it delivers what is expected, that it meets the business requirements and stays within budget and on schedule. A sponsor will also expect that risks are managed and controlled in an effective way.

Project management training is a crucial aspect for the success of projects within an organization. A solid project management training course for your organization's employees will ensure your people possess the right knowledge and skills for efficient management of your organization's business projects.

The knowledge area of project quality management includes the organizational processes that determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities. The PMBOK identifies three processes for quality management:

• Quality Planning
• Quality Assurance
• Quality Control

Project Management is the planning and management of a range of tasks, particularly where there are complexities either within the tasks or within the teams working on the project, in order to achieve a deliverable at the end of the project. A deliverable can be many things; it may be a physical thing such as a new product, it may be an intangible thing such as a new process within an organisation or it may be a new software system.

A Project Managers' role in a nutshell is being completely responsible for the successful planning executions, monitoring, control and closure of a project. This title is used in all most all industries. At a higher level, the role of a project manager is quite easy to describe. But it's impossible to apply one job description for all project manager positions as role and responsibilities differ from company to company. Below shows the requirements, roles & responsibility for project manager positions at a higher level:

Hopefully everyone knows the triple constraint - Scope, Cost and Time. Given below is a short synopsis of each and tips for best practices

Scope - This is where you determine clear objectives for the work that needs to be completed. As conversations progress you might have that sixth sense for where the scope creep could happen. Good Project managers usually account for these in their cost, as this will prevent change orders which most sponsors/stakeholders are always reluctant to approve.