Hello Reader, Most people I speak to are managing more than one project – that’s just life these days as a PM. I like the variety, but the workload… not so much. I put together a webinar a while back that shared my top 5 tips for managing multiple projects. You can watch the replay – there’s no registration or login required. In the webinar, I talk about the key things that make it easier to juggle all the projects: Milestone planning Dependency management Multi-stakeholder management...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, It's International PMO Day today. This is a relatively new day, I think it started last year. International Project Management Day (November) has been around for many years, so why shouldn't PMOs get their chance to shine too? How to set up a PMO was one of the questions that people came back to me with when I asked what you’d like help on a couple of weeks ago. I wouldn’t call myself a PMO expert, although I have run a team of PMs in the past, so I turned to my friend Bill Dow...
29 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, I’m a firm believer in doing one thing at a time… OK – that pretty much never works in practice, but I do try to have a goal of 1-3 tasks per day. Today was all about project communications. I don’t need to tell you how important it is to have a communications plan for your project (do I?). It’s something you should set up at the beginning of your project, and then review and tweak all the way through because: Stakeholders change and you don’t want to miss anyone out...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, You might know that most of my projects are managed in – gasp – Excel, because my stakeholders don’t have access to MS Project and they still need to be able to see the plans, action lists, budgets, etc, etc. (We also have Jira, and an enterprise PM software product.) So I spend a lot of time in Excel, and it’s not a fun time. Recently, I was on the phone with Grant Huang (who does Excel training), and I realised that I hadn’t updated my Excel skills for a long time. His cheat...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Did you know that where you live could change the real value of your project manager salary by as much as $66,000 a year? I recently analysed salaries across the U.S. and adjusted them for the cost of living, and the results were eye-opening: In Hawaii, project managers lose over $50,000 of value due to high living costs. In Oklahoma, the same salary stretches to give PMs an effective $16,000 boost. Some states that traditionally offer "big salaries" don't fare so well once...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Last week I asked what you were struggling with and I got a LOT of replies! There were some themes, one of which was setting up a PMO, so I've reached out to a friend who is an expert in that area as I don't have a lot of resources on that myself. I'll let you know what he says! Another thing I was asked for was a list of my best resources. So here's a start, off the top of my head. Free training webinars Most of the webinars I do are chargeable, partly because I believe that...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, When I’m mentoring project managers, one of the key things I hear time and time again is that they want to be given more responsibility and have greater influence over the work. Project managers often struggle from not having budget and resource responsibility. If you don’t control these elements of the project, you don’t really have the option to take many decisions about how the work unfolds. You can’t do anything to address risk either because people don’t take your...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Last week I led a short webinar on the 3 project management trends it's worth knowing about for your work this year. And no, it wasn't about AI (I assume you already know about that - plus, my research shows most project managers are not using AI tools to actually do their jobs, beyond a bit of ChatGPT). You'll learn about the importance of: Sustainability Personalization Speed of access. These topics underpin business resilience, stakeholder engagement and time management. And...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, In just a few days, I’ll be teaching a live paid workshop: The Productivity Blueprint for Project Managers: How to be Productive When You Run Out of Time Every Day. (If you haven’t booked your spot yet, make sure to do it now! It’s on Monday 27 January at 7pm GMT(UK)/2pm EST/6am AEST.) At this time of year, I start feeling overwhelmed with All The Things. So much to get ready for the new year. Work goals, new projects to kick off. All the things the children are supposed to be...
5 months ago • 2 min read
