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The Project Management Survival Guide

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Project management is a fast paced highly involving world of deadlines, information and teams. So how can you survive it all and come out with your and your colleagues sanity intact? Well Here is my survival guide.

Words to Live By

Each Project Management Leader should have the mantra of “Don’t Panic”, friendly text optional. Panic at any level will spread and cause mistakes, so if you feel it coming on, take a breath, count to five and trace the problem to its source, clearing up any other issues that may have sprung up around it in the process.

High Definition

Know what your project is about, have clear goals and make sure the investors and yourself know why the project has been requested, what will be produced during it and what the successfully completed project will have and when it will be.

Negotiation

No one likes to feel forced in to something so learn the art of negotiation, it is much easier to have a team member or employee do whatever task has been set willingly rather than have them fight you or become unhappy which will bring a very obvious note of discord that could disrupt the rest of your team.

Just Communication

Communication is vital to your survival, Don’t just talk at people, remember to interact with them! Listen and give appropriate well thought out responses when questioned as this will encourage others to do the same for you. It is also a good idea to document all communication and correspondence that goes on throughout your project as this will leave everyone on the same page and with a thorough understanding of each aspect of the job. This will be irreplaceable if something happens to a team member as their stand in or replacement will be able to review past notes and comments and pick up where they left off.

Building Bridges

Get your team working as one, even if this means going back to basics with team building exercises that is okay, one day spent on this could mean a much happier work environment with no miscommunication or unfounded resentments. Treat your team equally and help out with suggestions, mentoring or offering an ear for some counselling if needed.

Decisions, Decisions

Make sure there is a process for decisions when they need to be made, this way no one person has the “fate” of the project hanging on them, though is need be you can step in to make an executive decision – just remember that each team should be taught to see both sides of their point and you need to be able to do that too.

A Plan For Everything

You may not like hearing this but it has to be said; Plan for everything, even failure. Look at your project critically, what happens if everything goes wrong? Set aside some time to investigate this and work out some fail safes with your team, this way you’ll be prepared for every eventuality and you’re much more likely to succeed.

Vari thinks that survival guides are needed for most things from zombie apocalypses to engineering project management.

CV Tips, CV Writing, PMO, Project Management, Project management CV, project management resume

Bringing out personality in your Project Management CV

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As much as a balance of experience and competencies put into context are important on Project Management CV, personality is a close second. This may feel quite daunting as it can be difficult to bring the CV to life with a personal feel, but really it isn’t rocket science. Talking through you as a professional in your profile should really be a marketing pitch for employers which gives a snap shot of you, but don’t be afraid to present it in your own words – we are often encouraged to write this in a formal way but there are subtle ways of introducing your personality in there. Think about your management style and approach, if people are your thing then talk about how you engage people (briefly), you take a straight forward approach to implementing structure? Then say so, don’t worry about being too embroiled in PM terminology (there’s plenty of opportunity to get these keywords in further down the document. Now my favourite part of the CV, Key Achievements is the perfect place to really bring your personality to the document. This is where you talk about those extras that you do as a matter of course being a project professional and are what set you apart from others, so if you’ve already mentioned you are a good people person then you need to draw out a good couple of examples to qualify what you’ve said. If you have said you take a pragmatic approach to applying structure then this is also a brilliant place to talk through how and why you have done this with demonstrable examples. Really bring out your management style and personality to help the employer draw a picture of you.

Reflecting

Talking through your career experience you should look to add in context with the project details and competencies, then tailor the information to match up with your approach so it is wooden. I have come across so many CVs which are well written but read a little flat (missing the personality); the document needs to be informative and engaging.

It is really important to me to make sure a CV not only sells the candidate with all the right information but also to make sure the CV is akin with its owner – this is why a consultation takes place at the start of the our CV writing process – not only teasing out all the information, gaining a good understanding of your management style but also getting to know you and how you engage and articulate yourself.

guest blogger, Happy work environment, Project Management, project management recruitment

Hiring IT Consultants – What Are The Benefits?

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With economic pressures bearing down on both large and small firms, the pressure to change the way in which things are done is mounting. Times are changing and the way in which a modern business works is constantly evolving and moving forward, especially when it comes to technology. So why does it now make more sense to hire IT consultants for projects instead of using your in-house tech department?

IT Consultants

Expand Your Base

Some business owners may be sceptical about the idea of hiring consultants to come in from outside their company and essentially ‘tell them how to do things’. However, this view can sometimes be ego-driven and is often proved not to be the case. Consultants hold their positions because they know what they’re doing. Besides which, it can often be crucially beneficial to projects, especially creative work, marketing, or system planning/redesign, to have a fresh opinion from the outside. Consultants are there to help you and your business, not just to come in and get paid to tell you the time with your own watch.

Even if your internal staff have come up with amazing ideas and possess a vast understanding of your business and how it works, the consultant can bring proven, tried and tested methods to the table and re-work these into successful ways to help your particular project. They have used these methods before and have learnt what works and what doesn’t, as well as how and why these methods have proven to be successful. Working together, you could come up with something twice as good as you could on your own.

Cost Savings

Most importantly for many businesses, it costs a lot less to call in consultants as and when you need them instead of paying to maintain an entire department. This is especially true for SMEs who lack an IT team entirely, but is also true for those who wish to keep a small team in-house but expand capability for larger one-off projects. As well as saving on salaries, employers are able to avoid paying secondary and hidden costs such as pension contributions, payroll taxes, and sick pay.

Gain Skills As You Require Them

As we all know, IT is something that can be hard to keep up with. New technologies are released constantly, and with these come new methods of working. This leads us to another reason as to why IT consultants could be the best choice for your your business – managers need not worry about having to get too involved in the IT project and can utilise valuable time elsewhere in the company. You don’t need to train an external consultant as they already have the skills and knowledge that businesses need; some skills that may not currently exist in-house.

Another perk is that IT consultants only need to be hired and brought in when a big project is coming up, offering businesses more flexibility and giving them a little extra money to play around with. This extra revenue could mark the difference in being able to really push the limits of the company and can make that extra room needed for sustainable growth.

Katie Barnes writes for Penman, a specialist Cloud Computing IT consultancy based in London.

CV Tips, Project management CV, project management resume

Top 5 PM CV Tips

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Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of an employer when it comes to writing your CV? If you were looking to bring in fresh talent, whether on a contract or for a permanent role, what would you want to know about that person? When putting together your project management CV you should always try to take an objective view to what you are presenting, obvious things are grammar, spelling, format, CV length etc but beyond these standard considerations there is a lot you can be doing to make sure your CV is being considered for the job and not just put in the recycle bin.

Top 5 PM CV tips list:

  1. Are you telling the reviewer what it is you actually do? Your profile should be a summary of you as a professional, we would expect you to be motivated, complete (most of) your projects on time and to budget, and be a good communicator. What we actually want to know is: what do you actually do? Project management is a rather large umbrella that professionals sit under so tell us the types of programmes / projects you manage / support and what this involves. You are marketing yourself so some indication of the size and complexity coupled with the projects themselves is a good starting point.
  2. Talk us through some key achievements; tell us more than “successfully delivered a £20m programme on time and to budget”, after all this is expected if you were paid to do it. However projects don’t always go to plan or may be particularly tricky and it is this type of information which sets you apart from others, it tells us a lot about your management style.
  3. Your career history should give detail about the projects and your involvement and then look to drill down core competencies (as these are what are checked for by recruiters / employers – work through the project lifecycle and don’t just list keywords, add context.
  4. Keep emphasis on the most recent roles and reduce down the detail as the roles get older – something over 7 years old is a lot less relevant than work you have completed in you most recent roles.
  5. Any training and education should be included towards the end of the CV, do add dates and institution names and practitioner registration numbers. This is a professional document and most employers / recruiters will check, so make it easier for them.

Put yourself in my shoesThese are very simple but important tips to work to when putting together your CV – by following them you will create a document which tells the reviewer what they want and need to know about you as a prospective employee. Putting yourself in the employers’ shoes again, you have a project which requires XYZ and someone who has delivered similar sized/complexity through ABC methods – making sure you address this in your CV and add in that extra management style will set you apart from your competitors.

Making Your CV Project You