Using a Matrix Structure to Administer Your Project
Many project managers have adopted a matrix organization structure that combines elements of both the functional and projectized structures to facilitate the responsive and effective participation of people [more…]
How to Develop Your Project Team
Merely assigning people to tasks doesn’t create a project team. Any good project manager knows that a team is a collection of people who are committed to common goals and who depend on one another to do [more…]
How to Specify Team Member Roles and Procedures
An effective project manager needs to specify team-member roles and communication procedures. After all, nothing causes disillusionment and frustration faster on a project than bringing motivated people [more…]
How to Maintain Control of Your Project
Whether you're a novice or veteran at project management, the process of maintaining control over projects is the same: You track project-plan details and expenditures, deal with team members, and monitor [more…]
Managing a Project with a Project-Management Information System
Savvy project managers use a project-management information system (PMIS) to keep their projects organized. A PMIS is a set of procedures, equipment, and other resources for collecting, analyzing, storing [more…]
How to Monitor Work Effort
When you're managing a project, comparing work effort expended with work effort planned can highlight when people are incorrectly expanding or reducing the scope of an activity; are more or less qualified [more…]
How to Monitor Project Expenditures
Project managers monitor project expenditures to verify that they’re in accordance with the project plan and, if they’re not, to address any deviations. You may think that you can determine project funds [more…]
How to Formalize Your Project Control Process
Every project manager has his or her own way of setting up project control processes. To guide your project throughout its performance, you must establish procedures to collect and submit required progress [more…]
How to Identify and Correct Causes of Project Delays
An effective project manager tracks every aspect of a project as it progresses in order to identify and correct causes of delays. After you confirm that a problem exists, you have to understand what caused [more…]
How to Manage Project Change Requests
How project managers handle project change requests depends on individual management styles. On large projects, formal change-control systems govern how you can receive, assess, and act on requests for [more…]
Earned Value Management Terms and Formulas for Project Managers
The basic premise of earned value management (EVM) is that the value of a piece of work is equal to the amount of funds budgeted to complete it. As part of EVM, you use the following information to assess [more…]
How to Determine a Task’s Earned Value
The key to a meaningful EVM (earned value management) analysis lies in the accuracy of your estimates of earned value (EV). To determine EV, you must estimate how much of a task you’ve completed to date [more…]
How to Plan for Your Project’s Completion
New project managers may not realize this, but planning for the completion of a project should be part of the initial project plan. If you wait until the end of your project to start thinking in detail [more…]
What to Do When You Complete a Project
So you're about to complete your (successful) project. Filing the final report, however, isn't the project manager's last task. You need to help your team members transition off the project, acknowledge [more…]
How Project Managers Write Useful Reports
Writing useful reports is part of a project manager's repertoire of good communications skills. Written reports enable a project manager to present factual data efficiently; to choose words carefully to [more…]
How to Write an Interesting Progress Report for Projects
As a project manager, you write progress reports to let people know how the project is going. When you write your project-progress report, make sure it’s interesting and tells the appropriate people what [more…]
Supporting Virtual Project Teams with Communication Technology
A virtual project team is a group of people who work together across geographic, time, and organizational boundaries to accomplish a common set of goals and objectives. Although the needs of a virtual [more…]
Applying Earned Value Management to Your Project
If your project is fairly complex, you may consider using earned-value management (EVM) to help control performance. By providing cost and schedule performance assessments of both the total project and [more…]
Nine Questions for Project Managers to Ask
As soon as you’re assigned to manage a project, try to get a clear picture of its significance — an accurate appreciation of your project’s purpose can lead to better plans; a greater sense of team member [more…]
Ten Tips for Being a Better Project Manager
Successful project management depends not only on what you do, but also on how you do it. A project manager's attitudes and behaviors toward people affect how they respond to that person. The ten tips [more…]
How to Prepare for the Post-Project Evaluation
Successful project managers lay the groundwork for repeating on future projects what worked on past ones (and avoiding what didn’t) by conducting a post-project evaluation. A post-project evaluation [more…]
How to Run a Post-Project Evaluation Meeting
As a project manager you will want to run a post-project evaluation meeting. A post-project evaluation is only as good as the results, expenditures, and performance information it’s based on. Before you [more…]
How to Choose Project-Management Software
No matter how superb a project manager's organizational skills may be, project-management software is a boon. When your project is sufficiently complex, you can use software for a wide variety of tasks [more…]
How to Use E-Mail Effectively during Your Project
E-mail is a fast, convenient means of conducting one-way, written communication during a project. For example, you can use e-mail to confirm oral discussions and agreements with project team members. In [more…]
Product Development Lingo
Get to know the following product development language so you’re on top of your game and your head isn’t spinning from all the jargon used during new product development meetings and conventions: [more…]
