Category: Management

Crisis, Leadership, Lessons Learned, Management

How To Keep Your Project Going During the Wartime or Any Other Crisis

Recently Ukraine has become a victim of a treacherous invasion from russia. This is a real war that has affected all the spheres of everyday and business life. The first weeks of the war were most impactful because it was a total mess: we lost connection with the people, the clients were shocked, and the management of the companies was confused.… [ Read the rest...]
Management

Discovery Phase of a Project From a Manager`s Perspective

According to its definition, a project is a temporary activity, which means it is limited in time. But have you ever wondered what actually gives a start to a project? If you are a project manager who is familiar with the best project management practices you would probably answer that the project starts with an Initiation phase, where the project goals are explored and elaborated, the feasibility of the project is examined, the decision about the project stakeholders are made, etc.… [ Read the rest...]
Management, Meetings, Remote Teams

6 Steps to Establish a No-Meeting Day in Your Company: Meeting-Free Day`s Pros and Cons

Today`s workplaces are overwhelmed by meetings. This is especially true for the software development industry, and switching to remote work has made this issue even more severe: the number of meetings has increased and their quality has worsened. This redundancy of meetings leads to the situation when workers simply don’t have enough time to do their actual job. They`re jumping from one meeting to another the whole day, switching contexts and wasting their precious time, and at the end of the day it turns out that even half of the planned work wasn’t complete due to these distractions. … [ Read the rest...]
Communication, Management, Stakeholder Management

How to Push Back on Unrealistic Requests

Quite often project managers have to deal with difficult situations on their projects. A good example of such a tough situation is when the client comes up with an unrealistic request. In this situation, the project manager faces a dilemma: on the one hand, he doesn’t want to upset the client, but on the other hand, he understands that it is impossible to achieve what the client requests.… [ Read the rest...]
Management, Time Management

The Art of Juggling or How to Manage Multiple Projects at a Time

If one asks me about an ideal project, I will probably imagine a single team of 10-20 people. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. It is more common when a project manager is forced to lead a few smaller projects within his organization. Such a situation adds more complexity to the manager’s work because he has to balance his time and efforts between several projects and make sure that all of them are on track.… [ Read the rest...]
Management, Time Management

7 Email Management Tips That Will Make Your Life Easier

If you ask me where modern management begins, I would respond that it starts with your email box management. Indeed, email has become one of the main communication channels over the last twenty years, and most managers spend a great deal of time processing emails and responding to them.  Recently, I have realized that, despite my vast experience with email technology, I never thought if I’ve been using it effectively.… [ Read the rest...]
Management, Time Management

Task Prioritization Techniques: Get Trough Your Workday Like a Boss

When you work as a project manager, you’re often so overwhelmed by different tasks that you don’t know where to start. Moreover, usually, your to-do-list is much longer than a regular working day can accommodate. Unfortunately, you can’t extend a day length for a few more hours, but what you can do in this case is prioritizing your tasks and moving some of them to another day.  … [ Read the rest...]
Estimation, Management, Scrum

Story Points vs. Man-Hours For Project Estimation

When a new project is about to start, the project sponsors definitely want to know how much time it will take to complete it. If, on the contrary, you’re already involved in an ongoing project, project stakeholders probably are eager to know what amount of work you as a team will be able to complete during each subsequent iteration. We usually use different estimation techniques to provide the mentioned information to the project sponsor or stakeholders in both cases.… [ Read the rest...]
Communication, Leadership, Management

How To Encourage People To Work Overtime

I believe that every project manager, sooner or later, faces the need to request project team members work overtime. This part of my job really embarrasses me. I hate to be trapped in such a situation when I have to take people’s personal time, the precious moments of their lives which they could otherwise spend with their families or friends, or just for themselves.… [ Read the rest...]