project managers

While I was in Washington D.C. for the 2010 PMI North America Global Congress I asked author and blogger Elizabeth Harrin of PM4Girls some questions about her new book, “Social Media for Project Managers“.

I focused on two topics in this short interview, emerging trends and privacy.

One of the things in the book is on the new trends in social media.  What are the new things coming up?

Geolocation services like foursqure may have an evolution of that could be useful for project teams in the future.  The technology is somewhat immature still however, and can lead to problems with physical security and privacy.

What about keeping your personal identity online protected?

There have been some high-profile cases of people being made redundant due to something they put on their Facebook page.  People need to use common sense.

Sometimes as bloggers we tend to forget about this because as bloggers, we’ve been doing this for a long time and are used to being rather generic when it comes to blogging.

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Your ultimate goal in rendering a project is to finish on time, below budget and with a happy client. But how do you perform it? Here are five tips to assist you.

Be Honest

As the saying goes “Honesty is the Best Policy”.You have to be honest all the time in dealing with your customers. Tell them if their project is not feasible or if you don’t acquire all of the resource, cash and time involved to carry it out successfully from the start. Set their anticipations by saying to them what you will carry and by when. And if it eventuates that you can’t render on your promises, then state to them about it directly. By having an “open book” policy, you’ll have your client’s confidence. And if you involve them early enough, they will be a lot supportive to your cause.

Hand it over
Managers oftentimes fall into the trap of believing that they can manage things much efficiently than staff. Of course in a lot of cases they may be right, but the problem is that they don’t have the time to perform everything themselves. So a bright manager always tries to delegate as much as possible to staff. It presents them the time needed to supervise the project and support their team. It’s a delicate task, but even if you recognize you can do a job more expeditiously than others, delegate it anyway.

Become a leader
When you economize time by delegating your jobs, you have   time for  leading and motivating your group. Make this by regularly communicating the project  to your team, honoring them for progress and accrediting their accomplishments. Have their respect by showing them you care. Build Up team liveliness by bringing them to lunch on a daily basisand uttering about what they accomplished unitedly. Remember, there is no “i” in “team”.

Expect the unexpected
Always expect matters to change and be ready for it when it comes. People have ideas, your client may require changes, and the industry and technology change over time as well. It’s not the change that’s significant, it’s how you react to the transformation that weighs. Always handle change, but be suspicious of it. Question it, double-question it and only when you’re positive it’s for the greatest, apply it.

Work smart, not hard
Attempt not to begin from scratch. Give yourself a head-start wheresoever feasible by using tools like project management guides. These templates encourage the quality of your deliverables, while keeping you time and effort.

Jason Westland has been in the project management industry for the past 15 years and is the author of the book “A Project Life cycle”  if you would like to find out more information about Jason or his project management software you can visit projectmanager.com.

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