So, you’re new to project management. First of all – don’t panic! I still remember my first full project management role. Despite myself, I started to feel a little overwhelmed. But you don’t need to – here are some of my posts that will help you through.

General

• What is Project Management? – A quick overview of what is involved in project management.
• What is a Project? – Showing how important it is to realise you only use project management on projects, not day to day work.
• Project Organisation – The different levels you will need in your project management structure.
• I Hate Meetings – 10 Tips For Better Meetings – Pretty much as it says!
• Project Management – What Qualities Do You Need? – My take on what you need to be a good project manager.
• External Suppliers Are Part Of The Team – Remembering that building a project team means bringing everyone on board.
• Effective Communication – How can a project manager help a team communicate?

Starting the Project

• Before We Get Started – Looking at what leads to a project being started.
• Laying the Foundations – Putting in place what is needed to help make a project a success.
• Building the Case – Projects are done for a purpose – make sure you know what your project’s purpose is!

Planning

• Planning the Planning – A quick reminder that planning will take time, and you need to be ready for that.
• Planning the Planning – 2 – What other items you need in place to do the planning well.
• Project Plans – The Art of Prophecy – the 10 key sections you need in a Project Plan
• What Happens Now? – Scheduling a Project – Scheduling is only part of planning, but an important part. This post looks at how we can start to break the work up into tasks.
• Estimating Reality – A look at how we can try to come up with sensible timescales for project work.

Day to Day

• What Did You Do Today? – What I do day to day when managing a project.
• Are We Nearly There Yet? – Project Monitoring – A look at the vital work of making sure you know where the project is up to.

Risks and Issues

• A Risky Business – An overview of risk management.
• Identifying Risk – A more detailed look at identifying risks so we can manage them.
• Taking Issue – Handling the various issues that may crop up in a project.
• Don’t you wish you had riskier projects? Part 1, Don’t you wish you had riskier projects? Part 2 and Don’t you wish you had riskier projects? Part 3 – Why risk is a good thing in projects, and how to make sure your business and project managers embrace it.

Change

• All Change! – An in-depth look at dealing with change in your project.

Quality

• Feel the Quality – A look at how we decide on quality criteria, and what characteristics those criteria need to have.
• Continuous Quality – A reminder that the quality of the outputs isn’t an afterthought, it needs to be central to what we do throughout the project.

Ending a Project

• Your Mistakes Are Valuable – The importance of learning lessons from the problems we encountered and the mistakes we made.
• Closing Up – What to do when finishing a project, whether the project has reached its natural end or been stopped prematurely.

I hope you find these posts useful – taken together, they will give you a firm foundation to start developing your project management knowledge and skills. Let me know if there is anything specific you’d like me to cover.

If you’re looking for more in depth information, you can also check out my audio lecture course, Understanding Project Management – The Essential Guide.

If you found this useful, why not subscribe to Project Management Guide via the RSS feed, or if you prefer, via email?