At its heart, project management is really more about people than anything else. It’s about your team members, your stakeholders and the company’s customers. However, while projects should be people-centric, that doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t and shouldn’t play an essential role. That’s particularly true today, with the incredible pace of technological evolution in myriad industries. In fact, there are quite a few pieces of technology that can make project management easier and more effective. What should you know?
The Master Multi-Tasker
Perhaps the most essential piece of technology for project managers and their teams is the master multi-tasker – the modern cell phone. Once clunky, bulky and capable of nothing more than making phone calls, today’s cell phones have evolved considerably. These smartphones can still make calls, of course, but they can also send email, instant messages and even run program management apps that sync to desktop computers and tablets. For any PM and his or her team, having good cell phone technology underlying your efforts is invaluable. That doesn’t mean you all have to have the latest and greatest device on the market, but they should all be comparable in terms of software capabilities.
The New Kid on the Block
There are many new innovations out there, but few have had the same repercussions on the world of industry that the tablet computer has had. We’re not talking about jumped up e-readers here. We’re talking about true tablet computers – the iPad, Microsoft’s Surface, and the myriad Android devices out there. These handy little devices take the capabilities of the modern smartphone and build on them, offering most of the functionality of a desktop computer in a portable package that’s smaller and more transportable than a normal laptop. That’s particularly true of the Surface, as it runs a full version of Windows 8, but the iPad and those aforementioned Android devices can also work just as well. Tablet computers are must haves for any PM and their team.
Apps
While both tablets and smartphones are immensely capable devices, they don’t offer much without the right apps. Mobile apps provide a broad range of capabilities, and can be found in a dizzying array of types, formats and price points. There are full-blown project management apps designed for the needs of massive projects using waterfall management. There are svelte apps designed for teams operating within the bounds of Agile. There are apps designed for file sharing, those for basic communication and more. The world of mobile apps has grown so diverse that it can take a considerable effort to sort through and choose those most appropriate for your needs, but it’s important that you take the time to do so.
Between smartphones, tablet computers and the host of mobile apps available, you and your team can enjoy the best in terms of collaboration, communication, information and file sharing, and much more. It’s vital that every team have the right technology underlying their project, and PMs will find that technology can make their job much, much easier.

Just because a blog has a tongue-in-cheek name, doesn’t mean it can’t impart some serious wisdom. Or, at least a good review of some serious wisdom in the case of Herding Cats’ review of the book, “Effective Complex Project Management: An Adaptive Agile Framework for Delivering Business Value.”

The book, available via Amazon, is written by Robert Wysocki. An online blurb about it says the book has these key features:

Demonstrates why program and project managers need a framework that continuously analyzes and adapts to changing conditions to be consistently successful in managing complex projects
Defines the four-quadrant project landscape in order to classify Linear, Incremental, Iterative, Adaptive and Extreme project management model types
Presents an implementation model for defining and transitioning to an effective complex project management environment
Defines a complex project support office and emphasizes meaningful client involvement using a co-manager project team model to increase business value
Glen B. Alleman, writing at Herding Cats, says in his review, “The book is based on an Adaptive Complex Project Framework. The notion, a naive notion, that complexity can be reduced and complex systems should be avoided, is just that notional. In practice complex systems can’t be avoided in any business or technical domain where mission critical systems exist. That is non-trivial systems are complex.”

He explains how it was derived from a 2010 IBM report of 1,541 executives in 60 countries about the preparedness for complex systems work. Capitalizing on Complexity. Alleman, in his review, points out 10 critical success factors from the report. Here are what he considers to be the top 5 in order of importance:

Executive support – if those at the top aren’t willing to support your project, it’s going to be difficult to get help when things start going bad.
User involvement – projects are about users getting their needs met through new capabilities, delivered through technical and operational requirements.
Clear business objectives – if we don’t know what Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers, we’ll never recognize Done before we run out of time and money.
Emotional maturity – project work is hard work. If you’re easily offended by blunt questions about where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, assures that when you arrive the product or service will actually work and what evidence there is to show you spend the money wisely – you’re not ready for project work.
Optimizing scope – full functionality can never be foreseen. But a set of needed capabilities must be foreseen if the project is not to turn into a death march.
Others have also spoken up about the book. “Change drives today’s business, it is the only constant. Unfortunately, the processes that businesses use are decades old and built for a time that was much more predictive. Effective Complex Project Management is the first book to define a practical and rigorous yet adaptive solution for addressing rapid change in projects,” said Todd C. Williams, president, eCameron Inc.

Kathleen Hass, project management and business analysis practice leader, consultant, and author of “Managing Complex Projects: A New Model,” says, “Wysocki’s approach is to use an adaptive framework and decision-making tool which includes a robust project management methodology that seamlessly integrates change, and can be applied to all types of projects across industries. This adaptive complex project framework is aligned with the most contemporary principles of innovation, agility, and lean approaches to change, and represents the most advanced thinking in applied complex project management to date.”

Even the best employees can stand to improve their performance. Every worker has nearly limitless potential and can grow if handled properly.
Now, this doesn’t mean that contributors have to be coddled and treated like delicate flowers. In fact, that approach could be quite problematic, especially when project managers need their team members to improve from one initiative to the next.
You need to give constructive feedback so that your employees can develop new skills. If you offer an overabundance of praise, your workers will likely become complacent and production will stagnate as a result.
It can be a bit difficult to tell employees that they aren’t meeting expectations. Further, talking to talented professionals about ways in which they can improve might feel useless because they’re already your best associates. However, your job as a project manager is to ensure that workers are on the right path to continually grow throughout their careers.
Be realistic
If you’re explaining to contributors that they need to double their production while also handling other duties, you’re already making a couple of mistakes. While you want employees to reach for the stars, you shouldn’t set them up for complete failure by creating unreasonable objectives.
Before you start critiquing your team members, think about how they performed on the latest project. Identify trouble areas and praiseworthy moments so you understand everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. Once you have those, you’ll be able to create realistic goals for the entire staff and provide actionable feedback based on their most recent performance.
Give instructions
You shouldn’t compliment or critique a contributor and leave it that. Feedback should entail both your professional opinions and instructions on how to act on those thoughts. Scott Dobroski, community expert at Glassdoor, recently explained to Fox Business’ Andrea Murad that this strategy should be used at all times, even during positive discussions.
“When giving positive feedback, also give suggestions and direction on how they can improve and get to the next level,” Dobroski said.
As the project manager, you know what it takes for an employee to ascend to new positions and develop additional skills. However, your workers likely don’t share that same knowledge so they’re left wondering how they should go about implementing your suggestions.
By giving directions as well as feedback, you’re ensuring that your team members know how to respond and grow as professionals. Ultimately, this will strengthen your team and lead to enhanced production on future projects.
Further, directions will also show that you’re not just giving feedback just for the sake of being critical. The instructions will show your contributors that you’re invested in their development and want to give them all the necessary tools to thrive.
Frame it in a positive way
Your tone and delivery play a large part in how your employees will react to your feedback. If you’re overly positive, team members will walk away thinking that they don’t have to do anything in order to improve because you seemed so happy. Meanwhile, a negative approach can cause unnecessary stress and lead to emotional reactions, which can prevent contributors from learning.
In a report for the Harvard Business Review, Robert Pozen, a senior business lecturer at Harvard and author of “Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours,” wrote that managers have to find ways to cushion the blow so that workers can act on feedback instead of feeling attacked.
One strategy is to offer a compliment for every critique. This will show staff members that you’ve noticed the positive aspects of their performance and aren’t just focusing on the negative ones.

Almost every project team is completely reliant on technology to complete even the simplest task. This is mainly because cutting-edge tools have streamlined intricate assignments and eliminated unnecessary steps.
However, project management software isn’t a necessity just because employees are accustomed to using digital resources. There’s a veritable laundry list of reasons why technology is essential to the production of every single project. Let’s take a look at some of items from that list.
Advanced planning and monitoring
Our own Marie Larsen recently pointed that there are applications that allow project managers to plan their initiatives and track progress. The software assists teams by providing detailed insights into an assignment from start to finish, enabling every worker to see what’s been completed and what’s on the horizon.
Larsen even recommended some of the best applications: Mindjet MindManager, MindMapper and Mind Genius are all effective options becomes they integrate various services to create central project hubs. Managers can rely on these to carefully monitor progress.
Perhaps the most notable benefit of these software systems is they combine disparate elements so a project can be easily completed. This is an improvement over employees working in silos and then spending time combining all of their completed assignments.
Enhanced collaboration
Every project team has to be highly communicative in order to succeed so managers have to find ways to encourage associates to collaborate on every issue. In a report for Business 2 Community, Julian Hooks explains that project management software can facilitate communication between employees. Many applications have chat functions and messaging tools so team members can ask questions and provide feedback.
These features are especially beneficial for supervisors who are leading remote teams. When workers aren’t in the same office, there needs to be a way to overcome the distance. By implementing a reliable system, managers can ensure that everyone can stay in touch.
A project tool with an integrated communications platform is much simpler to use than a separate resource, such as a video conferencing channel. Some employees might not want to download applications and running multiple programs can slow a computer’s performance to a crawl.
Further, Hooks points out that there are some programs with document-sharing features. This can be a boon to collaboration as workers can edit and update each others’ reports without having to email them or load them into hard drives.
There are applications that feature cloud integration so companies can capitalize on online tools. The additional functionality can be helpful as it ensures that employees can work on their projects from any location, instead of being forced to come into the office every day. This benefit also helps project teams overcome hardware malfunctions as workers can access their documents from any Internet-connected device.
Better budgeting
In today’s uncertain economic environment, project managers have had to become adept at managing finances and ensuring that they are working well within their budgets. Leaders who frequently exceed their spending limits damage profit margins and negatively affect how much revenue the company can generate from an assignment.
Fortunately, management software has made this task somewhat simple. According to an article Arif Mohamed wrote for ComputerWeekly, many applications provide budgeting assistance. This is an invaluable feature for every supervisor, especially those who have limited funding for new initiatives.
Because the software can track expenditures and estimate potential costs, managers won’t have to keep close eyes on their wallets. Instead, they can spend additional time working with their team members and focusing on important matters, including identifying risks, resolving conflicts and communicating with stakeholders.
Interoperability
The days of desktops being the only devices project teams can use are long gone. These days employees can use laptops, tablets and smartphones to work on almost everything. That’s why it’s so important that managers implement solutions that are compatible with multiple devices.
We recently published our list of the best project management apps, some of which are available on various mobile operating systems. This allows employees to use the same applications despite using gadgets with different software.
Managers should search for systems that can work on every platform to ensure that team members won’t need to buy new hardware to access their company’s tools. Ultimately, choosing a universal channel allows an enterprise to increase productivity.

There aren’t many ways that you can stop change completely on your project, and frankly, that would be a bad idea. However, changes to project requirements can have a massive financial and schedule impact.
Take, for example, this anecdote from a McKinsey study. The project team at a bank only involved the finance department towards the end of the project, a few months before the transformation project was due to launch. Unfortunately, this led to the need to make changes to the system’s accounting modules. Recent changes to how the bank operated hadn’t been picked up by the project team, and as Finance hadn’t been involved to that point, they had no way of knowing the impact. The changes delayed the project by 3 months, at a cost of over $8 million. That’s a huge impact that probably could have been avoided by having the right stakeholders on the team, but it shows how important it is to manage change well.
The changes in this example sound to me as if they were essential, but you’ll often get asked to incorporate changes that don’t truly have to be done right now. If the initiator understands that their request is going to cost millions and delay the project overall they might better appreciate why they should back off and agree to bounce their change into Phase 2.
Higher project cost and schedule delays are two reasons why change control for new project requirements is important, but there are other benefits too. A Forrester study concluded that businesses are hit with 5 other issues when change control isn’t carried out appropriately on IT projects:

Poor software quality
Dissatisfied customers
Unnecessary rework
Failed changes
Downtime in production systems.
The change control process can help you avoid all of those issues. Your change process should look something like this.

1. Change request
The change arrives with the project manager. This could be via email, a formal request template, or through a chat in the corridor or during a meeting. You may require formal documentation or you may be happy to take on ad hoc requests – that’s up to you and will probably depend on the scale of your project. Anyone should be able to put forward a request but if it’s a really big project you may want to implement some control on that to say, for example, only team leaders can propose changes on behalf of their team.

2. Change log
The change is added to the change log (or register). Record the date, the originator, a brief description and the person responsible for seeing this change through the process.

3. Change analysis
Review the change. What implications does it have for the project? The budget? The schedule? The team? What work has to stop so we can do this? What’s the risk of not doing it? What’s the risk of doing it?
Analyse the change from all angles so you have a thorough view of what is going to be different on your project if you decide to go ahead.

4. Change decision
Are you going to do it? Sometimes as the project manager you can take this decision if it is within your area of control. But often you’ll have to take a recommendation to the change control board or project sponsor so that they can assess it too and make the final call.
Typically you’ll decide Yes, No or Not Right Now. This last one, Not Right Now, is good for changes that are sensible and will improve the product but that have come at the wrong time for the project and you don’t have the budget/capacity/time/something else to do it properly now. Record the decision and the reasons in your change log.

5. Change implementation
Of course, you only do this step if you are agreed that the change is going to go ahead. Update all the project artefacts and ensure everyone knows what they have to do. Then get on with it.
If you aren’t going to implement the change, then make sure that the originator understands that and the reasons why their change was rejected.
Personally I used to call this change management, but it seems to me that there’s been a bit of a shift in thinking and ‘change management’ is now in wide use as a term to mean organisational change preparedness or readiness. Change management is a discipline that helps the business prepare for and maximise the changes that projects deliver. Change within a project is easier differentiated as change control, so I’ve stuck to that term in this article.
Whatever you call it, you should do it! Does your process include all these steps? Is there anything that I’ve missed out? Let us know in the comments below.

Vision building is an art form. It’s a pivotal skill that all great leaders must possess. Without it, many leaders often turn to trying to motivate others through fear. Fear of loss, fear of repercussions, fear of what if’s, fear of humiliation. Fear is a weak and lazy method of motivation. Learn to do it better.

A Business Leader who knows how to craft an inspiring vision for their company and followers, and who truly lives their own powerful vision statement will find the world within their grasp.

If you can inspire, you will acquire. I have had the blessing of being around several great leaders while studying even more of them whom I one day hope to meet. One of the characteristics that I have seen frequently in these leaders and business owners is their ability to inspire their followers to achieve increasingly greater things for themselves and their companies every day.

People need so much more than just money in this world. So many are insecure about what tomorrow may bring, some may be craving genuine connection with others, others may have a need to care for their own, or a desire to help others in their past. There is a myriad of reasons people do what they do. But what these great leaders frequently demonstrate in their arsenal of leadership qualities is an ability to identify those underlying needs in anyone who they inspire to follow them. That is where a Vision Builder comes in.

Suggested article: Leadership Qualities: The Art of Vision Building

Vision and Vision Statement: How do you build it for your business?
Well, the process is two-fold. First, you must be able to envision it yourself. Put yourself in the future, think of all aspects of the life vision you seek to achieve. A book that beautifully describes how to build an excellent business vision and mission is called Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold. You can find it here on Amazon. Before you start, you must be willing to dream. Don’t worry so much about the details of “how” at this stage. Your entire focus must be on the “what” and the “why” for your business. Define the look and feel of what you aim to build in as much detail as possible.

Vision Building Ideas to Consider:

Business Culture: What will the company purpose be? How will your people interact with each other? How will they interact with the world outside of your business? What will the values, ideals, and standards be? How will you lead by example? What will people who first step into your business space feel about your company? What will contractors, vendors, clients, prospects, or employee family members experience about your company culture?
Employees: Who will you need to bring on board to achieve your vision? What will those people be like? How will your people interact with each other and the world outside of your business? What will they probably most enjoy about your business?
Business Finance: How much capital will your business need to achieve its long-term vision? What will its financial standing be? What will the company spend its money on?
Marketing Strategy: What will your brand identity look like? Who will relate to your business’s mission and vision? What will people feel when they interact with your business? What kind of clients will your business attract? Where will they find out about your business? What will they expect from working with your business? What will your brand’s voice be like?
Social Outreach: How will your business make the world a better place? How will people outside of your business perceive your business? What values will your business represent with its social outreach?
The next step is to be able to communicate it so well and so passionately that the people you share it with grow inspired themselves!

Communicating Your Vision: How Do You Get Your Followers to Buy In?
A Vision without followers is just empty words. How do you make people join your movement? Clearly answer what’s in it for them. If they join your movement, will you fulfill something in their lives where they feel they are lacking? Another excellent book that speaks on the kinds of needs you can fulfill for followers through your vision is called The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!.

Some of the needs are:

Make Them Feel Better About Themselves
Help Them Solve A Problem
Educate Them
Make Them Look Better
Give Them Security
Raise a Positive Emotion
Satisfy Appetites
Make Things Easier
While in the book the author emphasizes these needs as things your business can provide for customers, it also very much applies to people who choose to follow you and do business with your company. In communicating your Company Vision or Life’s Vision to people, work to tie in how following you in your Vision will ultimately fulfill those needs for them as well.

The better you are at communicating your Vision Statement while inspiring emotion and buy-in from followers, the more likely you are to increase your vision’s impact. In saying that, another essential skill to develop is your ability to communicate effectively and eloquently through your writing and speaking.

How can you improve your ability to communicate?

Listen to Famous Speeches and Analyze What They Say and How They Say It.
Practice Your Writing with a Blog or through Social Media Posts. (The author of this article for example, practices his writing and speaking on his instagram page @danielmurphybuilds and his deeper thoughts he saves for my blog!)
Practice Your Speaking Through A Toastmasters Club, or with Youtube Videos
Strike Up Conversation With as Many People As You Can
Basically, the more you practice, the better you’ll be! And every time after you practice, take time to reflect on how conversations went. How did the people react to what you said? Did they demonstrate positive or negative emotions in parallel with your message? Were they highly engaged with you, or were they distracted? Did they ask you questions about your message and actively appear interested in learning more? Did they appear happier, or more excited after talking with you? Emotional connection to your message is a powerful indicator of successful comunication.