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Social Media Networks provide effective tools for Project Managers
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As a Project manager you need to keep in touch with messages from clients, stakeholders, developers and team members, arranging meetings, keeping up with project updates. This takes a lot of time, in fact you could say that this makes up most of your job. There are emails to check and send, phone calls to make, meetings to attend, information and reports to chase.
Having done all the above, you then need to update your project plan, communicate the updates to senior managers and stakeholders, creating reports, communicate the progress of the project. Knowing the importance of personal relations, you probably wish you had more time to talk face to face with important clients, but your time gets eaten away with endless e-mails, phone calls and meetings. Not only that, you will need to keep on top of being able to locate and distribute the latest updates of documents for yourself and for your team.
This will not only eat up your time, all the emails and updates need to be read by your team members and it will subsequently eat up their time too. If they are unsure about whether they have the latest updates they must contact you directly, probably by email again to make sure they are up to date with project changes and deadlines. They may lose emails or miss them in the ocean of updates. This will keep you even busier as you may feel the need to check receipt of messages. Read the rest of "Using Social Media for Project Management"
Posted by Andy Trainer in News, PRINCE2, Project Management, Social Media on October 24th, 2011| 2 Comments »
There’s no avoiding the fact that Project Managers are everywhere these days! Project Management is one of the most in-demand skills, and this applies across all types of organisations and across both public and private sectors.
Here at Silicon Beach we run regular Management Training and Project Management training courses, as well as accredited PRINCE2 Training and MSP Training courses here at our training centre in Brighton, Sussex and demand is still strong, even through the recession.
But why are project managers so highly valued?
Any manager requires knowledge of their subject matter. A finance manager needs to know their numbers, an HR manager needs to know Human Resources, and so on.
The difference with Project Managers is that they have to be an expert general manager who is highly focused to achieve results across a range of disciplines with a defined scope and accepted quality level.
A really good Project Manager needs to be a jack-of-all-trades who knows enough about every stage of the process to get their project to completion. They are responsible for delivering on-time, to budget. They therefore have to have great people skills, and also excellent personal organisation and Time Management skills. They have to be contactable by any member of their project team – and with modern telecommunications technology that can be at any time, in any place – day or night (I know project managers who work internationally who frequently get calls throughout their evenings from overseas as well as all day in their own time-zone).
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Posted by Andy Trainer in Management & Leadership, MSP, MSP Training, News, Personal Development, PRINCE2, Project Management on January 19th, 2011| 1 Comment »
Project Managers are often inclined to care more that a job is done according to procedures than about a job being done well. Whilst budgets and schedules are vitally important and you cannot underestimate how essential it is for a good Project Manager to have a clear grasp and control over these elements, people and personality are also an important part of the mix.
Silicon Beach Training is an Accredited Training Organisation for PRINCE2 training in Brighton, Sussex, and offers a full range of PRINCE2 courses inducing Prince2 Foundation and Prince2 Practitioner Training courses with pass rates well above the national averages. We also provide a popular Project Management and MS Project training package you can book our 1-day Project Management course with our 2-day MS Project course.
Project Management procedures as well as software development procedures are extremely difficult to stick to at all times. You need people to enforce procedures or practices until people get used to them. And if these people cannot see the value in a specific procedure they may never get used to it. What makes a great project manager is knowing what procedures are essential and what details can be flexible. If something hasn’t happened according to plan, it is actually going to be better for the project to hold a meeting about it and change things that are not essential if to redo something will risk spending more time and money than is necessary. Sometimes it may be better to hold a meeting at the end, after the budget and deadline have been met and discuss as a group what changes you would make next time.
Project Management Methodologies are based on procedures. Prince2, for example, is structured into 8 processes which cover all the activities in the project, 8 components which take up various aspects of project management and 3 techniques. However, there are multitude of techniques which can be used. I am not about to imply that Prince2 training is not a great way to learn about Project Management. The great thing about Prince2 is that it is a standard, in a large organisation projects need to be managed to the same standard using the same techniques in order for projects to move forward. There needs to be a common understanding about the way that projects are handled. However sometimes so much time is spent on maintaining procedures that less time is spent on work which actually pushes a project ahead.
Whilst it may be important to create good document templates is it essential to spend time going over every detail of new document templates? It needs to make sense – what would be the point of discussing a 5-hour schedule change for an hour with 12 people? Sometimes just to let people get on with things and to hold back and not spend your time and others picking up every detail is what is needed to get a project out on time and budget.
We have some free Prince2 templates for you to download, free prince2 case studies, a free Prince2 training resourcePrince2 Quiz to test out your knowledge. and a
Posted by Heather Buckley in New Free Resources, News, PRINCE2, Project Management on October 25th, 2010| 4 Comments »
Best iPhone apps for Project Managers
The other month I got my very first smartphone, in the form of Apple’s iPhone! I first really didn’t know where to start when it came to picking the best and most useful apps, so I asked my friends on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for help. Thanks to everyone who contributed. Where there were rival apps I’ve chosen the one that was cheaper. Hope it’s useful – let me know if I’ve missed something.
Silicon Beach Training offer a range of Project Management Training courses including PRINCE2 Training in Brighton, Sussex. We also offer a popular range of Social Media Training courses. If you’re a lover of all things iPhone don’t miss our general list of iPhone apps for Business.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Project Management on July 7th, 2010| 1 Comment »
Top Tips for freelancers: how to keep Project Management simple
Working as a freelance Project Manager requires excellent time management, communications, stress management and planning skills. It also requires good self-motivation and discipline. Here are our top tips to help you keep your cool as a Project Management freelancer.
We also write regular guest blogs on PRINCE2 Training, Project Management Training and Social Media Training in Brighton, Sussex - get in touch if you’re interested.
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Posted by Andy Trainer in Project Management on July 5th, 2010| 1 Comment »
At Silicon Beach Training we offer a wide range of IT, Business and Management training courses including Project Management training, PRINCE2 training and Six Sigma Training in Brighton, Sussex. We’re always looking to network with others interested in Project Management and have even compiled a list of the best Project Managers to follow on Twitter.
Check out this list of 10 excellent Project Management blogs: there are so many different blogs to choose from, my choice below focuses on blogs that are a bit different and provide personal angles on Project Management…
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Project Management on July 2nd, 2010| 4 Comments »
Project Managers on Twitter
We run regular Project Management courses here in Brighton as well as PRINCE2 Training which is also in Birmingham, and we’re always looking for Project Managers to chat too and share ideas with. The easiest way to find Project Managers on Twitter is to follow the #PMOT tag for “Project Managers on Twitter”. However, if you’re serious about using Social Media (see our article on using Social Media for Project Management) there are some friendly Twitter users you really should be following – we’ve put together our favourites with a focus on the UK…
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Posted by Andy Trainer in Project Management on June 2nd, 2010| 3 Comments »
Why Project Managers should be using Social Media and how to do it
Silicon Beach Training offer Project Management Training, Social Media Training and also PRINCE2 Training in Birmingham and Brighton for those looking for a formal project management qualification.
Think Social Media and (for many) think kids procrastinating on Twitter and Facebook. But simply put Social Media just names a way of communicating online and what is successful Project Management without effective and efficient communication? If you’re not making use of Social Media and the Real-Time Internet in your Project Management, you really need to be. Because nowadays when you can research any subject and get immediate results on Google, your clients and team members will start to expect the same from your project. If you’re not convinced, see this excellent post by Andrew Filev which compares completing a project with and without Social Media.
Of course Social Media does often mean kids procrastinating on Twitter and Facebook, and if you’re going to use Social Media you definitely need to ensure you do so in the right way, with the right platforms. Read on for our suggestions on why you should be using Social Media and how you can do it.
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Posted by Andy Trainer in New Free Resources, Project Management, Social Media on May 21st, 2010| 4 Comments »
