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Have an upcoming kickoff meeting, and want to write a clear invitation and meeting agenda that send your project in the right direction?

You’ll find a template at the end of this blog for a kickoff meeting invitation with an agenda built-in. Feel free to copy and paste it into your digital meeting ...

Ah, deadlines.

In one sense, a great project manager rises above deadlines and keeps everyone focused on what meets project goals under current circumstances, even if that means original deadlines shift or fall by the wayside.

But in another sense, project schedules DO matter, and meeting a deadli...

The more I write about project management, the more I find myself talking about the “tools I have in my toolbox.” When I use this metaphor, I’m essentially talking about the possible responses I know about and feel prepared to use to various scenarios that arise in the course of managing projects. A...

A lot of project management is getting other people to make decisions.

As project managers, some decisions lie with us, especially when it comes to choosing the right tools to use to move a project forward. The decisions that lie with the project manager can vary depending on how this role is struc...

I once had a coworker who had clearly mastered the art of managing his own workload. He had a really positive way of saying no to new requests that were beyond his capacity. His response would almost magically leave you feeling good, even though he’d just declined to do what you asked.

At the time,...

This morning I woke up to an ant in the bathroom. Then another. And another.

This isn’t the first year my husband and I have had ants—though why they typically first appear in our second-floor bathroom is fascinating to me. Ants are irritating when they make their way into your home, but in an impr...

If you’ve been a project manager for any length of time, have you noticed how much communicating you do?

I’ve heard it said that project managers have 3 priorities: communication, communication, and communication. I don’t disagree.

It begs the question, however: are we supposed to do ALL of the co...

Once I was supporting a project that lasted about 18 months. About a month away from the project deadline, I was feeling proud that I’d built trust with a new team on this project and led them through all the required decisions in a timely fashion. Most of the big project deliverables were nearing c...

I was perusing r/projectmanagement on Reddit and I found a post from a new IT PM who asked, “How do you gauge severity of testing issues that you don't fully understand?”

I didn’t weigh in on the conversation because I agree with a lot of the advice already provided: Lean on the technical experts o...

I was chatting with a friend whose role is transforming more and more into a project-management-type role. Occasionally, even as somebody with the responsibilities of a project manager, she feels confined to tasks such as scheduling meetings for others that are traditionally associated with an admin...