Politics are never fun on a project and a PM’s life is always easier when they don’t have to deal with them, but that’s just not realistic. By recognizing that fact and counteracting “bad” politics with “good”, you can go a long way to neutralizing the threat to your project. Learn how you can leverage politics to your benefit and have a significant advantage.

If you’ve ever been involved in a highly visible project in which major stakeholders are jockeying to position themselves to impose their own agenda, then you would have experienced project partisan politics. And If you are a ScrumMaster on an agile project, there isn't a more important impediment to get out of the way.

While many consider politics to bring out the worst in people and try to shy away from or ignore internal and external politics, they are a reality in the corporate world. Ideally, politics can be a force put to use for the common good--are you utilizing the power?

When it comes to leveraging social media techniques on projects, the most important place to start is frame of mind. It’s not about mimicking Facebook in the workplace, but rather removing barriers to communication and information-sharing. Project leaders who do will improve team camaraderie and productivity.

Distributed project teams are a reality of today’s business world, and the ability to enlist them while upholding Agile principles can bring great advantages as well as real challenges. Our 38-page report looks at those challenges but focuses on the benefits of working with distributed agile teams — and how to achieve them.

Retrospectives are a catalyst for continuous team improvement, providing a feedback loop to examine methods, teamwork and results. But holding monotonous retrospectives isn’t much better than holding none at all. Here are three techniques you can interchange for maximum effect.

Code reviews are not typically viewed as part of a pure Agile process, but some of the technique's benefits, such as collective ownership, are in line with the Agile philosophy, and they can be conducted without slowing your project down. Here are some suggestions for adapting code reviews to work in an agile environment.

Harnessing the power of social media tools can greatly improve the communication and collaboration on your projects. But a test drive is prudent, and you must take into account team skills and location, among other considerations, before you dive in. Here are five pre-requisites for a successful social media deployment.

As long as people are involved in the project process, project managers will have to deal with politics. As intuitively obvious as that statement might be, it must remain an enigma to many project managers because they seem to be very politically challenged. Many PMs fail to understand that projects are comprised of people who must find a way to work together toward a common goal.

Project management is all about people and relationships--and there will be times when not everyone gets along. Projects have the potential to be political hotbeds as stakeholders have their own personal agendas--and that applies just as much to team members as it does to the sponsor or customer. Here we present a true story of politics and the destruction of departmental relations...learn from it before it's too late!

If you have not been a project manager on a contingent worker status, you're missing a great deal of experience. If you are ready to jump into the consultant PM life, what should you be aware of so that you are happy in the long run?

Someone said project management involves leadership. What does that look like, and how do I do it? Given the uncertainty of what leadership is, what do we do in developing our own capabilities? What are the strategies that we should adopt, and how do we get to the point where we are comfortable doing so?

We have to be able to understand the environment in which we and our projects are operating, and more importantly we also have to be able to operate and manage effectively within it--including how to deal with people and customers. With acceptance of this reality, we quickly find ourselves firmly within the realm of organizational politics. For many, this is not a place that they like to be.