Career Development > Employment Law

Should you sign a non-compete clause? There's good news and bad news...and no easy answer.

How do you handle a bully boss? You don’t have to be miserable and take his abuse. Advice to PMs: Approach them as you would a project.

Managers can play an even more valuable role in organizations as teams become self-organizing and take on more responsibility. But if managers want teams to take more self-responsibility, they need to shift their focus from monitoring the day-to-day work of individuals and let teams grow up. Here are three common areas of confusion as managers and teams negotiate their new relationships.

In today's workforce, there are few secrets you can keep from a prospective employer. Pre-employment background investigations provide unlimited potential to find out everything there is to know about you and your work history, all in the name of protecting their company, employees and customers. A company that is interested in keeping all of these aspects secure makes sure that no stone is left unturned--and has to be careful itself.

How can organizational change be implemented with a minimum of distress? Change frequently results in unrest, uncertainty and concern caused by nothing more than fear. People lose focus, become less productive and potentially seek out alternative employment because of the fear of something that is not going to happen. In this article, we look at how we can manage those situations more effectively.

How new ideas about what motivates us as individuals are changing the way we think about effectively managing projects.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that technology-based companies are still struggling to deal with the problems plaguing the current economy. But a new report hints at happier times ahead.

Training provider LegalBizDev has introduced the first program to formally certify lawyers as Legal Project Managers.

The Workforce Management Department Discussion Board is experiencing a disagreement between two groups: those who see discrimination and those who don't. What's going on? And who's likely to end up in court? In this second installment, we look at some legal ramifications.

There are plenty of project managers who, at the age of 40 (and up) consider changing jobs, but pause. Why? Well, plenty of professional people worry--and with good reason--about age discrimination in the IT world today. We have all heard the horror stories and, of late, the not-so-subtle hints from the executive recruiters that you may be more "difficult to market." How can this be with all of your years of experience? If anything, the "marketing" challenge should be getting easier--shouldn't it?

To manage risk effectively on our projects, we need to deal with uncertainty, understand why it matters, follow a structured process, and take into account the human side that influences judgment and decisions.

Project Management Institute reports that 71 percent of project managers saw an increase in compensation over the last 12 months.

The PMBOK Guide and other best-practice frameworks provide considerable detail on schedule, budget and risk management techniques, but much less guidance on how to manage the people-related challenges that threaten the execution of these plans, and are the most commonly cited reasons for the failure of complex change initiatives.

All too often, outsourcing is equated to offshore outsourcing. But it spans a much broader spectrum and includes any work or service performed by third parties for a company. So let’s look at outsourcing from both sides of the aisle, and explore the trade-offs. In doing so, a framework will be developed that you might find useful in evaluating the extent to which outsourcing is appropriate for your IT organization.

There are indeed several things that you should never do professionally, contrary to the age-old saying. In interviewing applicants, you should never write on a resume. Not even in pencil, folks! No, I know there is no law against it, but the law could be enforced based on what you write. There have been more times that I am willing to count that I have been in an interview review session with a client and I have seen them writing on a resume either during the interview or afterwards. ?So?? I hear the group echo. Take a minute to review this information and understand just what type of consequences can be derived from this seemingly harmless action.

The Critical Chain approach to executing projects has been compared to Lean, which also shares common ground with Agile-related techniques such as Kanban. Is there untapped synergy between Critical Chain and Agile methods? A recent conference helped to shine light on their similarities and key differences.

A key to sustaining employment and professional growth is finding ways to use the same skills in different jobs, and that requires looking at your skills in a broader way.

The future of too many organizations — and individuals, for that matter — seems to be set on "default." Change initiatives and process improvements come and go, but the underlying problems remain. Steve Zaffron says project leaders and teams can help rewrite the future together by understanding three fundamental laws of performance.

As the world still comes to grips with the tragedy in the United States, one expert in business intelligence argues that a national data warehouse combining all of the law enforcement agencies' criminal activity and suspect data would be a step in the right direction.

Why do sponsors refuse to provide contingency for risks? It’s not going to go away, you know! It's time to talk about reserves--the amount of time and money that needs to be put aside to cope with the risks on a project. In particular, we want to look at the mindset of the sponsor who refuses to acknowledge this contingency in the budget and schedule.

For the unemployed or under-employed, 2010 isn't looking as sunny as we would like to report. But here are some job-seeking tips and tricks to help you find your silver lining...and maybe your next position.

Most project managers think of changes to a project to be related to change requests that modify the scope of deliverables. But changes to projects go far beyond mere scope changes, so it's important to have a change management process in place that can address any manner of project change. While the majority of organizations have fairly mature change request processes in place, most lack similar processes to handle event-driven changes.

What do you do if a potential employer asks you to take a personality or psychological test as a condition of employment?

You know all the questions you should ask in an interview, but what about the questions you shouldn't ask--under penalty of law. That's right, there are a number of topic you must avoid to keep yourself safe from allegations of discrimination.

As our series concludes, we find out why it took so long for aid to be dispatched to New Orleans and how crisis management procedures have been improved.

Our woes were supposed to be over by now, but the economy seems to be hitting project management in two key areas: job loss/job creation and project/position funding. What does this mean for our PM organizations?

This writer was searching for the elusive missing piece that would allow project management to finally break through and be on par with other professional fields. The key piece we have all been missing finally struck him…Latin!

Project Management Institute selects British Airports Authority, Colorado State Patrol and Flour Corp. as finalists for its 2009 Project of the Year award.

The Hurricane Katrina problems cited by project managers and engineers have barely been solved. New evidence has surfaced that proves that a great deal of the destruction that Katrina wrought could have been minimized, or even avoided--and more importantly, it could be used to prevent another disaster.

What do you do if you're asked illegal interview questions? It's a tough situation with no easy answer. Do you know your rights and options? Here's some advice.

The manager of an evidence-gathering team of law professionals has reached a verdict, and it is in favor of project management. Bryan Melchionda spoke with Projects@Work about the growing need for bringing well-coordinated project management principles to the electronic discovery phase of large, complex legal cases.

When customized to the analyst, risk analysis can be watchful of ways to not only control risks, but provide details on cost and resource efficiencies for each risk reduction strategy. To begin with, you need to know just what threats could await you.

For workforce members over the age of 50, a set of challenges is making it even harder to keep their careers on track during the tough economy. What’s standing in older workers’ way? Some studies and trends paint an unfortunate picture.

It's not just a patriotic good idea, but it's the law: Employees must be excused from work for military training or deployment, and must then be re-employed in the same position they would have had if their employment had not been interrupted. Reservists are entitled to all rights and benefits that they would have attained if they had been continuously employed.

Any business must manage its human resources according to the law. The matrix organization makes compliance especially tricky for the project manager.

Times are tough...so what can employers do to avoid cutting too deep? How will IT staffing levels be affected and what are some of the unintended consequences related to laying off key intellectual capital resources? Here are some strategies for employers and employees that might help make getting through these tough times a little easier and more manageable.

Clients, law firms and consultants can use project management principles to streamline digital information-gathering efforts and minimize costly coordination issues and missed deadlines. Here is a basic framework and key tools for building and honing an effective end-to-end eDiscovery project.