Project Management Training > Consulting Skills

Need some transcendent advice for project managers? Learn how to grow your consulting skills and create more opportunities.

What’s the best training for a project manager who already has the basics? Here's what you need to keep in mind when trying to advance your knowledge--and your career.

So you want a career in project management? What will it take to be successful, and what about earning potential? This article will explore the pursuit of a career in project management, including looks at characteristics of successful PMs, what employers are looking for and salaries.

One of the unsung PMO functions is managing risk. There are a lot of aspects of risk management where the PMO can provide tangible support to project managers in their endeavors. In this article, we explore some of that support in terms of identification, analysis and response.

Is there a "best" way to start a career in project management? Assuming that you have started a career in an organization already, how should you focus on it? If the "by accident" approach isn't for you, there are two very distinct planned paths.

Regardless of the economic climate, IT project managers and consultants going head-to-head with established consulting firms have to be prepared for a bumpy road in the beginning. Here's some advice on competing with the big guys.

There’s no excuse not to continuously improve your skills--are you always learning? Here, we explore the need for continuously improving your skills and the various options available that will allow that to happen within the confines of our busy careers and lives.

How do you lead and develop resources across the miles? Having a strengthened project team can be hard enough if everyone is located in the same location, but how do you ensure success when the project is global in scope? In this article, we explore different aspects of team and individual development and leadership--and some of the specific challenges that are introduced in a global project.

With the recent economic challenges, project pressures have grown even more--there’s less money available, and that means fewer resources and a need to get money-making (and money-saving) work completed more swiftly than ever. Can project teams be the secret to better project management in the future?

The head of the PMO has a significant responsibility to the project managers to act as career coaches and mentors. Are you taking that role seriously?

Just because someone is good at handling a specific situation on one project doesn’t mean that they are always a great PM. What does it take to be the best in your profession? Whether this person actually exists is debatable--at least on a consistent basis--but it’s a fun exploration. Let's see how you measure up...

Employers often look only at their own industry when hiring, because not every PM can make the jump--and if they can’t, things can get very bad very quickly. So what should employers look for--and by extension, what should PMs demonstrate that they are capable of doing? Does industry matter in your career? How transferable is the project management skill set?

What advice has helped you survive this crazy profession? One writer weighs in on some valuable tips of the trade.

Career development and training go hand in hand with mentoring. If you can find a few good mentors in your career, you’ll be much better off than having to experience the pitfalls of the work world all alone. This writer has been fortunate to have several formal and informal mentors help him along the way, and here he shares the top five bits of career advice that he still keeps fresh in his mind.

Management is important on projects, from juggling tasks to managing schedules and risks. But it’s not enough. It’s leadership that sets us apart. It’s time to start thinking like and becoming a project leader. There are no short cuts.

Everything this writer knows about managing resources he learned from Santa Claus. What can the big guy teach us about WFM? Warm up some cocoa, start the fire and turn on some carols as we learn some valuable holiday PM lessons.

We seem to be moving from the “every PMO is different” model to the “PMOs fit into one of several types” model. However, since the heady days of Y2K the world has changed a lot--and created a lot of opportunities for PMOs to reinvent themselves and create a new model. This writer may be a power-crazed egomaniac, but he thinks PMOs can run the organization (if not the world).

How do the rules around communication change when we add the global element? When we add a global perspective into the picture, things can get a lot more complicated. The physical distance can be a big part of that--as can time, language and culture. In this article, we look at how communication needs to adjust on a global project in order to remain effective.

How do these two roles stack up against one another? Can a project manager adapt to being a ScrumMaster? Given the opportunity and environment, people can be successful in a number of different roles--provided that there is some degree of connection.

Does your project need outside help? You’ll need to consider a few things before making your pitch to the necessary senior leadership and actually bringing in an outside consultant. Here, we cover some key considerations.

Organizations are expected to deliver more and more with less and less, and that has in part led to the growth of organizational project management. But in this writer's experience, organizations have not been able to define what a successful OPM model looks like. How do you maximize the return on Organizational PM?

Project control is not about the minutiae, it’s about the big picture. Here we provide some guidelines on how to move from micro-level project management to a more macro-level control phase.

Recognizing the needs of our team members is a huge step in becoming an effective leader and creating an environment where success is easier to achieve. These needs include confidence, motivation and recognition/reward. But they aren’t the same for everyone.

How can you ensure that your PMO is as strong as it can be as the economy recovers? In this article, we look at how you can use this opportunity to improve your PMO--making it a more significant contributor to your organization than it was before the downturn.

In this time of tight budgets and limited resources, the ability to better manage the resources that you do have across the full portfolio of work is vital. Learn more about maximizing your resources--and how you can manage and distribute them more effectively.

The most effective virtual team leaders are able to balance execution-oriented practices with interpersonal skills and cultural factors. Communication is king, according to a study of 48 virtual teams that identified five best practices for virtual team leadership.

When a PM is first exposed to Scrum, it can seem as though there is very little if any structure--the team simply organizes themselves and gets work done in relatively uncontrolled sprints. That’s not the case, and the PM does have an important role to play. How do PMs adapt to a distinctly different role in Scrum?

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?

When you need to hire, how do you ensure that you get the right person? This two-part article explores some of those challenges and ways to work around them. In Part 1, we focus on the lead-up to interviews--a process that is often not given the attention it needs.

Effective project activation is more than just hard work and good luck. It's an important focus on the work required to bring the project up to speed, and this article explores some ways to get from zero to 60 as quickly as possible.

As the year draws to an end, it’s a good time for self-examination, professional and personally. For project managers, it’s important to conduct an honest assessment of your leadership and communications performance this past year — and identify opportunities for improvement in the coming year.

Our writer was approached by the head of a PMO who was launching a major new program--a huge initiative that would consume more than half of the project management capacity of the organization for the next three years. If it sounds like a project manager allocation nightmare, it is.

As a PMO, do you have a view on project manager certification? When people join the PMO from other areas of an organization, there is often an expectation that they will follow a certification path. So what are the options, and what should you be thinking about in determining whether your PMO should require certification?

Project-driven organizations can benefit in many ways from creating a career framework that gives employees the opportunity to grow — and share — their knowledge and skills by moving across job roles or business units. In the process, they align company values and culture, optimize resources and increase client satisfaction. Here’s an overview of IBM’s approach.

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?

Many project managers that are more advanced in their careers no longer see PMI as offering the kind of training, development and career advancement opportunities that they are looking for. So where do we go from here?

With slashed budgets and cancelled projects, promoting projects internally and externally is tougher than ever. Working in this tough new landscape has created new challenges for PMs, but seasoned professionals find creative ways to solve the problem.

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 consulting game is tougher and more confusing than ever. This interview with guru Tom Rodenhauser sheds some light on the ever-changing landsacpe.

Organizations do a lot to implement what is viewed as project management. But do organizations have an organizational project management capability? To understand whether we do or not, we have to understand what this actually means, explore where organizations are today and evaluate how close we actually are to the attainment of this goal.

The portfolio manager is the strategic spearhead of your project organization, and there is a lot of mystery about an organization’s strategic planning process. The PPM function of your organization needs to be in the center of this process, and in this article we explore some of the functions that it needs to perform.

There are not a lot of presentations that actively engage the advanced project manager. If only there was course that dealt with a project management topic from an advanced perspective, one that allowed for real application with course attendees...something like a PM game!

We've already explored the work necessary to prepare criteria to measure applicants against. In Part 2, we look at the interview and selection process--and consider the steps necessary to maximize your chances of making the right hire.