Replacing a team member can be a difficult and time-consuming process, from sifting through endless resumes to conducting interviews to on-boarding the new person. By effectively conducting formal reviews, supplanted by informal evaluations, project managers can address team members' weaknesses, reward their good work, set future goals and implement an improvement plan, thus rendering the replacement of a team member less likely. This article explores ways to take the guesswork out of three evaluation conundrums when it comes to assessing team members' performance. In doing so, it reports the results of a 2011 study--conducted by Harris Interactive--showing that organizations risk 250 percent of an employee's salary in turnover costs because of poor performance management processes, including performance reviews. It then identifies three challenges that come up frequently during the review process and provides a solution for each challenge. Accompanying the article are two sidebars: The first sidebar lists three questions for every review; the second sidebar details the perfect type of review.
The race to acquire talented resources for your team has never been tighter. Despite the difficulties that surround finding outstanding talent, there are more options than ever. Even traditional ways of finding people have changed. Here’s how you can make the best of finding your new team.
Just as the agile mindset is sometimes paid lip service and poorly implemented, many organizations say they have policies for talent management but also implement them poorly. So, after recognizing why the process is a good one, let’s see how talent management operates for agile teams, and what the future likely holds...
Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers. In this installment, we learn how one conversation changed the way a PM thought about project staffing.
Early on in the career of a project manager, there are things known, things that are unknown and things that he or she doesn’t know they don’t know. And therein lies the dilemma of estimating. There is no perfect estimate, and this is where the foundational techniques of estimating bridge the existing estimating gap that exists between senior leadership and the project manager.
When things go wrong in your project, as a leader who do you blame? When the hammer is about to hit your head as a project leader, what do you do? Do you look for people on your team to sacrifice for the error—or take the blame?
Organizational values, project boundaries and performance expectations are all important areas that exist within every organization with varying degrees of thought and implementation behind them. Here we look at how organizational rules and norms are presented and communicated to employees and project team members, and how they can be interpreted.
Projects can be all-consuming activities. There are times when you need to step back and take a break, as rest is an important and necessary part of life no matter what activities you are engaged in.
When managing complex ERP projects, the visual representation of work is essential. It keeps teams focused on the right priorities—and leadership aware of key challenges, like staffing shortages. Here are some options that can help—and some constraints you may encounter.
