How to Prepare Well for Your Next Job Interview

Internet is without a doubt a best source of information – also for job interview. It shall help job seekers to prepare well for it. However, one needs to distinguish the quality information from the rest as well as understand were the real value is hidden. Generally speaking, you can find two types of interview tips online. First group is the advice from people – job seekers. Second group represent websites that are built by recruiters, HR managers or corporate interviewers. Each group has different point of view. While job seekers often see only their own perspective, employers and interviewers can often help you to see the things from their point of view. I would suggest you to look at advice published by both groups. That’s the best you can do to see the interview from different angles.
Right answers to interview questions do not guarantee a job offer
Most people believe that right answers to interview questions guarantee you a job offer. But there is way more you have to do if you want to succeed. First of all, you need to have an exceptional resume and cover letter. It should build you a good path in an interview. Then, I suggest you to try your very best to show your motivation and strong determination for the job. Interview is not only about your verbal communication – keep it in mind. Non-verbal communication is equally important. You should always keep eye contact with the interviewer. A handshake also matters. Do not forget that the interviewers are trained to do their job well. Every little detail in an interview is important. It’s for sure good to mock the answers to interview questions – but it is not enough. You will have to do much more in order to succeed.
Where else to look for interview information?
Internet is not the only source of job interview information. In fact, you can get much closer to the stream. Information interview is a great way how to get some good job interview tips, directly from the person working in the company. Maybe you heard about it already. A job seeker prepares a set of questions and meet someone from the company for discussion. However, it is not appropriate to ask directly about interview questions or interview procedure in the company. On the other hand, you can wisely learn more about it by asking the right questions. For example, if you ask about values of the company, or about colleague, you can see what matters and what the recruiters seek for. It is important to prepare well for this information interview. In fact, it’s a two way interview. They are also testing you, in this stage already.

There is also another good question – what can be considered as a success in an interview? Is it getting a job? Well, I do not believe so… First of all, you should be realistic before an interview. There are often hundreds of applicants for every single job. Each person has some strengths and some weaknesses. It doesn’t matter how well you are qualified or prepared for the job. There still can simply be a person who is better qualified or more suitable for it. On the other hand, it is a game of numbers. You should always keep it in mind. The more interview you have, the better the chances of getting a job are. Please, do not be disappointed if you do not get a job on a very first try. It happens very rarely… You should trust your abilities and apply for a job again and again. As time goes by, someone will choose you definitely.

5 ways to save money during your job search :-

1. Find free ways to improve your skills
There are plenty of free classes available online or at your local community college that can improve both your skills and your résumé. If the local community college doesn’t offer anything in your area of expertise, do an Internet search for free university classes. Even institutions such as Harvard and Yale offer free classes, so take advantage of them.
2. Write off all applicable job-search expenses
Many job-search expenses are tax deductible, including résumé preparation fees and employment agency fees. Keep track of the expenses and save your receipts, and you may get a break come tax time. See the IRS website for a complete list of details and restrictions.
3. Check your closet
Before you buy a new suit or outfit, check your closet to see if you can find an appropriate ensemble. Most experts recommend wearing modest, neutral clothing to a job interview, so you just may be able to get by without buying a new outfit.
4. Track your efforts
If you have been spending a lot of money mailing résumés and portfolios to a variety of companies to no avail, stop. Figure out which strategies are getting you the biggest bang for your buck, and focus your attention on those efforts.
5. Know when to spend it
There are quite a few instances in life where spending a little extra money pays off in the long run. A perfect example is résumé preparation. A résumé prepared yourself or by an unqualified professional may keep you in the job-search line for an extended period of time. Seriously consider having your résumé crafted by a qualified individual or organization. It’s important to understand which aspects of your job search need an investment, and which can be cut back.

5 Ways To Sell Flex Time To Your Employer

 5 Ways To Sell Flex Time To Your Employer

According to the 2012 Nonprofit Organizations Benefits Report, flex time was one the more popular perks offered to employees. With many people feeling the squeeze from the dual responsibilities of work and home, it's easy to see why flexible start and end hours are popular among workers.

Nearly 50 percent of employers offered flex time to employees last year according to the report, but that still leaves a good percentage of nonprofits that don't. That doesn't mean you shouldn't advocate for it to your boss. If you're one of the many employees who want a flexible schedule, here are some ways to convince your superiors that it's a good idea.

• Assess the Environment: See if anybody else in the office has been offered a flexible arrangement. If nobody else has, talk to them and see if they would be interested in such a program. You should then head to your HR department and see if flex time is even offered as a benefit. If it isn't, you can advocate for it based on its popularity in the office.
• Assess Your Needs: Flex time benefits come in many different forms. This includes flexible start and/or end times or telecommuting. Based on your personal situation, figure out which is right for you. Your work habits also need to be considered, as you are not likely to be offered flex time if you are not performing with a regular schedule.
• See Things From the Employer's Eyes: A good way to advocate for flex time is to position your argument as one that benefits the nonprofit through increased productivity or other cost savings. For example, the organization could actually benefit for having a compressed work week if provides added coverage at a time when it is desperately needed.
• Create a Proposal: Write a formal document explaining your proposal and schedule a meeting with your boss. Be prepared to explain how you will accomplish all your work if given flex time, and outline why it won't make things more difficult for the organization's mission.
• Be Flexible: Flexibility from the organization requires the same from the employee. Be willing to make necessary accommodations for the employer if it is needed.

The Right Way To Answer "Tell Me About Yourself

The Right Way To Answer "Tell Me About Yourself

There are a couple questions that everyone dreads in an interview.

"What is your greatest weakness?" "Where do you see yourself in five years?" and "Tell me about yourself." It's the default question (and the first) in most interviews, and to many candidates, it can feel like a trap.

So we spoke with executive headhunters and career coaches about how best to answer this question. "They want to gauge how the person thinks," 

Even though there is no one right answer, focusing on the past, the negative, or the too personal can hurt your chances of making it through.

First ask: "Where would you like me to start off?"

Starting in the present might make you seem like you're not reflective,

 and starting in the past might seem like you're not really focused on what's happening right now, 

 whose firm has a human resources specialty.

A good option, she says, would be to ask your interviewer: "Where would you like me to start off?"

If they don't tell you, or let you decide, then talk about your previous work experiences

 and tell them why you've chosen the career you're in.

Never reply with: "What do you want to know?"

"It's the most annoying answer," says Nancy Fox, founder of The Business Fox, 

which helps entrepreneurs and professionals attract top-tier executives.

 "You're retaliating and it shows you're not prepared for the interview.

"You also don't want to tell an interviewer you're divorced; you want to tell them something positive,

 like you're a big believer in giving back to the community."

Imagine you were paid to consult your interviewer

"Forget about being a candidate…totally," says executive headhunter Mark Jaffe of Wyatt & Jaffe. 

"Imagine instead that you’re a consultant, 

and that you’ve already been paid a non-refundable $20,000 consulting fee to attend this meeting.

 How does that change things?"

Jaffe says this way, you won't worry about selling yourself: "No posing, no posturing, no tap dancing of any kind."

There's a fine line between brevity and wordiness

"It's a fine line, if you're too wordy you're going to lose them, 

but if you just give them bullet points without any narrative or conversation

 then they're going to think you're not self-reflective or self-aware," says Finn.

Some things Finn says you need to include: Brief details about who you are,

 things you're passionate about and areas you focus on, and past positive work experiences.

In fact, your answer shouldn't be more than five minutes

The answer should be short and succinct, never more than five minutes.

A good option, Fox says, is to tell your interviewer you're going to answer the question in three parts:

 Past career opportunities, positive personal details about yourself (like interests), 

and strategic details (like what you can offer the company).

Knowing your interviewer's style will help you craft your answers

"Do a little prep on who's going to interview you," says Fox

. "What charities are they involved with? What school did they go to?"

"The answer can be different depending on who's going to interview you," she says.

With this in mind, it also pays to do a mock interview before the real thing

"You should sound confident and at ease, but never cocky,"

 Fox says. "People with outstanding careers can go into an interview and make [employers] feel very small."

Role-playing with a mentor or career coach can go a long way.

Tips for Better Documents

Projects generate a lot of documentation. Even if you use online project management software or collaboration tools, you will still end up creating documents for your project. That’s not a bad thing – documents have a huge part to play in how organized we are and also how you communicate status, problems and requirements to other people. Documents also enable us to get everyone on ‘the same page’ (literally!) about the project scope, which can be invaluable. Writing things down makes them more real somehow, and documents can serve that purpose.

Documentation can also be used to gain commitment. If people sign off or accept a document, whether they do it via email, a collaboration tool or the old fashioned way by actually signing the document with a pen, it shows that they have read it and are committed to it.

Here are 7 tips for better project documents.

1. Use Version Control

There is nothing worse than spending a lot of time reading a document only to find out that another version has been issued since you got your hands on that one. Everything you have read, and all the comments you made, are potentially out of date.

Don’t let your project team members be frustrated in this way. Add a version control number to the document so that they will always know what the latest version is. They can compare the number of the document that they have with the latest version and instantly check that they are working on the latest copy.

Many online project management and document repository tools will add version control to a document for you, some even showing you what has changed since the last version. If your project management software has this feature, use it! If not, include a small table on the front page of the document that shows the latest version number.

2. Add Page Numbers

It’s better to encourage people to look at your project documents online. It saves paper, which is better for the environment and for your budget! But there will always be someone who prefers to print out a document, especially if it is long. Page numbers can be a great help to them if they accidentally drop the document and it isn’t stapled together, or someone messes up the order of the pages as they come out of the printer.

Page numbers also make it easier for you to talk to your team about specific parts of the document. You can say: “As you can see from the scope section on page 12,” instead of having to ask them to find the scope section, which is after the risk section but before the part on milestones, no not that part about scope, the other bit…

3. Add a Footer

The page number is just one element of the document footer. Think about what else you could include in the footer, which is the bar that appears at the bottom of every page. Adding in the document name and file path is a good idea so that you and others reading it can instantly see where it is stored. This can help if they need to find the latest version. You can also include your name in the footer (or the name of the primary document author). Finally, consider adding in the document version number.

4. Add a Header

A header is the text that appears at the top of every page. You can change what is featured in the header so that on the front page of a document your header can include different information to that on the other pages. For example, you might want to include a logo on the front page, but not on any of the other pages.

You can include anything in the header. Some suggestions would be the project name, the section of the document or the date. Make use of this space – it can help orientate people in the document so that if they walk away from it and then come back to it they know what it is that is open on their screen.

5. Use Headings and Sub-Headings

Break up the text with headings and sub-headings. Typically a heading is used for a major division in the document, like a new section, and sub-headings are used to break up the text that appears after that. Many software tools have built in heading styles so you can use these. They also act as signposts within the document so that readers know where they have got to and what they are reading about.

Headings and sub-headings break up large expanses of text so they can make documents look less daunting. No one likes to be faced with page after page of dense black squiggles. Headings allow you to structure your document so that it looks better and includes some white space on every page.

6. Include a Date

When was your document written? It might not matter for some documents, but for many, knowing how old it is can be the difference between acting on the content and ignoring it. People are far more likely to take action when the document is new, or at least new-ish. If they know that they are looking at a document that was written in 2007 they are unlikely to take it seriously, and that is a prompt to you to review your paperwork!

Most project documents are written specifically for the project (even if you do use a template – see point 7 below), but you may need to refer to standards or guidelines at a corporate level and you can include the version or date of those as well.

7. Use Templates

Set up document templates for types of document that you produce regularly, such as the project schedule, the project charter, change request forms, communications and quality plans – in fact, any type of document for project management can start life as a template. Templates prevent you from having to write the document from scratch every time so they can save you a lot of work.

Templates include things like the cover page, table of contents, all the relevant headings and sub-headings for each section, a structure for version control and all the headers and footers already populated. All you have to do is delete anything irrelevant and add in new text.

You can’t get away from producing documents on projects, but following these steps will help you produce better project documentation more easily.

Top 10 Young Entrepreneur Success Stories:-

#10 Syed Balkhi, 21

Syed Balkhi used to get online at three o’clock in the morning to trade stones for a game called Neopets.

When he was 12, his cousin pointed out that he could do the same thing with domain names – all while pulling in a handsome profit. Soon he was developing websites, designing them, and running a paid domain name directory.

Along with a handful of college friends (Amanda Roberts, David Pegg, and Mohammed Karim), Syed has started a successful web service company called Uzzz Productions. His blog for WordPress beginners, WPBeginner, has been up since July 2009 and already attracts an incredible 145,000 unique visitors each month.

#9 Farrhad Acidwalla, 18

His first step at entrepreneurship started with his borrowing $10 from his parents to buy his first domain name. He began building a web community devoted to aviation and aero-modeling. The website was a success; he sold it for a lot more money than his initial investment, and moved on with other similar ventures. Each took his achievement to another level and the appreciations left him humble. This motivated him to offer his work under the name of his company.

Farrhad has launched Rockstah Media, a cutting-edge company devoted to web development, marketing, advertisement, and branding.  It is just over a year old but it has clients and a full fledged team of developers, designers and market strategists spread across the globe.

As the CEO and founder, Farrhad is behind the wheels of the company taking care of the clients and guiding the creative team to success.

#8 King Sidharth, 20

King Sidharth is a multitalented youngster. He is a speaker, author, magazine publisher.

As an 11-year-old growing up in Northern India, King Sidharth and a few friends began organizing events and competitions for other children. They would make tickets and charge an entry fee, then award little prizes to whoever won. Sidharth’s first business was a big success.

Seven years later, King Sidharth got graduated from high school and he has already made a name for himself as one of India’s top young entrepreneurs. His primary work is in website development and design (see websites like MeditationRocks.us).

King is also a speaker on topics of entrepreneurship and spirituality. He calls himself the Outlaw Entrepreneur, because he refuses to follow a given pattern and says he’s going to reinvent the wheel. His vision of the wheel is unique.

 #7 Arjun Rai, 20

Arjun Rai caught the entrepreneurial bug at the age of seven, selling knickknacks that he found around the house.  Young Arjun set up shop to sell leftover wildflower necklaces after a wedding. He and a cousin put up a banner at his grandmother’s front gate, asking 25 cents.

TV shows like ‘The Oprah Show’ and ‘The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch’ inspired Arjun to take entrepreneurship to the next level. During the summer of 2009, he got a LinkedIn account (under the name Aaron Ray) and started connecting with other ambitious entrepreneurs, hoping to learn as much as possible about the art of entrepreneurship and business.

In 2010, Arjun became the COO of a quickly growing onlineadvertising company, but he soon set out to follow his own,unique vision. That vision is a brand-new venture called odysseyAds

.

#6 Sabirul Islam, 21

Sabirul Islam grew up in a crime-ridden borough of London, England. His eyes were opened to entrepreneurship by his cousin, who offered Sabirul a job at the age of 13. But when Sabirul was fired a few weeks later, he decided to take matters into his own hands. At 14, he gathered six of his friends and started Veyron Technology, a website design company. Sabirul made his first $1000 within the first two weeks.

In January of 2008, at age 17, Sabirul self-published his first book “The World at Your Feet”. It offers young people guidance and encouragement to turn their entrepreneurial vision into reality. The book sold 60,000 copies. Sabirul has also launched a board game (‘Teen-Trepreneur’), become a globe-trotting public speaker (over 600 speaking engagements), and started his own publishing company for aspiring teen authors.

 #5 Adora Svitak, 14

Adora started writing when she was four years old. She hasn’t stopped since. At six, Adora received a laptop computer from her mother, on which she quickly amassed a collection of hundreds of short stories and hundreds of thousands of words – typing at 70 words per minute.

At the age of seven, Adora achieved her dream of becoming a published author with the release of Flying Fingers: Master the Tools of Learning Through the Joy of Writing. The book featured several of Adora’s short stories, along with her writing tips, typing tips, and advice from her mother. At age 11, Adora published a second book, Dancing Fingers, with her older sister, Adrianna.

Adora at the age of 12 has transformed her writing success into speaking and teaching success. She has spoken at over 400 schools and presented at the annual TED conference. She has been featured on Good Morning America and on CNN.

#4 Savannah Britt, 17

Savannah Britt was a published poet by the age of eight. By nine, she was hired as a paid reviewer of children’s books for The Kitchen Table News – a New Jersey newspaper with a readership of 70,000. But when that newspaper went under, Savannah was left unemployed at the tender age of 11.

She bootstraps herself and started her own publication – a magazine called Girlpez – making her the youngest magazine publisher in the world. The magazine features coverage of events, like concerts and fashion shows, along with interviews from the likes of Shwayze, Kevin Rudolf, and Dawn from Dannity Kane.

#3 Philip Hartman, 17

Philip Hartman became an entrepreneur when he was eight-years-old. That’s when he started building slingshots that shot both BB’s and arrows.

When he was a home-schooled high school senior at the age of fifteen, Philip spent most of his time cultivating two somewhat more advanced entrepreneurial ventures. One was a new system for fusing optical fibers that is cheaper, more efficient, and more dependable – an invention for which Philip won the 2008 Young Inventor of the Year award.

The other was called Steam Viper. It was a device that emits steam onto a windshield and is capable of defrosting a frost-covered windshield in about 15 seconds.

#2 Alex Fraiser, 18

In January 2009, at the age of 15, Alex Fraiser used his web design know-how to start Blogussion.com, a blog about blogging. As the year went on, Blogussion thrived – bursting not just with insightful articles but also with an ever-growing, increasingly enthusiastic community of subscribers.

In January 2010, Alex and his business partner, 24-year-old Seth Waite, launched their first product – a web theme modeled after Blogussion’s unique style – to immediate success. With an Alexa ranking under 20,000.

#1 Mark Bao, 19 

Mark Bao had his first encounter with entrepreneurship in the fifth grade. He used Visual Basic 6.0 to write a simple computer application that managed his homework assignments and helped him write school papers. Then he copied the program onto floppy discs and sold them to his friends.

His first start-up came in his first year of high school. Debateware.com was an event management system for debate organizations. Eventually, Mark and his business partner sold it to the largest debate organization in the United States.

Mark at the age of 17, a high school senior, launched 11 web-based companies (and sold three of them) along with three non-profit foundations.

 

Tell me a little about yourself.

"Tell me a little about yourself."

You should take this opportunity to show your communication skills by speaking clearly and concisely in an organized manner. Because there is no right or wrong answer for this question, it is important to appear friendly.

Short Answers

"I attended MIT where I majored in Electrical Engineering. My hobbies include basketball, reading novels, and hiking."

"I grew up in Korea and studied accounting. I worked at an accounting firm for two years and I enjoy bicycling and jogging."

"I’m an easy going person that works well with everyone. I enjoy being around different types of people and I like to always challenge myself to improve at everything I do."

"I’m a hard worker and I like to take on a variety of challenges. I like pets, and in my spare time, I like to relax and read the newspaper."

"I’ve always liked being balanced. When I work, I want to work hard. And outside of work, I like to engage in my personal activities such as golfing and fishing."

Long Answer

"I went to the University of Washington and majored in English Literature. I went to graduate school because I really enjoyed learning. Afterwards, I started my career at Boeing as a web content editor. I’ve been there for 3 years now. Although my emphasis is in writing, I like numbers. I think solving logic problems and riddles are quite fun. I also enjoy jogging, reading, and watching movies."

There is no right or wrong answer for this question. Most important thing you should remember is how you deliver the message. The example above shows a short answer telling a little bit about the person. The answer went from education to career, and then to personal interests all in a smooth flow.

Way to Project Management

21 Ways to Excel at Project Management

Definition: "Project Management is the dynamic process that utilizes the appropriate resources of the organization in a controlled and structured manner, to achieve some clearly defined objectives identified as strategic needs. It is always conducted within a defined set of constraints." ¹
Learn more with this book, written in a question and answer style, containing 21 pieces of valuable advice for making your projects a success.

Project management in the modern sense began in the 1950s, although it has its roots much further back in the latter years of the 19th century. The need for project management was driven by businesses that realized the benefits of organizing work around projects, and the critical need to communicate and coordinate work across departments and professions.
One of the forefathers of project management is still a familiar name today, Henry Gantt (1861-1919) creator of the Gantt chart. Still in use, one hundred-years from their birth, Gantt charts are one of the project managers' most valuable tools. In the mid-20th century PERT charts emerged, complex network diagrams that show the critical path of a project. These tools and techniques spread quickly as businesses looked for new ways to manage large and complex activities, evolving into project management as we know it today.
It is now sixty years since the birth of project management and much of the early work has been collected and put together into formal methodologies. Although many different methodologies exist, they all work with the same basic principles and good practice. So now you may expect we are expert when it comes to running projects, but sixty years on and project failures are still with us, and according to some observers rising in number.
Siemens made headlines in the UK when Government systems for new passports were hit by terrible delays. ICL also failed with its system to automate benefit payments; the project was axed with £460m of taxpayers' money wasted. In 1992, the London Ambulance Service launched a new computer system that slowed its response times to emergency calls. More recently the £21bn Eurofighter project has experienced problems caused by 'delays in bringing the detailed design to full maturity in some areas', which prevented flight-tests from starting on time.
"Projects go wrong for the same reasons all the time. There are no new sins. We can look at a project in its first two months and know if it will be a success or not. Many organizations are failing to heed painful lessons learned from past projects." ² The biggest sin in project management is not learning the lessons of past projects. When we learn to do this then we will reduce the number of project failures.
What follows is a practical guide to managing projects, which will help steer you to a successful result.

The Stages of a Project:

Projects are divided into six stages:

1. Definition.
2. Initiation.
3. Planning.
4. Execution.
5. Monitoring & Control.
6. Closure.

Each project stage is characterized by a distinct set of activities that take the project from its first idea to its conclusion. Each stage is of equal importance and contributes to the overall success of the project.

1. Definition

Before a project starts the project manager must make sure the project goals, objectives, scope, risks, issues, budget, timescale and approach have been defined. This must be communicated to all the stakeholders to get their agreement. Any differences of opinion need to be resolved before work starts.

2. Initiation

This is perhaps the most important stage of any project as it sets the terms of reference within which the project will be run. If this is not done well, the project will have a high likelihood of failure. The initiation stage is where the business case is declared, scope of the project decided and stakeholder expectations set. Time spent on planning, refining the business case and communicating the expected benefits will help increase the likelihood of success. It is tempting to start working quickly, but a poor initiation stage often leads to problems and even failure.

3. Planning

The key to a successful project is in the planning. Creating a project plan is the first task you should do when undertaking any project. Often project planning is ignored in favor of getting on with the work. However, many people fail to realize the value of a project plan in saving time, money and many other problems.

4. Execution

Doing the work to deliver the product, service or wanted result. Most of the work related to the project is realized at this stage and needs complete attention from the project manager.

5. Monitoring & Control

Once the project is running it is important the project manager keeps control. This is achieved by regular reporting of issues, risks, progress and the constant checking of the business case to ensure that expected benefits will be delivered and are still valid. A project that is not controlled is out of control.

6. Closure

Often neglected, it is important to ensure a project is closed properly. Many projects never end because there is no formal sign-off. It is important to get the customers agreement that a project has ended and no more work will be carried out. Once closed, the project manager should review the project and record the good and bad points, so successes can be repeated and failures avoided. A project that is not closed will continue to consume resources.

Sponsorship and Leadership:

A Steering Committee must be set up and become operational from the beginning of the project. The Steering Committee is responsible for taking all key decisions about the project and should be comprised of senior managers from the business.
The chair of the Steering Committee has ultimate responsibility for the project. The Project Manager leads the project on a daily basis and is fully accountable for delivering the project described in the Project Definition document.
In his article Six Ways to Give Proper Project Leadership Dr. Keith Mathis offers this advice:

• Create an atmosphere of trust.
• Build the right team.
• Spell everything out for your team up-front.
• Monitor and give feedback.
• Keep communication open.
• Keep the end goal clearly in mind.

"The project sponsor is perhaps the second most influential person on the project, after the project manager and in some cases may even wield more influence on project results." - Dave Nielsen

Common Mistakes

• Wasting time and money on projects that do not have sufficient sponsorship, commitment or leadership to succeed.
• Hoping that people who do not commit early on will find time later.
• Not involving the sponsor enough with setting direction and keeping the project on track.

Notes: Before you start your project, find a committed project sponsor who has enough clout in your organization. Your project sponsor will prove invaluable in helping you overcome organizational roadblocks as they arise.
Put simply, a project without a senior business sponsor will fail.

Defining the Business Objectives and Benefits

1. Clearly defines the objectives and scope of the project.
2. Provides management and team members with a common view and clear understanding.
3. Provides a good starting point for the subsequent definition of more detailed documents, for example the Project Plan, Project Budget and Functional Requirements Specification.

"The single best payoff in terms of project success comes from having good project definition early." - RAND Corporation.

Common Mistakes

• Start focusing on solutions, how to achieve something, before gaining a clear understanding of the business objectives that you want to achieve and identifying the business sponsors needed to help achieve these objectives.
• Not returning to the Benefits Statement during the project to make sure they are still valid and achievable.

Notes

• "The number of projects that set out confidently with little or no idea of what they are supposed to achieve is truly astounding."
• "Some projects start out with a clear idea, but lose track of it by the time they're 20% into the project."
• "Many proud, objective-orientated managers have a list of goals that are, on closer inspection, technology driven, and not business driven. They are headed for a 'successful' project whose results will never be used."
• "Keep in mind that the aim of a project is 'results delivery' not, as is often the case, 'construction activity'. This means thinking about the products the project is in business to deliver."

Planning the Project

1. Translates the high-level business objectives into a detailed 'road-map' of concrete deliverables.
2. Provides a detailed list of resource requirements.
3. Provides a realistic assessment of project timescales.
4. Allows estimated project costs to be further validated.
5. Allows for issues to be identified early on, for example tasks taking longer than expected, slippage in target dates and team members not being productive.

Base the plan on known metrics, how long did a previous similar project take?

Involve all team members, not just senior management. Develop the plan in iterations over several weeks, by consulting team members and drawing on their experience.

Common Mistakes

• Having no project plan.
• Having a wrong project plan. Do not be swayed by a sexy looking project plan that has been produced to give the Steering Committee a warm, comfortable feeling, but which is not based on reality. A wrong project plan is worse than having no project plan at all.
• As with all methodologies, a healthy dose of common sense and pragmatism is required. Do not be too religious, for example a 5-day project does not need a detailed project plan.
• Do not lose sight of what the project is trying to achieve. Traditional project management techniques can encourage over planning and an excessive focus on micro level tasks at the expense of the overall objective.
• Disbelieving evidence from past projects and insisting the current project can be done faster with fewer people.
• Do not lose sight of what the project is trying to achieve. Traditional project management techniques can encourage over planning and an excessive focus on micro level tasks at the expense of the overall objective.
• Disbelieving evidence from past projects and insisting the current project can be done faster with fewer people.
• Committing to or baselining project plans too early.

Notes: Trying to manage a large and complex project without a project plan is like trying to cross an unknown continent without a map, you are running blind. The key thing to get right is the balance between planning and action. Take the example of driving from London to Paris: too much planning and other cars will be halfway there before you leave; too little and you will turn up at the Eurotunnel terminal without passports.

"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." General George S. Patton, JR.

Warning Sign! When successive project milestones are missed this is a sure sign of a project that is failing.

Ensuring the Project is a Manageable Size

Each project plan should itself be subdivided into a number of key milestones. This helps to provide continual delivery and to ensure that actual progress is measured regularly. For example, a recent large project involved two separate project plans for different stages of the project, development and implementation. Each plan consisted of around 300+ separate tasks and around 30 key milestones.

In his article 7 Steps to Project Success, Peter Draper suggests it is necessary to break up projects into smaller, independent subprojects that are more easily manageable. These subprojects must be:

• Small, that is, less than $1m.
• Fast, that is, takes less than 6 months.
• Compact, that is, fewer than 6 people on the team.
• Focused on key benefits and not just deliverables.

Common Mistakes

• Going for a 'big bang' implementation.
• Not being prepared to take the extra cost of splitting a project up into separate stages.
• Underestimating the overall complexity and the interactions between all the separate components.

Defining the Budget

A few basic rules will help ensure that an accurate and realistic budget is produced:

• Assume that resources will only be productive for 80% of their time.
• Resources working on multiple projects take longer to complete tasks because of time lost switching between them.
• People are generally optimistic and often underestimate how long tasks will take.
• Make use of other people's experiences and your own when creating your budget.
• Get an expert view.
• Include management time in any estimate.
• Always build in contingency for problem solving, meetings and other unexpected events.
• Cost each task in a Work Breakdown Structure to arrive at a total, rather than trying to cost the project as a whole.
• Agree a tolerance with your customer for extra work that is not yet defined.
• Communicate any assumptions, exclusions or constraints you have to your customer.
• Provide regular budget statements to your customer, copying your team, so they are always aware of the current position.

Common Mistakes

• Lack of budget ownership.
• Providing funds on an ad-hoc basis.
• Major costs not clearly identified early on; this can result in the project being cancelled later because of lack of funds.
• No control or monitoring of actual spend against planned spend.

Managing the Risks

• Identify the project objectives.
• Prioritise the objectives.
• Identify the key risks to missing those objectives.
• Take preventive action.
• Track and update risks regularly once a week or month using a risk log.

There are four risk management techniques your may employ to manage the risks to your project:

Avoidance: Use an alternate approach that does not have the risk. This is not always possible. There are programmes that deliberately involve high risks in the expectation of high gains. However, this is the most effective risk management technique if it can be applied.

Control: Controlling risks involves developing a risk reduction plan and then tracking to the plan. The key aspect is the planning by experienced people. The plan itself may involve parallel development programmes.

Assumption: Simply accepting the risk and continuing. However, there can be a tendency within organisations gradually to let the assumption of a risk take on the aura of a controlled risk.

Risk Transfer: Means causing another party to accept the risk, typically by contract or by hedging. Liability among construction or other contractors is often transferred this way.

"Never expect initial risk management plans to be perfect. Practice, experience, and actual loss results will dictate changes in the plan to allow different decisions to be made in dealing with the risks being faced. In order for companies to succeed in the twenty-first century, they need to excel in all aspects of their business, which includes risk management, so they can fulfill their own and their customer's goals." ¹

Common Mistakes

• Reluctance to focus on risks.
• The Steering Committee not wanting to be presented with 'threatening statements about project failure' and only wanting to hear good news.
• Waiting too long and taking a reactive approach to risks.

Notes: "To run away from risks is to miss the whole point. To ensure project success, you need to take the right risks and you need to be aware that, that is what you are doing."

Getting the Right Project Manager

In theory all business projects should be led by the business. In practice, many business functions do not have the required project management skills, experience or disciplined approach. A good working compromise is to appoint two people to work together in a partnership, a Project Manager and a User Representative. The comprehensive nature of these two roles should not be underestimated.

In her article The Top Five Project Management Traits to Master 'the How' Joli Mosier lists the top five traits you need to master the 'how' of project management as:

1. A collaborative management style.
2. Adaptability.
3. Figure-it-out resourcefulness.
4. Highly developed communication skills.
5. Flexibility.

In his popular article Top 10 Qualities of a Project Manager, Timothy R. Barry identifies the qualities most important for a project manager:

1. Inspires a shared vision.
2. Good communicator.
3. Integrity.
4. Enthusiasm.
5. Empathy.
6. Competence.
7. Ability to delegate tasks.
8. Cool under pressure.
9. Team building skills.
10. Problem solving skills.

Common Mistakes

• No project manager appointed.
• Project manager appointed with no prior experience.
• Mistaking enthusiasm or seniority for experience.
• User project manager appointed to lead a large project as well as his or her existing responsibilities.
• More than one project manager appointed.
• The project manager not being fully responsible and accountable for the project.

Getting Customer Representation

It is important to keep the whole process user driven, and ultimate ownership of the project must rest with the business. You must ensure you have enough user resource to drive the project forward. If this is not available, you should stop the project. Follow a 'no surprise' approach with the user group. This requires regular communication and 'telling it like it is'.

Common Mistakes

• Insufficient resources made available.
• User representative made available part-time.
• Underestimating the amount of user input needed during ALL stages of the project.
• Business input does not end with a User Requirements Specification.

Notes: As the project moves into the design, development and user pilot stages, considerable and continuing business input is needed to define requirements at a much lower level of detail and to answer the many questions that arise.

Warning Sign! When users are not a willing part of the project team.

Defining Roles and Responsibilities

The following structure works well on large projects:

Business Sponsor

• Overall sponsor of project; receives regular updates.

Steering Committee

• Senior managers from business.
• Responsible for all key project decisions.
• Meets every 4-6 weeks.

Project Team

• Led by the Project Manager, who reports to the Steering Committee.
• Must include a User Representative.
• Must include technical expertise.

User Group

• Led by the User Representative.

The roles and responsibilities for managing the project must be fully documented and adapted to suit the size and complexity of the project and the skills of the organisation.

Common Mistakes

• No clear ownership for the project.
• Lack of leadership and commitment from the Steering Committee.
• Roles and responsibilities not clearly defined.
• Disconnection between the Project Team and Steering Committee, for example discussions not open and honest.

Notes: Comment from a project team member "...I was never quite sure what I was supposed to be doing..."

One of the many roles of the Project Manager is to actively 'drive' the Steering Committee ensuring that regular meetings take place, providing clear agendas, ensuring that key decisions are made and actions are followed up.

Warning Sign! The sponsor fails to attend scheduled project review meetings.

Getting the Right Resources

Dedicated resource provides time to think it through. Two or more people equal different experiences, networks and a healthy debate.

Getting good people appointed as dedicated resources for projects early on is a tough challenge and some compromise is often necessary. For example, a recent global project agreed, at a high-level, to provide people in each area affected on six-month full-time secondments. In reality only a small minority of areas provided dedicated resources; most people were made available part-time; this resulted in overall timescales being exceeded by six months. Often culture and working practice is heavily orientated to 'business functions' and this is not always conducive to project based work and team working.

"The challenge for the project manager consists of attracting the right resources, forming a cohesive team, keeping the team motivated, meeting individual aspirations and getting the work done - all within scope, cost, time, and customer satisfaction!" ¹

Common Mistakes

• Not enough experienced committed resource from the business.
• Appointed resource overcommitted and unable to devote enough time to the project.

Warning Sign! Resource requirements exceed resource availability.

Monitoring and Reporting Progress

"...many people use what is called Rolling Wave Planning. This is when you plan down to the level of detail currently known and go back to plan deeper once more information is acquired. Usually rolling wave planning needs to stay at least 2 to 3 months ahead of the actual work being done, but of course this varies slightly by industry." ¹

If you create plans at the beginning of a project, put them in a draw and forget them, why bother creating them in the first place?

"In poorly run projects, problems can go undetected until the project fails. It's like the drip...drip...drip of a leaky underground pipe. Money is being lost, but you don't see it until there is an explosion." - Joy Gumz

Common Mistakes

• Project plans never updated beyond the first draft.
• Using non-binary milestones.
• Low-level tasks are not complete until they are complete; they should be measured as either 0% or 100% complete.
• Ignoring warning signs and pressing on in the hope everything will turn out alright in the end.

Warning Signs!

• The number of open issues continues to rise.
• Contingency plans are used faster than the rate of progress on the project.

Communicating Progress

The following format is recommended on a maximum of 2 pages:

1. Report Date
2. Project Status
3. Project Summary
4. Key Issues
5. Identified Risks
6. Tasks and Next Steps
7. Decisions Needed
8. Key Future Dates and Milestones
9. Budgeted Cost
10. Spend to Date

This ensures that people are kept informed, involved and committed. Regular communication is essential to the well-being of any project.

Regular progress reporting creates a valuable written record of the projects life. This can be used later to look back and decide how to improve the running of future projects.

Metrics can also be developed to measure project progress in other ways, such as earned value, or activity float statistics.

Common Mistakes

• Poor communication channels.
• Lack of honest communication.
• Not asking for help when it's needed.

Warning Sign! Unwillingness to communicate bad news.

Consultation and Leadership

Engage in lots of consultation, but do not have too much democracy. If you want to achieve a real business result in a realistic time frame, a small team operating on Stalinist principles is more likely to succeed than large committees acting as talking shops. This is important for regional, cross regional and global projects.

Common Mistakes

• Making a decision and then starting a debate.
• Not getting a real agreement, and then having to revisit the issue.
• Failing to remain goal focussed.

Notes: "The Romans did not build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing all those who opposed them."

Getting Realistic User Requirements

It is important to match the user requirements specification against the available technology and solutions that can be implemented in a timely, robust and practical manner. This may result in an agreement that some of the requirements, say 20% will not be delivered. Such a compromise will ensure the remaining 80% can be delivered quickly. This is commonly known as the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle. This compromise is important for global projects with a large user base. On such projects the speed and ease of implementation is an important consideration in the overall solution.

To be successful at requirements gathering and to give your project an increased likelihood of success, follow these rules:

1. Don't assume you know what the customer wants, ask.
2. Involve the users from the start.
3. Define and agree the scope of the project.
4. Ensure requirements are specific, realistic and measurable.
5. Get clarity if there is any doubt.
6. Create a clear, concise and thorough requirements document and share it with the customer.
7. Confirm your understanding of the requirements with the customer by playing them back.
8. Avoid talking technology or solutions until the requirements are fully understood.
9. Get the requirements agreed with the stakeholders before the project starts.
10. Create a prototype if necessary to confirm or refine the customers' requirements.
11. Use a recognised notation, such as UML, for modeling the software.
12. Cross-check the software design against the requirements and review regularly.

Common Mistakes

• Basing a solution on complex or new technology and then discovering that it cannot easily be rolled out to the 'real world'.
• Not prioritising the User Requirements, for example 'must have', 'should have', 'could have' and 'would have', known as the MoSCoW principle.
• Not enough consultation with real users and practitioners.
• Solving the 'problem' before you know what it is.
• Lacking a clear understanding and making assumptions rather than asking.

Defining Your Approach

"Prototyping involves feedback from customers to developers on a trial based product. Each time a new prototype is released, it is usually an enhancement of a previous one. The evolutionary prototype often becomes the final product. Prototyping was first recognised as a software development approach when developers found that they couldn't figure out all the requirements, until work had started on the project." ¹

Basing the development on a series of prototypes will create a perception of early delivery to the users and a feeling of involvement in and commitment to the development process.

You should involve a large population of users in prototype reviews as early as possible. This ensures that a large percentage of users will already have seen the system through demonstrations and training sessions before the 'go-live' date. This provides a high-level of confidence the system meets user needs and it highlights early on, any problem areas needing more attention.

Skipping this step and going straight to build may result in costly rework.

Common Mistakes

• Basing user requirements on large documents only.
• Not using an iterative prototyping approach.
• Not involving enough 'real' users.

Conducting Structured Testing

A structured test plan should be developed and then performed by people independent of the development team. Besides testing the deliverables, you should also test the overall infrastructure over which the deliverables will run. The major components in the architecture should be tested before building the final deliverables.

The test development lifecycle contains the following elements:

1. Test plan.
2. Test specification.
3. Code tests.
4. Validate test.
5. Run tests.

Test documentation is a needed tool for managing and maintaining the testing process. Documents produced by testers should answer the following questions:

• What to test?
• How to test?
• What are the results?

"When end users get involved in the final stages of testing, light bulbs go on, and they often have an 'aha' moment. Unfortunately, that is often too late." - Frank R. Parth

Common Mistakes

• No test plans and therefore no testing.
• Testing conducted in an ad-hoc manner by the development team.
• Waiting until the deliverable is deployed before testing.
• Using test time as contingency.

Warning Sign! Documentation or testing stages are cut to make up time

Creating an Implementation Plan

1. The implementation should be carried out by the people who will live and work with the new system; they will have a strong vested interest in getting it right.
2. Conduct a 'company survey' for each site, to meet the senior management, gain their support, and fully understand the local working practices. This will help to ensure the new process is fitted in seamlessly with the existing processes and that any nasty surprises are discovered early on.
3. An implementation 'event' for each site should include a presentation by the Chairmen to the rest of the company to show strong support from the top of the organisation.
4. Comprehensive training for all users with different sessions if the process involves different types of user, for example gatekeepers, project leaders and team members. You can never have enough training. It is better to split training into several short sessions, for example basic training, with two follow-up sessions at monthly intervals.
5. For a multiple site implementation, use the idea of a 'showcase' company where the conditions, for example user buy-in, expertise and motivation are good. A successful implementation in the showcase company will then prove the system and process and act as a centre of expertise for the remaining sites.
6. For a multiple company implementation, consider running several workshops for the implementation staff, to allow them to learn from one another. A little competition between different companies also helps to spur on the implementation. This approach helps ensure that real problems are resolved fast and that other team members quickly remove 'false' problems. Consider special awards for implementation success. For example, an 'Accreditation Certificate' when a company has successfully implemented the system and met some key (but simple) criteria in the business process. The certificates should be signed by the President or Chairman and presented to the local implementation team.
7. Consider special measures to track implementation progress, for example Gold, Grey and Blacklists. People don't like to be singled out as poor performers. For this approach to work you must select a few simple key measures that cannot be challenged; be scrupulously fair, objective and reject all bribes.

Common Mistakes

• Failure to involve end users.
• Inadequate training.

Conducting a Post Implementation Review

Organisations are beginning to recognise the growing importance of knowledge management as a key to competitive advantage. We must therefore become much better at capturing our learning and making this information available to the rest of the organisation. This will increasingly become the duty of every manager.

As project manager, you are in a unique position to help your customer gain the benefits, detailed in the business case. It can be an additional phase once you have closed the project or run as part of the project itself. It may not follow on directly from the project end, and start after a short period of time, but before the post implementation review, which typically takes place 3 to 6 months after the project has been completed.

Opinion seems divided as to whether active benefits realisation is the domain of the project manager, but one thing is certain, many projects declared a success never deliver the desired benefit or result.

At the conclusion of your projects hold formal debrief sessions including a post implementation 'Lessons Learned' review with the team.

Common Mistakes

• Forgetting what has been done and discarding any useful experience that has been gained on a difficult project.
• Being so relieved to finish that we simply move on without reviewing the project's result.
• Disbanding the team too fast before the learning has been captured.

Realizing the Benefits

On a recent large project, after the usual development and implementation stages, the project team was retained for a third stage called 'benefits realisation'. This was to ensure the roots of the new business process and supporting IT system would grow deep and deliver real business value. A project should only be considered completed when the benefits have been delivered to the business and not when the project has just been delivered. This will ensure that implementation problems are resolved.

To gain benefits you must have change. In their book "The Information Paradox," John Thorp and DMR's Centre for Strategic Leadership say that, "It is a central tenet of the Benefits Realisation Approach that benefits come only with change and, equally, change must be sustained by benefits." "People must change how they think, manage and act in order to implement the Benefits Realisation Approach."

Changing the way people think, work and manage is no easy task, but without it your project is in danger of joining a long list of successful project deliveries that never realised their envisaged benefit or result.

Common Mistakes

• Believing that a project is over once the delivery and implementation is complete.
• Expecting benefits automatically to drop out of a project without any effort.
• Expecting benefits without change.

Learning the Lessons

problems preventing us learning valuable lessons from past projects:

1. We think the lessons don't apply to us.
2. We want to get things done.

"The sad truth is that these lessons learned are useful. That time spent in doing the work better is time well-spent. That getting it right the first time is cheaper and easier than doing it now and fixing it later," Derry says.

History has a strange way of repeating itself. If we don't take time to learn the lessons of the past, and also act on them, we will continue to commit the same mistakes again and again. And don't think it won't happen to you, it will!

Common Mistakes

• Being too busy to evaluate projects when they have been completed.
• Moving on to your next project before reviewing the last.
• Failing to learn lessons from past projects.
• Not making lessons learned available to other people in the organization.

Warning Sign! Making the same mistakes time and again.

Celebrating Success

"Completion of a project and the steps along the way can be intrinsically rewarding for project team members. Outwardly celebrating successes also can be a source of motivation for the team. When project milestones are reached, they should be communicated to project team members and stakeholders. Small rewards for team members who go above and beyond their duties also should be considered to communicate a job well done. These rewards can come in various forms, from certificates of appreciation to recognition in the organizations staff newsletter or on its website." ¹
In the words of American psychologist Frederick Herzberg, "True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction and recognition."