Published in Leadership and Soft Skills, Project Management.
As Project Managers, we always work with people: project team members, Project Management Office colleagues, stakeholders, and clients. Working with other people involves dealing with them both logically and emotionally. A successful working relationship allows PM to manage the project effectively and deliver results in a timely fashion. There are many aspects of working with […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
When talking about the future it’s convenient for managers to plan things: a set of actions we want to perform, ideally, with concrete timelines. Planning is one of the five management functions apart from organizing, controlling, motivating & leading, and decision-making. Planning usually takes good judgment skills and includes something like “rent a floor” or […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
It’s natural to seek career progression into management or in-depth specialization. Today I’d like to discuss what companies are looking for in leaders to give you an overall understanding of the skills, responsibilities, and everyday tasks of middle managers. Being a head of a team, you maintain a complete and specific function within the organization […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
Much of the real work of companies happens despite the formal organization. Often what needs attention is the informal organization, the networks of relationships that employees form across functions and divisions to accomplish tasks fast. These informal networks can cut through formal reporting procedures to jump-start stalled initiatives and meet extraordinary deadlines. But informal networks […]
Published in Product Management.
Digital product management is booming: salaries are high, requirements for candidates are low and many companies are searching for senior PMs. Being an experienced product manager with experience with physical products you may think about switching to digital products. However, in an interview, you may face many questions to which you don’t know the answers. […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
13-14th of October 2022 in Moscow Center of International Trade the biggest e-commerce conference took place. Conference “Electronic trade 2022” united online shops, producers, sellers and retail under one roof. Topic of the event was “Big Remake”. Between 18th and 20th of May 2022 26th Russian Internet Forum took place. What was discussed at these […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
A performance review allows both the employer and employee to discuss what has been completed during the last performance review cycle, assess what went well, where areas of improvement may lie, and proactively implement needed support. Employees often underutilize performance reviews. They are great opportunities to get feedback and to present your achievements to reach […]
Published in Project Management.
Traceability describes relationships between two or more elements throughout the development process. Usually, Project managers visualize these relationships using traceability matrices that depict many-to-many relations. In Project Management, these can be between requirements and workstations, requirements and test cases, requirements to requirements (dependencies), or multiple project deliverables. Working on a Project with good traceability, you’ll […]
Published in Project Management.
On a project, each stakeholder and project team member has a specific view of what’s going on. They differ in understanding what steps the team will perform, how long they will take, and what the results will be. Managing expectations is about establishing a common denominator that aligns with Project documentation and plans. As a […]
Published in Project Management.
Project documentation is often a deciding factor separating successful projects from unsuccessful ones. Every project with insufficient documentation is a gamble posing risk to the organization. Every requirement missing from the documentation can be viewed differently by stakeholders. Every decision made during the execution can be redone for no reason causing ineffectiveness. Project documentation is […]
Published (updated: ) in Leadership and Soft Skills.
I believe there are two ways one can advance his career: either becoming a highly qualified specialist or providing general utility to the team and organization. The first ones often become seniors – senior engineers/programmers/lawyers. The second usually becomes managers: middle managers, Project Managers, Process Managers, etc. Governing other people requires less hard skills and […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
Innovation is a cornerstone for modern Businesses as even the smallest performance gain can separate a profitable company from a bankrupt one. CEOs, experienced managers, and business gurus all talk about innovation. As a first-time manager, you play a vital role in the innovation process. Apply these tips to help your team innovate: Promote cooperation […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
According to the definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, micromanaging bosses “try to control or manage all the small parts of something (such as an activity) in a way that is usually not wanted or that causes problems.” Even though micromanagement is usually portrayed negatively, there are quite a few exceptional situations where micromanagement might be […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
Genuine problem solving often requires us to ask people for help and information. This is applicable for both work projects and career advancement as a whole. Creating strong cases for your requests will improve the chances you get positive answers and prevent miscommunication of excepted results. Often, inner thoughts dissuade us from asking for anything. […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
As my latest article with tips for first-time managers has received much positive feedback on Telegram, I’ve decided to play with this topic a little more. Let’s talk about facilitating coordination and cooperation within a team. Cooperation is a must-have aspect of effective teams. Promoting cooperation is one of the most important manager’s responsibilities. You […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
No book is going to have the perfect advice for each situation first-time managers face. Being a good manager is making good decisions with information on hand and following several guidelines that differ very bad managers from okay ones. In this post I’ve listed the 8 that I think is the most important: 1. Success […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
We often rush doing tasks that we just received. It can lead to us spending time on tasks that will be of no use to anyone. Imagine finishing a report just to find out that the requestor has already received the same information from another source. Such a task can be discovered to violate your […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
Good presentation on a performance review is vital for your career advancement, getting realistic feedback from the manager, and increasing collaboration with your colleagues backed by increased authority and respect. According to UC Berkeley’s Guide to Managing Human Resources, “Performance Management is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee that occurs throughout the year, […]
Published in Leadership and Soft Skills.
Being knowledge workers, we all got multiple projects and tasks. Our managers and colleagues rely on us to keep things under control and manage up when needed. Have you ever struggled to tell your manager, outside the project, what has changed since last week? Most probably, something happened, but you weren’t involved. That’s a natural […]
Published in Project Management.
Being a manager or Team Leader, you will inevitably meet working with the team’s processes and knowledge. Techniques such as Scrum, Agile, and Kanban can help you with processes, and knowledge management software like Confluence can help you simplify Knowledge Management As Team knowledge often complements Teams’ processes, a problem arises: how to split information […]
