We are working on adding quizzes, which will be set up to hone in on specific areas such as risk management, effective meetings, or communications plans.

If there are ideas you have for what would be handled by the project management quiz, we would like to know before we go live. Give us some ideas here, or when the online quiz is available, give it a test run.

How do you spot the phony? By testing and comparing it to the authentic, of course. Until there is a course in management authentic comparison, we’re here to help out!

Here in our table we have made it easy for you to spot the obvious:

This handy table will help, in a humorous way, spot the fake management styles.. Even if sometimes the fake project manager… is you!

Second, you don’t have to like comics to enjoy this post.

So, what’s the spin on this? Well, you hone your craft, and the cartoon-makers hone theirs. You may not become Captain America, but your powers can increase!

Honing your craft takes time. You and the cartoon artists aren’t born with all of the skills. And there are conventions to let you strut your stuff.

How do top comic books get made? By managing the process. It’s part art, and part science, and perhaps part science-fiction. Technology helps, but the people… each of us artists in our crafts… are the real force behind making things happen.

And the final result is beautiful, shiny, and held up for display. But the crafting of it is the work. Working for days, weeks, months, the final result is usually only a vision in our heads.

With most projects, we get to shine at the end when it’s all done. After a long time fighting dragons, outwitting stalkers a la Showtimes’ Dexter, and dealing with Mr. Scope Creep, you show it off. With people in the visual arts, a convention like Comic-Con helps showcase the best work, and motivate those to keep on working on their art.

The video below gives a sense of the ComicCon energy:

All of the courses, all of your practice and experience, and all of the knowledge in your head.

Being a wizard is easy. It’s the work that isn’t always so.

In the Harry Potter movies series, training is key. In fact, learning takes a long time. Practice helps. But as usual – in movies and in life – luck and friends are needed pull you through the tough times.

The plot of your own projects in life, and in your career as a wizard, will unfold as you go. Destiny is there in the background, whether you love it or not. You find out that your future was not as you had planned, because there was another plan already happening.

Like Harry, you are born with gifts… wizardly powers… that perhaps are not known by those around you. Whether you train at Hogwarts, or you do your management training at Harvard, you learn. And in a sense, you’re always in school. Besides the benefits of continually stretching your brain, everyday life presents constant changes and knowledge for you to absorb.

And as you advance in your wizardly levels, you find out the “truths” you knew earlier are not the same. You grow up, and your world grows up.

But inside of you is the same young wizard, with the potential, and the magic inside to rise up to the challenges you face.

An example is getting a nice table at a restaurant, or to get a table more quickly. You ask the person at the door to help you out. Of course, you’re the same as every other customer. And the person gets this request frequently.

So, you have to find some influence. You could try a compliment “Nice shoes! Where did you get them?” You can try conversation, such as the honest and obvious “You must get a lot of requests for special treatment. How do you handle them?”

This type of influence is getting them to like you, or at least interact with you from a personal perspective. There are many ways to understand influence, and to find strategies to identify, understand, and use them more effectively.

There has been an increasing amount of attention on influence. The 1998 book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert B. Cialdini was (and may still be) a milestone reference in understanding influence. The core idea was the concept of the six weapons of influence. These “tools” are reciprocation, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. The expansion of the ideas in the book continues today.

However, the explosion of interest has come more recently due to online social websites for networking and interaction. Influence has become more quantifiable. It can be seen, measured (to some degree, in some cases), and studied. Social media sites and services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn have various ways for people to influence others. And mobile apps are just starting to enhance this trend.

How does this help you solve your project management challenges?

First, keep your focus on the positive aspects of persuasion. We know that too much persuading can be seen as annoying, pushy/aggressive, or begging. Using some of the “six tools”, having people like you is helpful, even if it is only at a level of professional respect. This only happens if they know something about you. In fact, not knowing about you makes their interaction less personal, and perhaps less of a priority.

Reciprocation is another tool that applies to management. You can divide this into these three phases of time: before, during, and after. If you do something for someone (in the past), then they will want to reciprocate. If you are doing something for them now, then it is similarly an optimal time to ask for reciprocation. The future-based strategy would be, for example, promising now to do an action, and then asking for a reciprocal favor or action. Brain and mind studies have shown that reciprocation is part of human biology, and you can do more research in how this works to understand both sides (i.e. how others may be using it).

Another tool that is not explicitly one of the six weapons listed above, is communication. People understand what is communicated to them, so this helps your influence. Additionally, people react with more interest to the ideas they have been exposed to, and the more often, the more aware they are of the concepts. For example, if you include more people in your project updates, then over time they will have seen some of this information more than other projects.

“We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it.” – Christopher Marlowe

However, on those dark days when problems cannot be solved, when deadlines are coming (or past), when you don’t have all of the answers…

… those dark days are your opportunity for leadership.
Leading yourself, leading others, and leading the project. Let’s look at these:

Leading yourself: You don’t know all of the answers, but you must. Inside of you is fear, uncertainty, and the confidence that you surely don’t know it all. At this time, you can look to others (“What would my mentor do..?”) or simply just tell yourself to keep going & exploring options. Another tactic is to lead yourself from the future: ask yourself “What will this look like in 30 days?” (or 6 months, or a year, or longer). Pretend you are yourself, wiser, living in the future, and tell yourself what to focus on and how to move forward. This technique can also relax you by focusing on the longer term.

Leading others: People will follow you, even if you don’t have all of the answers, or if the path you chose didn’t work out. You can lead from the bottom, by asking for ideas and recommendations. You can do this boldly (“I have no clue, so help me out here team!”) or with subtlety (“There are some options we have, but first, what do you all have to offer?”).

Leading the project: Recognize where you are now, and where your project needs to go. Think about the future, not on what happened, except if you need to analyze a cause to solve your issues. For example, if you are late, thinking about why you are late isn’t saving any time, but thinking about how you will handle being late will set the stage for what will happen anyway. And in preparing for what will happen you also tend to come up with ideas of options of how to make it better. It’s project management intersecting with project reality.

And, it’s not about you. Put yourself aside, and think of what the stakeholders want, and how the project will evolve towards their needs.

Leadership is easy until it is hard, and it is at that moment that you have the opportunity to grow. Use your concern and “negative” energy towards where you are going. Recognize the strengths you have, and those that you are developing.

Strictly speaking, giving praise to team members won’t cost you anything. It’s free. So, if you see any of your project team players doing a spectacular job, don’t hesitate to acknowledge their efforts.

If someone deserves praise, why not provide some? Some managers are old-school, maintaining “work is it’s own reward” thinking. But in a competitive modern hiring & retention environment, even people who don’t report to you are usually people you want to have ‘retained’ for your project continuity. Even people who always give praise, to almost everyone for even small deeds, are generally seen as conducting beneficial acts for the group.

Meanwhile, your words of praise would do wonders for your project team’s self-esteem, and will also encourage continued dedication.

Project Management Course homepage

Project management methodology is absolutely critical in determining the failure or the success of a specific development environment, meaning that it is absolutely imperative that you can truly differentiate between the concept of a methodology, a technique or a tool. There are some properties that are generic to all project management methodologies, which will be detailed in part 2 of this methodologies series.

A project can be pretty much any activity which involves following through with a task that is non-repetitive in nature. So in a sense, everyone is a project manager, and everyone practices project management to a degree. However, there is a very large difference between carrying out a project which is very simple and involves a few people, and carrying out a project that deals with a complex number of people, tasks and organizations. Projects on a large scale once tended to use very simple techniques for resource and control, including brute force in an attempt to motivate the workers.

The art of planning ahead for the future is a trait that can be found in many people. It only really takes a few specific elements to capture a project on paper, such as a start and end date, what tasks must be carried out and a rough outline of when they should be finished, along with a basic idea of what resources will be needed, including people and material resources like machines and tools. Unfortunately, many paper plans can quickly become unreadable when the plan begins to involve more intricate details, including different events occurring at different times, different resources required at different points throughout the plan’s completion, different work rates and so on. Once the paper plan begins to cover an area which is much more vast, it will be difficult to keep track of.

Many project management tasks can be handled by computers that are designed to analyze, but project management software is only meant to be a tool for a project manager to use, not to serve in the role of the project manager itself. Project management involves control, teamwork, resource management and leadership skills which cannot necessarily be handled by a computer or a software program.

Every leader or project sponsor would prefer for their projects to be finished on time, with all objectives met with quality, and without costing more than the originally prepared budget. These three facets of project management form the core of all project manager duties, as well as what is known as the classic “time, quality, cost” pyramid. Project management can be an easy, or a difficult task depending on these three facets, so while you may start a project with an unlimited budget, unlimited time, or a fairly average expected quality for objectives, it will not always play out that way. Generally you should expect projects where time and money have become critical, and where the highest quality of work is expected, but with the right tools and experience, there is reason that you cannot tackle any project as a project manager.

Luckily there are plenty of available resources for anyone who is interested in learning about the project management facet of business, as well anyone who is interested in obtaining certification for certain project manager skills. These resources include but are not limited to online courses, face-to-face courses and instructional books or manuals. All of these tools can be extremely useful in helping any individual to develop the project manager skills they need.

For anyone who is in charge of managing a project, the main objective is simply to see the task through from beginning to completion. The secondary objective for project managers in most case is to make sure as little money as possible is actually spent on said project during its completion.

Overall, project manager skills need to center not only on excellent communication, but also on a handful of other facets including but not limited to duty delegation, scheduling and ensuring quick and efficient completion. At the same time, an effective project manager has to be thinking about producing results of the highest possible quality, no matter what task is assigned or time frame allotted.

If you are looking to improve your project manager skills, courses in general management can certainly be a large help. You will surely learn how to delegate specific duties, how to handle issues with employees, how to effectively hire new employees and how to lay off or fire others, and how to schedule projects that you can see to from beginning to completion. You will also typically learn about task monitoring and problem solving through management courses. All of these are important project manager skills which can prove to be invaluable in the workplace.

When looking to increase your project manager skills, there are a wide variety of different certification and training programs that you can choose from. Each program offers something which is a little different from the others, so compare all of the projects available to you before to settle on one over the others. This way, you can lay out an effective plan for your project manager skill training, forecasting the length of the training in the process. Forecasting your project manager skills training in this way will also allow you to sketch out the financial responsibility necessary so that you can plan ahead adequately.

By obtaining new project manager skills, you will be opening yourself up to hundreds of additional job opportunities that address facets of project management. If you are skilled in the art of handling projects which are difficult and diverse, and have acquired the necessary training to effectively complete all of the tasks required of a project manager, then you can easily become quite the invaluable employee or consulant.