By Brad Egeland Project meetings – necessary evils in the world of project management. But meetings are meetings, right?  No.  All attendees come to meetings because you invited them so they have to, right?  No.  If you say it’s important, everyone needs to take note and be there, right?  No.  You’re the project manager so […]

By Brad Egeland If you aren’t PMP certified then I can almost guarantee you that you are not earning enough as a PM. How can I do that? Because I know that on average certified project management professionals (PMPs) earn up to $20,000 more annually. That’s a lot of money – that’s $400,000 over a

By Brad Egeland Whether you know it or not, negotiation on the project just simply goes with the territory. If you are a project manager you probably don’t even realize how often you are negotiating for something to help your engagement along or to keep the customer happy or to get the right team member

By Brad Egeland In the project management world or the consulting world no one ever really wants to say, “I told you so.” Why? Let’s consider you’re saying this to your project client. If you are uttering those words – even if you were right from the beginning – it means the client isn’t happy,

 By Brad Egeland As my wife continues to force the country genre on this classic rock guy, I actually find some connections with many of the songs and how they relate to life in general and, in some cases, to project management. Other than the fact that the term “blue jeans” is usually proceeded by

By Brad Egeland Customer happiness is Job 1.1 for the project manager.  I would say it’s Job 1.0, but I’ve always said that Job One is effective and efficient communication and I don’t feel it’s a good idea for me to flip flop.  I am not a politician.  So, if customer happiness is Job 1.1,

By Brad Egeland Do you consider yourself to be a top notch project manager? What skill set or character traits do you think are most needed to be all you can be as a project leader? Need to become a good project manager? Every individual who is considering entering the field should probably ask this

By Brad Egeland It’s not secret that project managers wear a variety of hats on nearly every project they manage. Exactly what hats they wear usually depends on several things – the complexity of the project, the culture of the organization, how much authority the PM is given, and sometimes even how the customer wants

By Brad Egeland Are you productive working around others? Do you work well with interruptions and are you able to easily get back on track and focused on issues and tasks you were working on before the interruption? Or can an interruption at a critical point stop your forward progress and send you chasing rabbits

This is a funny question and I get this one from all sides. Are formal sign offs necessary for things like individual deliverables, user acceptance testing (UAT), and final system acceptance? I get this from my teams from time to time, from the customer periodically, and – believe it or not – from senior management