If you work in construction, IT, manufacturing, architecture, chemicals or any other major industry, you’ve almost certainly come across people with the job title ‘project manager’. Unlike some other positions within your industry, say site foreman or quantity surveyor, the moniker ‘project manager’ doesn’t really indicate what this person does. Yet, the project manager, PM, might just be the most important person on any specific task.

It’s the spookiest time of year and, naturally, as an accredited training organisation, we thought it was only appropriate that we had a little think about zombies. Hey now, bear with us here – there’s method to our madness or, at least, a methodology…

Understandably, we believe that being certified in project management is a sure-fire way to boost your career chances, knowledge of best practice and overall skillset. However, without the right personal skills, a qualification can only take you so far. We’ve pulled together 4 essential attributes you can use to take your PM skills from good to great.

PRINCE2 isn’t just the world’s most popular Project Management methodology, it can also help you boost the power of your CV. Even though it won’t guarantee you a job (it’s up to you to wow the interviewer!) it can help your chances significantly.

Here are our 5 top ways how PRINCE2 can help you out at different stages of your career.

Mindfulness is a meditation technique that focuses not on achieving a state of calm, but on observing thoughts and emotions as they are. The practice originates from Buddhism, but doesn’t require any spiritual inclination, and has been proven to have incredibly positive effects on mental health and wellbeing. What we’re interested in exploring however, is how being mindful can improve our leadership skills.

This month’s blog entry comes from guest blogger and PRINCE2 certified Project Manager, Phil Doyle. Phil has a strong interest in metrics and process improvement and has worked in a variety of project management roles, particularly in the IT sector. He’s also passionate about what he describes as the ‘fusion of the theoretical and the actual’: how best practice methodologies could have helped real-life projects. To see more of Phil’s work, visit his website ‘Project Health Check’, where he writes a number of blog posts. 

The Six Nations Championship is underway, which has us thinking about project management (of course). Dr Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber actually invented a rugby-inspired management process named Scrum back in 1995. Like a rugby scrum, its short meetings offer a chance for project team members to reset and regroup.

It’s Super Bowl weekend, so (naturally) we’re thinking about project management. We’re not, however, going to discuss the processes and logistics that go into organising an event like this. We’re going to outline why a football game is just like a project.

Not all projects are created equal. Some are fundamentally flawed, and they usually display at least one of these warning signs. If you can spot any of these five red flags early enough, you’ll be better prepared to stamp them out, or avoid managing a doomed project altogether.

Project Management guides often refer to six different leadership styles from Daniel Goleman’s 2000 article, “Leadership That Gets Results”. We could list and define these, like many before us, but we thought it’d be much more worthwhile (and fun) to take leadership to the movies.