Communication

When it comes to leveraging social media techniques on projects, the most important place to start is frame of mind. It’s not about mimicking Facebook in the workplace, but rather removing barriers to communication and information-sharing. Project leaders who do will improve team camaraderie and productivity.

Kanban is designed to help your processes, not define them. Along the way, it can provide enormous value to projects and teams, including improved focus, efficiency, communication, prioritization and visibility. Here is an overview of these benefits and tips for realizing them as you implement Kanban into your project work.

Retrospectives are a catalyst for continuous team improvement, providing a feedback loop to examine methods, teamwork and results. But holding monotonous retrospectives isn’t much better than holding none at all. Here are three techniques you can interchange for maximum effect.

The more you specify exactly what your team must do and how it must do it, the less team members will seek to understand the thinking behind what they’re doing. High-performing teams start with a firm grasp of the goals of the project — the "why" — and then actively participate in achieving its success.

For any and all projects you lead, a constant mantra should be “keep the stakeholders involved.” It will help you to get ahead of potential risks and changes to scope as your project moves towards completion, and it will be critical to its ultimate success. When in doubt, overcommunicate.

Establishing productive working relationships with your project team is as critical as building the plan, managing risk or reporting to stakeholders. It requires accessibility, adaptability and authenticity. Here are seven principles that can help you help your team members maximize their individual and collective value.

As the year draws to an end, it’s a good time for self-examination, professional and personally. For project managers, it’s important to conduct an honest assessment of your leadership and communications performance this past year — and identify opportunities for improvement in the coming year.

Working with stakeholders can be one of the biggest challenges for a project manager, but most of the problems are rooted in a failure to communicate. Here are some rules for engagement that can establish the foundation for a more productive relationship.

If your meetings don’t contribute more value than they cost, they should be cancelled. So how do calculate how much your meetings cost, and what’s the key to making them more effective and efficient?

It’s not just project managers who need to be strong communicators. Team members must be willing and able to communicate with each other, but many may lack experience or training in this area. Here are some simple tools and techniques to help them connect with each other.