Projects

As a leader you have to manage a project once in a while (or several at a time). Find out how to articulate an effective project goal and how to make a plan that is solid among other things.

How to use if-then planning to reach your goals

You probably know the feeling – it’s something that typically happens right after New Year’s, but it also occurs throughout the year: Once again you have to admit that you cannot follow up on your New Year’s resolution. You are not going to lose 5 kg or learn to play the guitar or bake all your bread yourself. Luckily for us, there is a method that we can all use.

Flexible and rigid goals. Is the problem motivation or consistency?

It’s no surprise that most people prefer flexible goals. In the end, we’re quite bad at predicting the future, and the elbowroom a flexible goal offers means that we can change the goal a little along the way. But this logic doesn’t apply when it comes to completing a goal. Here, studies show that we are better at completing a goal when it follows a structured and rigid plan.

How to treat project constipation

TOOL | About efficient project portfolio management, less is more and why short and thick is better than long and thin. A lot of companies struggle to complete projects on time and within budget. A large part of the reason that the project gets out of hand is that the company has no overview of which projects that are ongoing.

Formulating project goals

TOOL | How to formulate a effective project goal. Before you begin your project, it's important to specify what the project goals are, where you want to end, and what the desired outcome is.

Know your recipient: How to make a stakeholder analysis

TOOL | A stakeholder analysis is a useful tool when dealing with your company’s communications effort. It's important to know who you're communicating with in order to communicate efficiently.

Murder Boarding

TOOL | Murder Boarding is the process that marketing consultant Nilofer Mercent uses for filtering ideas and locating what really makes a difference in a specific situation and context.

What is pretotyping?

TOOL | Basically pretotyping is the art and the science of “faking it before making it” when trying to create an innovative product or service. When using this method, you increase the speed of innovation and product development and still save resources.

Gap analysis

TOOL | The Gap analysis has several purposes. It helps you discuss and clarify the difference (the gap) between your company’s current situation and the situation you want. This way, you're able to clarify your company’s current and future solutions in relation to your customers’ needs.

Learn to control the creative process and get more out of your ideas

TOOL | This tool, which is made with inspiration from the production company Copenhagen Bombay and their work on idea development, you will get the fundamental sketch for how to avoid spending too much time on idea development and on how to have the right impact with your ideas.

Project Portfolio Management (1/3)

VIDEO | Are you managing more projects than one? Or are you managing several project managers? Then you know how difficult it can be to satisfy everyone when there are limited resources. Niels Søndergaard Teilberg talks about the challenges of project portfolio management and shares the solution with you: You can not make everyone satisfied.

How to avoid scope creep

TOOL | Scope creep is when the frames around a project, both financial and deadlines, grows during the process of the project. It literally grows in size, and there are many possible explanations of this.

What is project management?

TOOL | Project management is inevitable for most leaders. Sooner or later your company will have to implement something new, and you'll need some essential tools to help you create a better perspective of the process from idea to product.

The agile manifesto

TOOL | The agile manifesto is not quite a method but rather a philosophy that attempts to break away from the rigid, fixed methodologies they experienced within the area of software development. Which is also implied in the use of the word “agile”.

Understanding Scrum: The most basic components

TOOL | If you have a project with lots of unknown elements that needs development in an unknown or very unpredictable environment, the Scrum-development framework is a way of managing all the unknown and movable parts of your project.

Scrum factsheet: Introducing to the most important terms

TOOL | Have you also read that Scrum is supposed to be simple, but you're still confused? Perhaps this is because of the overwhelming use of esoteric terms by Scrum-practitioners. This means that it's difficult to see the big picture because of the minor details blurring it. That's why we have developed this factsheet.

4 reasons why Lean fails

TOOL | Lean, if used the right way, is a very efficient tool for increasing productivity and reducing waste. But sometimes companies fail when attempting to implement Lean. Here we will reveal four of the most typical pitfalls.

Create an efficient team with Tuckmann’s 5 team development phases

TOOL | You probably know the situation: You have gathered a team of your best coworkers to solve a critical work assignment. Your star-coworkers are ready, everybody knows it is an important assignment that needs solving, and everybody know that there is too little time to do it, as always.

The 12 phases of a partnership process

TOOL | A partnership or a strategic alliance is a complicated process. It's characterized by many moving parts and potential pitfalls that you need to manage. Luckily, here are some firm reference points to steer by.

What really happens when we push a deadline?

TOOL | The reason that you do not take advantage of extra time and how you can start doing so. Research shows that after we sigh with relief, because the pressure is off, we really don't know how to spend extra time in a sensible manner. That's why we end up battling the same problems again: The same stress, the same time pressure and the same feeling of not being entirely ready. But now another week or even another month or year has passed.