Post of the day

5 Steps to a smart compensation plan

When you found a company and it starts growing it makes sense to give a few thoughts about the career option of your employees. Your first time employees are key to success and I am a strong believer of finding the right people is a major success factor especially at the beginning. Later they also need a prospect especially in case of technical careers. I found an interesting slideshare articel about it.

Check out the link.

Post of the Day - Entrepreneur - Business Aids

30 Marketing Ideas To Increase Sales For Your Small Business.

I found an interesting chart about it. Check out link below.

Link

Hiring the best people

Team and Hiring

Preparation

Think about needed skills and put an imaginary ideal candidate on paper together. Compare the interviewees against the ideal candidate and assess them based on a weighted point system. Try also to weight soft skills and your personal judgment.

First order questions

Basic questions one should ask:

• Are they smart?
• Do they things get done?
• Do I want to spend a lot of time around them?

 

• Second order questions

• Do they have good communication skills?
• Determined to reach an objective?

  

Mark Zuckerberg's questions

• Do I want to spend my private time with them?
• Would I feel comfortable reporting to them?

Link - Teams and Execution - Stanford University

Stakeholder management – Project Environment Analysis

Project Environment Analysis

The project environment analysis helps to get a good understanding of the stakeholders involved and their needs. It is a valuable tool to identify stakeholders and manage their expectations and clarify requirements of a project.
Usually the stakeholders can be divided into five general groups:

• Project Group
• Customer (int. or external)
• Internal Departments
• Supplier
• Others 

Project Environment Analysis

 This representation can be used to put a stakeholder register together and to prepare a stakeholder action plan. The bottom line is the stakeholder management cycle below, which leads to the identification of stakeholders and the development of a plan. It depends on the size of the project how much effort should be put into proactive stakeholder management.

Stakeholder Management Cycle

Stakeholder action plan

The plan identifies the actions that need to be taken to increase stakeholders' commitment and increases the likelihood of a successful project.

Stakeholder action plan (aka Stakeholder Management Plan)
Stakeholder	Current Contribution Commitment	Targeted Contribution Commitment	Relationship	Actions
Head of Finance	Desirable Neutral	Desirable Supportive	Barney	Weekly meeting one on one Invite to Status-Report meeting

Post of the day - The Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management

I read an interesting article (link is below) which has a few thoughts about project management mistakes.
I specially like point 2 about "saying no". "Instead of managing expectations through saying “no,” think about using the “yes, and…” principle." As project manager one often has to sell a product or service to a costumer who can be internal or external. Be being to strict about the scope, a project manager may block useful ideas and approaches which might be of essential value during project implementation.


Link - The Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management

Project Close down - Project Management Process by IPMA

What is the objective of the project close down?

• Handover has happened.
• Documentation of project success
• Lesson learned session and knowledge transfer into the organization
• Formal event to show end of project
• Rough post-project plans drafted
• Accounting/Finance informed

How can a project closing be organized? 



Project Close Down

Planning:	Planning of the rough elements at the beginning of the project setup
Planning workshop:	Planning of the key elements of the closing workshop (e.g. objective, agenda, lesson learnt)
Closing workshop:	Doing of the workshop, can be a day workshop, can be a quick debriefing depending on the project size.
Follow Up:	Follow up meeting/ discussion based on the results of the closing workshop.
Closing:	Finalization and archiving of documents, accounting informed.

Project Management Process - Project Marketing

This part of project management is often forgotten even though it is important to sell a project to its stakeholders and to guarantee the acceptability of a project. A few steps are necessary to market a project in the right way. The larger the project the more important it is to have professional project marketing in place.

Process within the framework

 Marketing steps:

Initial situation:	Description of the context derived from the project charter.
Defining target groups:	Who are the relevant stakeholders (e.g. project sponsor, user, distributor etc.)?
Defining marketing content:	What is the core message? What is relevant to a specific stakeholder?
Defining means:	Project logo, project web page, newsletter, company news, flyers, project t-shirt, giveaways, project bulletins, social media (internal/external) etc.
Defining marketing plan:	Detailed plan which spell out exactly what activity will carry at the period of the plan. Calculating and approving of marketing budget.
Finalizing concept:	Review and put everything together into a folder, check with global company marketing team.