Interesting Project Management Reads

Scholarships for Aspiring Project Managers

The Project Management Institute Educational Foundation™ (PMIEF) offers academic scholarships and professional development scholarships to provide students, teachers, professionals and charities the opportunity to develop their project management capabilities.

The cost of gaining formal project management qualifications can be prohibitive for those who are not funded by their employers so these scholarships should remove that financial obstacle for those who are eligible.

Whilst many are only available in the USA there are at least a dozen scholarships available globally. Find out more about the project management scholarships provided through PMIEF on their website.

10 Killer Interview Questions for Hiring Project Managers

Interviewing for project management jobs is something I have had to do but I don’t find it easy. How do you know what to ask? And how do you use what is normally a really short period of time to let the candidate show themselves in the best possible light?

Added to that is the fact that it’s easy for candidates to come up with answers to many of the standard questions because there are so many books about recruiting and interviewing. They have plenty of time to rehearse their answers, so the whole thing can feel like a box ticking exercise.

I’ve put together my 10 killer interview questions for hiring a project manager. Next time you have to recruit someone for your project team, why not try some of these?

Read the full post on Elizabeth Harrin’s Blog

Project management ‘failure’ behind lack of Apple Maps updates

A number of improvements to Apple’s mapping service that were slated to hit the stage at last week’s Worldwide Developers Conference did not appear after poor planning and “internal politics” caused deadlines to be missed, a new report alleges.

Much of the blame for the absence of long-rumoured features — such as public transportation integration and a new, more reliable data backend — during the WWDC keynote address was heaped at the feet of project managers, according to unnamed sources who spoke with TechCrunch. Combined with a loss of engineering talent, these problems were said to have overloaded the development team.

Ed’s Note: Of course if it had been a success it would have been a joint effort…
 

Project Management: Strategic Pluses

Most of us know – especially those of us in the project management world – that a solid PM practice that is truly running smoothly in an organization can bring great benefits to the company, the employees and, of course, the project customers. However, not everyone sees it and sometimes executives want to deny that this is the case…choosing to fund different areas of the organization with the limited budget available because they just don’t see the benefit.

In these cases, what the PM practices are left with is struggle to survive, a lack of ability to show a consistent “face” of PM to the organization and the clients they serve on projects, and the reliance on more luck than best practices to bring ongoing success to the projects they manage. Not good. So what we always need to do is tout the pluses of project management and why the funding of a solid PM infrastructure is a good thing…not a frivolous endeavour.

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London Olympics 2012 guru Andy Hunt on how to win business goals

If they were handing out medals for project management on an unprecedented international scale, Andy Hunt should have a solid gold one and be allowed to wear it with pride.

Cheltenham resident Mr Hunt was for five years, until February 2013, the CEO of the British Olympic Association, the national Olympic committee for Great Britain and Northern Island, and ran the team that brought us the glittering success that was London 2012.

As unfeasibly enormous as the project was, the detail is rarely mentioned, only the good times and the successes – and in particular Team GB’s medal haul. For Mr Hunt, you imagine this is the litmus test that gives him greatest reassurance he and his vast team did their job pretty damn well.

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