Project Managers- Four Sources of Good Advice

Take Advantage of the Experience and Lessons of Other PMs

Sep 1, 2009

New project managers have a great deal to learn and most of it does not come from a classroom. Fortunately some great PMs share experience in their blogs or books.

Project management is a complex undertaking requiring technical, people, and corporate skills. A new project manager is selected because they have potential to do the job well, but they have a lot to learn. And, they have to learn fast.

Some of the situations faced by a new project manager will be completely unique; others are variations on a theme. However for someone who has not managed projects before, each situation will test nascent skills and techniques. The project management professional community is a supportive one. With a bit of research and time, a budding project manager can learn from the mistakes and observations of those who have been in the trenches and survived.

PM Clinic – A Resource for Project Managers Facing Difficult Challenges

PM Clinic, recently renamed Patoomba, is a site that offers a challenging project management situation each week for professionals in the field to comment. The service is email based and requires registration. A reader will need to work through a lot of material to find parallel situations, but the comments are based on real world experience and usually well written and thoughtful.

Scott Berkun, who began PM Clinic, remains an editor on Patoomba. Scott is also the author of an excellent book on project management, Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management (available from Amazon published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.; Revised edition (March 25, 2008), based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Microsoft’s biggest projects.

Fear No Project – A Blog About Many Aspects of Project Management

Fear No Project is a fairly new PM Blog by Bruce McGraw, a certified Project Management Professional. Recent posts on Fear No Project include:

Project Management Articles - PM Hut

The Project Management Hut offers thousands of project management articles organized into categories to quickly find subtopics of interest including: agile development, change management, certification, cost management and best practices.

Project Management Institute

According to their website, “With more than half a million members and credential holders in over 170 countries, PMI is the leading membership association for the project management profession.” Access to PMI’s books and articles is not free—an individual membership is $129.00. However, membership comes with access to their key publication: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).

The lessons a new PM needs to learn have been learned by others. Take an opportunity to stand on the shoulders of others and check out these project management resources.

The copyright of the article Project Managers- Four Sources of Good Advice in Business Project Management is owned by Barbara Brown. Permission to republish Project Managers- Four Sources of Good Advice in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.