Articles by Meghan Corbin

We all have those days when we arrive home from work and see nothing but more work all around us. There are dishes in the sink, piles of laundry in the corner, and kids hungry for dinner. Yet after a ten hour day and two hour commute, we can only muster enough energy to microwave …

Continue reading “12 Time Management Tools and Strategies for Maximizing Productivity”

Sometimes little things can make all the difference. A small cup of espresso can ease you into the workday, or a tiny increase in pay can allow you to eat out once a week. A brief happy hour with friends on a Friday afternoon, too, can jumpstart a relaxing weekend. For so many of us, …

Continue reading “What’s a 9/80 Work Schedule and What’s in It for Me?”

Whenever anyone seeks employment, one persistent question keeps raising its head. Is it better to be paid with a salary or hourly? It’s tempting to give a practical answer to this question, and say that a wage is a wage is a wage. But more often than not, our experience questions such a simple approach. …

Continue reading “The Wage Battle: Salary Versus Hourly Compensation”

Imagine this if you will. You attend a two hour work meeting, and do nothing the entire time but sit in the back and scribble into a notepad. A few hours later, you participate in the daily standup, where you observe that the team is poised to make a big, expensive mistake. But you mention …

Continue reading “Scrum Master vs Project Manager: 5 Major Differences, Plus Tactics for Code-Switching Between the Two Roles”

We’ve all had that sinking feeling in a project when disaster looms ahead, a turnaround is nowhere in sight and we realize the only way out is to jump ship. These failed projects so often begin innocently enough. The team and client set off buoyant and full of hope. Yet just even one fatal turn …

Continue reading “Know Your Blind Spots: The Top Ten 10 Reasons Why Projects Fail, Plus How to Avert a Hot Mess in Your Upcoming Projects”

We’ve all worked in those organizations where something’s off. The secretive glances, the terse emails, the cold greetings at the water cooler all smell fishy. Then one day you request time off for a religious holiday, or point out an overt error in the books. A few hours later, your boss shows up with a …

Continue reading “12 Examples of Workplace Retaliation…And 3 Tips on What You Can Do About It!”

Nobody feels neutral about giving or receiving feedback. When the feedback request email lands in their inbox, some people feel annoyed and think, “As if I can really tell my boss how I feel about her in this ‘anonymous’ form!” Others feel relief. “Finally I have a chance to unload on my coworker who Drives. …

Continue reading “Pro-Tips & Examples for Giving 360 Feedback to Your Peers, Subordinates and Your Boss”

The solution to some problems is so clear and straightforward that it’s like looking down a long, straight road to the horizon line. Take the problem of a scraped knee. All it needs is a good cleaning and a Band-Aid. Other problems are so twisted and complicated, however, that it’s not possible to even see …

Continue reading “Scrum Made Simple: How a Team Uses Artifacts in the Scrum Framework”

It’s so easy to lapse into a daydream over all the things we’d like to be doing in our life. Maybe on a walk with the dog around the block, you start to fantasize about the new career you want to break into, the second home you want to purchase or the dream vacation you …

Continue reading “Turning Desires Into Reality: How to Write an Action Plan, With Examples”

Even if you already know all the ropes of project management, clinical trials can throw a curveball. With all its procedures and protocols and phases, a clinical trial is a world unto its own. It’s exciting to be a part of the research that goes into a major medical breakthrough, but for anyone new to …

Continue reading “5 Soft and Hard Skills to Crushing It as a Clinical Trial Project Manager”

They say that change is constant, but for manufacturing, change is both constant and rapid. It wasn’t so very long ago that agile, kanban, lean and the theory of constraints took manufacturing plants by storm, and everyone was focused on pull workflows, continuous improvement and systems built around the weakest link in a process. Now, …

Continue reading “Best Practices for Project Management in the Manufacturing Industry”

Have you ever taken the time to closely inspect your spending habits, and were surprised by what you discovered? Maybe you found that a huge amount of your budget was going toward eating out, leaving little left for savings. Both in business and in real life, a subjective analysis is so oftentimes full of misconceptions. …

Continue reading “Your Guide to Business Process Modeling, With Benefits, Tools & Examples”

Leading a team can so easily become a hot mess. Some people say you micromanage, while others think you’re too hands off. Oftentimes, leaders constantly do other people’s work for them, and answer basic questions to employees who should know better. The workday becomes more like running a daycare. And to top it off, people …

Continue reading “A Situational Approach to Leadership, With Examples”

Even if your current project management software isn’t cutting it, you don’t want to dive headfirst into something else. Because whatever you choose, you have to live with. The wrong software means all sorts of hangups. Work doesn’t flow, onboarding is clunky, and people get frustrated and resist the change from the get-go. So it …

Continue reading “Shopping Around for Alternatives: The 14 Best Competitors to Jira”

We’ve all heard the saying that people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. Some managers can hardly greet anyone in the morning without generating grumbles from the staff. Every single week is a countdown to Friday. At the other extreme, other managers foster so much loyalty that people remain in the same position for decades, …

Continue reading “Quotes, Books & Principles: The Ins and Outs of Servant Leadership”

Most of us have learned the hard way that lightning strikes when we least expect it. And when it strikes, you want to be prepared. Because if you don’t get ahead of an incident or an issue, you pay the price. Scope increases, budgets swell and deadlines are extended. Sometimes, when a project cannot scramble …

Continue reading “Risky Business: The Top Risk Management Tools, Techniques, Softwares and Methodologies”

If you’ve spent any time as a project manager, you’ve experienced plenty of resistance to change. Maybe the requirements change midway through a project, and then key players throw up their hands and quit in fits of frustration. Or a project’s timeline gets cut short and the entire team is thrown in a tizzy. Whether …

Continue reading “The Best Practices, Tools & Softwares to Simplify Change in Your Organization”

Do you ever have those days at the office where you can’t even hear yourself think? You want to get some solid work under your belt, but with the coworker who gabs on the phone every afternoon and the loudmouths who love to discuss sports at the water cooler, it’s all you can do just …

Continue reading “The Best Music for Productivity, Creativity and Focus in a Noisy Work Environment”

A seller’s life is full of hard knocks. Customers may buy a product, rave about it, then you never hear from them again. A hot lead suddenly goes cold, and you have no idea why. Or a list of “prospects” turns out to be a bunch of cold leads to begin with. Every successful salesperson …

Continue reading “The 10 Best Online Sales Tools (Plus 5 Secrets to Closing the Deal With Remote Sales)”

Do you ever toss and turn over two similar products in angst over which to buy? As a business owner, your role is to understand this angst, and craft a pitch that sways your customer to push the “buy” button on your webpage. Because if you’re not on your toes, they’ll go with the competition. …

Continue reading “10 Excellent Monitoring Tools for Shellacking Your Competition”

What’s the secret to a product that flies off the shelves or a cafe with lines out the door? Because for every hot, top-selling product, there’s dozens more that land in the market with a dud. This includes excellent products that should be an easy sell. Sometimes a product has an auspicious beginning. It receives …

Continue reading “The Best Market Research Tools for New Customer Acquisition and Retention”

“We should have known.” It’s such a common phrase to hear when reflecting on a project that’s gone over budget or schedule. Whether it’s materials arriving late, employees quitting, or prices soaring, so often a project goes off the rails because of something that might have been prevented. In the eager anticipation to get a …

Continue reading “Known Unknowns: A List of Common Project Assumptions (& What to Do About Them!)”

“I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work,” the character Peter Gibbons tells consultants in the 1999 movie, Office Space. Gibbons, as you may recall, idled away at a cubicle in the notoriously unproductive software company, Initech. Many of us relate to Peter. The office environment …

Continue reading “The Top 32 Work from Home Tools for Remote Teams & Solopreneurs”

Have you seen those kids who can solve a Rubik’s cube in a few seconds? It’s really something. Most of us twist and turn those puzzling cubes around for hours before throwing in the towel. Instagram, some have said, is like the Rubik’s cube of social media. Some people make it look like a cinch. …

Continue reading “The Secret Tools to Build an Instagram Empire…and 4 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid”

Have you ever shared what you thought was a great idea and were surrounded by naysayers? Maybe it was for an innovative product or a new marketing campaign. And the responses all sounded a little bit like: “Hasn’t that been done?” “I just don’t see the point.” “What we have now is working, so why …

Continue reading “Steps to Write A Business Case, With an Example”

Do you ever have those days where you don’t even check one task off the to-do list, because the first item ends up being so (dang) complicated? For most of us, it happens all the time. Take a car repair, a visit to the doctor’s office, or the first day using a new software. These …

Continue reading “Swishing the Three Pointers: How Story Points Allow Agile Teams to Nail Work Estimates, Every Time”

Why do some meetings really move the needle, while others feel like a colossal waste of time? There’s obviously more than one answer to this question, but more often than not the effectiveness of a meeting is determined by something as simple as its minutes. Fundamentally, a meeting is a powerful method to move things …

Continue reading “Capture the Essentials With Concision: How to Write Meeting Minutes (With Examples!)”

We’ve all seen productivity metrics that don’t make any sense. Why is the employee who goofs off every afternoon consistently out beating the rest of the team in sales? And why is customer feedback declining at the same time that revenue is increasing? When it comes to evaluating productivity, it’s easy to churn out all …

Continue reading “Finding Metrics With Meaning: How to Measure Productivity In the Workplace”

We all have those chock-full days where it feels like our brain has been placed inside a blender and someone pushes the “puree” button. Maybe we’ve just left a planning session for a project that’s an amorphous mess of requirements, conflicting objectives and opinionated stakeholders. And we somehow need to capture the minutes and come …

Continue reading “10 Examples of Mind Mapping to Conquer Complexity and Unleash Potential”

A complex project can derail in so many ways. The software team might hunker down and develop an innovative product, only to discover that it’s not what the user wants. At the other extreme, the team might set out to solve the client’s problem, only to realize mid-way that it doesn’t have the capacity to …

Continue reading “The Role of Epics in Agile Project Management”

These days, hustling and productivity are marks of pride. How often do you hear people subtly drop into a conversation that they wake up at 4 am or put in a 70- hour work week? We live in a world that elevates anyone who somehow manages to do it all. And of course, this is …

Continue reading “How to Avoid the Dangerous (and Sneaky!) Trap of Toxic Productivity”

Have you ever watched a business scale and achieve huge success, seemingly overnight? It’s hard to not to marvel and wonder, “How did they DO that?! Because oftentimes, within our own organizations, it’s a different story entirely. Maybe it’s patterns of long meetings where everyone makes themselves part of the problem, not the solution, a …

Continue reading “How to Use OKRs to Fast Track Success (With Examples!)”

When your organization has the right project management software, you’ll know it. Things like productivity, team synergy, and lead generation increase right away. While at the same time, everyone receives some respite from those boring, repetitive tasks. The problem for most of us, however, is that we don’t want to spend a lot of time …

Continue reading “The 7 Best Alternatives to Monday.com”

Left to itself, the internet is like a noisy crowded room where everyone screams for your attention. You can’t watch a video without getting hit with at least three ads. You try to finish an article but get distracted by all the advertisements, pop up windows and like buttons that the author wants you to …

Continue reading “Your Life Is About to Get So Much Easier: The 19 Best Google Chrome Extensions You Can’t Afford to Miss Out On”

First dates certainly aren’t the only time you may find yourself stuttering, stammering and flustering for words. Providing constructive feedback in face-to-face conversations can be every bit as awkward, and the stakes are just as high. Everyone has blind spots. It’s easy for someone to lead an unfocused meeting, to deliver a presentation that fails …

Continue reading “I Don’t Know How to Put This: How to Give Constructive Criticism (With Examples!)”

It’s easy to relish excellence when we see it. Not a few of us watch the Super Bowl just for all those creative commercials that reel us in, inspire us and make us laugh. Or we might have made a memorable trip to an iconic building that captures the soul of a city, such as …

Continue reading “How to Give a Project Liftoff With a Creative Brief”

Social media places every organization in a never-ending performance on a global stage. There’s always multitudes of people browsing your announcements as they scroll feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And when you least expect it, a customer calls you out in a busy public forum, either to celebrate or criticize you. Under this spotlight …

Continue reading “In Search of Greener Pastures: The Best Alternatives to Hootsuite. Plus Three Social Media Hacks from Your Favorite Experts You Can’t Afford to Miss!”

At one time or another, everyone has paid the price for a deficiency in emotional intelligence. Maybe it’s ongoing conflicts in the workplace that lead to low performance and failed projects, or a leader whose communication patterns leave people feeling undervalued and discouraged. On the other hand, some leaders have the capacity to leave a …

Continue reading “How to Create an Emotionally Intelligent Workplace: With Examples”

Back in grade school, did you ever have a class where you aced every test and answered all the questions right, and then the following year, you had a teacher and a classroom where everyone else seemed to understand what was going on, but you didn’t have a clue? Or have you ever seen a …

Continue reading “Structure Matters: How to Design an Effective Team for Your Organization”

It’s not uncommon for a project sponsor to hand over the reins to a project manager and become occupied in other matters, then only chime in at the end when presented with a bill. Yet, it’s nearly impossible for a project manager to deliver value when crucial people like the stakeholders and sponsors aren’t interested …

Continue reading “Project Governance: A Framework for Success”

Do you ever spend an entire morning doing something completely pointless, like cleaning up dog food spilled across the kitchen floor? And then, when you leave for work, nothing is accomplished. You haven’t worked out, checked emails, or even had breakfast. If this is one isolated episode, that’s one thing. But sometimes entire days proceed …

Continue reading “How to Work Smart (Not Hard) With a Priority Matrix”

Did you ever read the Ukrainian folktale about the boy who drops his knitted mitten in the snowy woods? One creature after another climbs into it for warmth; a mole, an owl, a bear and a mouse; stretching the seams until finally it bursts, leaving the animals exposed in the snow. It’s easy for an …

Continue reading “The Benefits of Smart Capacity Planning, and the Tools to Get You There!”

A project may look straightforward enough at the very beginning. Until you start asking questions. Maybe initially the client asks you to build a widget, and says that it needs to be green. Ok, you think, clear enough. But then in the second and third rounds of discussions, you begin to see the bigger picture. …

Continue reading “A Business Requirement Document: The Secret Ingredient to Every Successful Project”

Sometimes in a project, the budget drips out like a leaky faucet, in steady, predictable amounts. At other times, the pace of the budget is more like a roller coaster. There are long stretches where almost nothing is spent, followed by short, fast intervals that consume huge portions of the budget in one go. Understanding …

Continue reading “​​Cost Breakdown Structure: The Backbone to Budgeting in Project Management”

Losing great people is the worst. Everything you’d become accustomed to, all their quality work, is gone in an instant. Poof. And finding a replacement can be such a slog. It so easily becomes a process full of money thrown at ads that reach unqualified candidates, job profiles that reveal nothing about grit or EQ, …

Continue reading “Are You Letting the Big Fish Get Away? The 12 Best Job Posting Sites for Scouting Talent…Plus 9 Backdoor Tips to Writing a Job Description that Nails It”

Have you ever had a client whose head is in the clouds? Maybe she wants a new porch, a hot tub and a brand new kitchen, all in under a few weeks. Or has a client ever come to you in the middle of a complex project, asking you to speed things up and complete …

Continue reading “Resource Scheduling Methods, Guidelines & Strategies that Every Project Manager Needs to Know!”

Project planning is a long process. Even after huge milestones are met, things are usually still in a tangle. Getting everything firmly into place requires several more yanks with a fine tooth comb. Gathering all the requirements and then defining the project’s scope is a significant threshold, for sure. Yet, during the process of allocating …

Continue reading “Project Best Practices: How to Use Smoothing in Resource Management”

Have you ever set your mind to complete a DIY home remodel, and the very next day you started ripping out tiles and pulling up carpeting? When you’re really excited about an undertaking, the inclination to dive right in is almost irresistible. Yet, when a project executes before outlining the budget, the requirements and the …

Continue reading “Hopping From Lily-pad to Lily-pad: Managing a Project End-to-End”

Most of us learn about scope creep and gold plating the hard way. Maybe it’s a home remodel, and the project manager agrees to “just” add another sconce in the bathroom, which leads to a costly electrical repair and fifteen hours of work. Or an enthusiastic developer builds a close relationship with the client, and …

Continue reading “How to Avoid Scope Creep and Gold Plating in Project Management”

Do you know what happens when a homeowner removes a load bearing wall? The impact isn’t pretty. Walls crack, floors sag, doors won’t close, and in some cases the entire house buckles and falls to the ground. It’s the very same thing when a key employee suddenly resigns. Maybe it’s a virtual assistant who knew …

Continue reading “How to Keep Your Bearings When a Valued Employee Suddenly Quits”

As too many project managers have learned, the “just” request is the kiss of death. “Can you just do me a quick favor?” “Can you just make a small change here?” Because no request is ever “just.” You agree to change the font on a webpage or retouch some trim on a remodel and next, …

Continue reading “Coloring Inside the Lines: Scope Management in Project Planning”

What if you were hired for a job, and it turned out the workload varied wildly from week to week. One week, you might have to put in 70 hours of hard, manual labor. Then next week, you’d mostly stand around and do nothing. In the following week, you’d be back to working 70 hours …

Continue reading “Everything You Need to Know About Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing”

Have you ever sat through a company goal-setting session and come out feeling less motivated that you did going in? Maybe you came up with a list of personal goals that looked something like this: Network more. Be a better communicator. Stop going over budget all the time. When you shared the goals, everyone approved. …

Continue reading “How to Create Opportunities and Drive Results: 8 Examples of SMART Goals for Project Managers”

Have you ever promised someone you’ll meet them for dinner at 7:00, and a little voice inside your head knows it’ll be a close call? Suppose it’s a Saturday, and you have a pile of errands to run: change the oil, get gas, buy groceries, drop your coat at the dry cleaner, turn in library …

Continue reading “Sick and Tired of Missing Deadlines? How to Use the Monte Carlo Analysis in Project Management”

Have you ever dined at a cafe with mouthwatering dishes and lines out the door, then a week later returned to locked doors and a “For Lease” sign on the window? It’s a puzzling phenomenon. How could a business with a terrific product possibly fail? It’s sometimes the way of things that a business presents …

Continue reading “What is the Purpose of a Trial Balance in the Accounting Cycle?”

It’s a well-known fact of any workplace: when managers don’t manage, some people quit, others are fired, company culture declines and output plummets. We’ve all done our fair share of venting over second-rate managers at the dinner table. The complaints all go something like this: “I can’t work with her breathing down my neck,” “I’m …

Continue reading “The Best Books for New Managers (That You Don’t Want to Miss Out On)”

Have you ever hit snooze so many times in the morning that you had to skip the normal routine of taking the bus to work, and order a Lyft instead? Maybe to save additional time, you ditched the breakfast plan to have hot oatmeal, and rather ate a breakfast bar on the way to work. …

Continue reading “Wanna Really Make Things Cruise? How to Use Crashing and Fast Tracking in Project Management”

Have you and your spouse ever purchased groceries without communicating with one another, and each of you ended up buying a gallon of milk? Supposing you have a large kitchen with two refrigerators, you may not even realize this double purchase. The result is a whole lot of wasted milk. This example represents the sort …

Continue reading “All You Need to Know About Procurement: Strategies, Issues & Documents”

Have you ever gone to your favorite diner, expecting your usual bacon, eggs, toast and coffee, and the same friendly banter with your favorite waiter, only to discover that they’d changed the menu and she’d up and quit? This kind of upset is enough to throw off your entire day. We’re creatures of habit, and …

Continue reading “Wheedling the Mules & Winning Buy-in: Change Management in Project Planning”

Do you ever decide to take a trip, and suddenly find yourself thinking through every detail, right down to where you’re going to eat meals and what toiletries to pack in your suitcase? It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves sometimes. As the Birds sang in their #1 Hit back in 1965, “to everything there …

Continue reading “Learning to Roll with It: Wave Planning in Project Management”

Don’t you sometimes wonder what your employees say over happy hour, after they’ve left the office and let their hair down? Do they brag and name drop about “their” company, or rather talk about “those people” they work with, and discuss the workday like it’s a painful slog? These casual comments have significant implications. They …

Continue reading “Eye-Opening Books for Building a Team with Dynamism”

Every project manager knows that “things” are going to happen, regardless. A project consists of many moving parts. It’s about building something new, or establishing a new process, and operates within the constraints of time, money, and resources. Plus, it requires coordinating a checkerboard of activities. And so snafus, unforeseen occurrences, problems, issues, and even …

Continue reading “Issues vs Risks in Project Management: A Breakdown and Analysis”

Have you ever had clients who fret and fuss over every detail? Just so you can sleep at night, you probably find yourself tending to their every need. Or have you ever dealt with the fallout of a disappointed client? None of this is ever any fun. In order to avoid these scenarios, every seasoned …

Continue reading “The Pitfalls of Trying to Hard: Gold Plating in Project Management”

How many different emotions would you say you experience on a given day? And do you make a distinction between feeling happy and feeling joyful? What about reading other people: Can you tell by the twitch in someone’s eye whether she’s annoyed or surprised? And can you detect the glimmer that communicates enthusiasm? For most …

Continue reading “Who Else Wants a High EQ? The Best Books on Emotional Intelligence”

Have you ever worked on a project that was way behind schedule, way over budget, and ultimately resulted in a mediocre product? If so, you’re definitely not the only one. Many frustrated managers have scrutinized fizzled projects, and conclude they’re often a symptom of a broken methodology. And they’ve worked to develop new and improved …

Continue reading “Quick and Easy Definitions of Agile, Scrum & Sprints”

In the journey of your career, you may have come upon a crossroads. When you look down your current employment path, you see it continue all the way to the horizon. There’s no bumps, no guesswork. It’s paved and smooth, and it bores you. A pivot in another direction reveals something else entirely. Maybe striking …

Continue reading “Time to Get Scrappy: The 13 Best Books for Bold Entrepreneurs Like You”

It’s easy to be cynical when you pick up a book on productivity. As you flip through it, you may come across puzzling concepts like “finding the weakest link,” “going agile” and “incorporating the principles of lean.” Or else it’s full of the same old self-help mumbo jumbo about “discovering your why,” and “being present …

Continue reading “Losing Your Competitive Edge? Here Are the Best Books to Read on Increasing Your Focus, Organization & Productivity”

Have you ever been called an “asset” or a “commodity” by human resources during an onboarding session? Surely, they lost you at hello. Once employees figure out the organization sees them as “just a number” (right alongside equipment and other assets on the balance sheet), they start to behave like one. They deliver a perfunctory …

Continue reading “How to Build a Team With Dedication: The Five Best Books on Employee Engagement”

Do you know that “time” is the most commonly used word in the English language? It makes sense. Every time we converse, make plans, or look over our day, our questions revolve around time. Do you have the time? How long will this take? Are you running late? Do you have a minute? The biggest …

Continue reading “Getting Time on Your Side: The Best Books on Time Management”

Do you ever find a product that’s exactly what you’re looking for? Maybe it’s a coat with pockets in all the right places, manufactured in a fashionable shade of blue, or an office chair that supports your back just right, allowing you to focus on your work for hours. How was it made so perfectly, …

Continue reading “Discover What You Don’t Know: The Best Books for New & Experienced Product Managers”

On any day of the week, most of us find ourselves saying things like, “He drives a hard bargain,” “She didn’t give me an inch” and “He’s a real pushover.” Yet while negotiation is a part of our everyday lives, for many it’s still shrouded in mystery. We don’t understand how people we know always …

Continue reading “Wanna Know When to Hold and When to Fold? Here’s Your Guide to the Best Books on Negotiation”

Way back in the 90s, political analyst James Carville liked to throw around the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” It so encapsulated the political climate, he believed, that he made it a cornerstone of Bill Clinton’s presidential platform. Anyone who’s earned his or her stripes rallying a team to align around a mission or a …

Continue reading “Want to Build a Company You Crave? Here Are the Best Books on Workplace Culture”

It’s so exciting to win a big project. You’re as pleased as punch that the client has picked you to be the project manager, and the team is full of positive anticipated outcomes. However, as you look around the office, you may see outdated systems, software that’s full of glitches or a culture that values …

Continue reading “Who Else Wants Results? The Rich Reward of Outcome-Based Project Management”

We’ve all watched the media cover natural disasters. Whether it’s a flood, a severe storm, or a hurricane blowing in from the coast, the coverage always includes an image of a pundit standing under an umbrella and holding a microphone to her face as gusts of wind tousle her styled hair. Then the camera cuts …

Continue reading “Adios W-2, Hello 1099: How Contingent Employees Are Changing the Workforce”

Software releases are seeped with dramatic tension. After slogging away over several development sprints, the agile team passes the beta test or completed software on for presentation. How will it be received? Will the team’s hard work end in tragedy, with glitches and malfunctions galore, or in rousing success, with an evening of hearty pats …

Continue reading “5 Tips for a Top-Notch Agile Release”

You’ve probably heard the expression that “the best things in life aren’t things at all.” Some of our favorite things, such as nights out at the movies, evening walks in the snow and road trips to national parks, wouldn’t mean a whole lot if they didn’t include “things” like laughter, connection, friendship and love. What …

Continue reading “Catching a Cloud, Pinning it Down: How to Capture Non Functional Requirements in Agile”

Do you have a fabulous idea for an app, but find yourself overwhelmed thinking about putting all the pieces together? Or maybe your company’s blog is hopelessly outdated, and not converting leads, yet all the alternatives seem too complicated to take on. Everyone becomes flummoxed by technology at times. There’s so many options, and constant …

Continue reading “How to Choose the Best Tech Stack (Even if You Don’t Know What That Is)”

Nobody likes working with Captain No-No. It’s so disheartening to present a brilliant product or service idea at an all-hands meeting, only to have a cautious manager tear it down with a speech about compliance and regulations. Yet any compliance specialist or CEO who appreciates the risks of non-compliance is willing to put up with …

Continue reading “Better Safe Than Sorry? The Double-Edged Sword of Compliance Management”

We’ve all read a three-star Google review that goes something like: “Great product, once it finally arrived. And the website is a mess. Took me forever to place the order.” For any type of business, building a great product is a significant milestone. It can take years. Yet even when the product or service has …

Continue reading “Double Your Income With a Workflow Audit”

Isn’t is a thrill when you land a big project with a new client? You run to the refrigerator, pop a bottle of champagne, and spend the rest of the evening soaking in the bliss of sheer success. But before long, the project is complete. All the final deliverables are sent. You and the client …

Continue reading “Are You Leaving Money on the Table? 25 Powerful Strategies to Wow Your Clients and Keep Them Coming Back for More”

Have you ever written someone a letter and then it sat on your desk for a week because you didn’t get around to finding a stamp and putting it in the mailbox? It’s so easy to mentally check something off as “done” before it’s “done done.” Yet the intended purpose of something like a letter …

Continue reading “How to Define Deliverables in Project Management (With Examples)”

Have you ever had a requirement that was so vague it almost seemed pointless? And the team had to do all sorts of work trying to figure out what it meant. At other times, though, a requirement is so lengthy and specific it’s like reading a textbook. When gathering requirements is done well, it leads …

Continue reading “Guaranteed Requirements Gathering Techniques for Agile Teams”

Have you ever had one of those days where you had around ten hours of work to do, and only four hours in which to do it? Even if you wear yourself out by going into speed-mo, there’s seemingly no way to get it all done. At times like these, it’s easy to just throw …

Continue reading “Time Saving Secrets: How to Use the Laddering Technique in Project Management (With Examples)”

You know the game of telephone you would play as a child, when everyone would whisper a message in the ear of another, until the original message sounded like gibberish? It’s easy for a similar phenomenon to occur within an organization. The CEO and VPs may announce a new plan to senior management, who in …

Continue reading “Getting a Leg Up: Mastering the Craft of Skip Level Meetings”

Don’t you love those movie montages where everyone’s working together toward a big goal? Like in The Three Amigos, when the entire town of San Poco prepares to defend themselves against the arrival of the murderous villain, El Guapo. Even the elderly women come out, sewing suits to disguise themselves as Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, …

Continue reading “Swarming: The Secret Life of Agile Teams”

Have you ever started something that should have taken thirty minutes and it ended up taking forever? Maybe you went into the kitchen to make dinner, and it was three and a half hours later before you finally sat down to eat. When we don’t take time to plan a project, it may well end …

Continue reading “A Lean Approach to Project Management”

Have you ever tried to fix something and found your efforts didn’t do any good at all? Maybe you tried to remove a stain from a carpet, but it only made it worse, or fixed a cupboard in your home, only to have your kids break it again the next day. Sometimes we don’t fix …

Continue reading “Is Scrumban Really Scrum 2.0?”

Have you ever laid out a precise plan for a big project, only to have everything fall apart? Maybe weather threw the timeline off, or resources didn’t arrive in time. Or a critical team member suddenly left. And all your careful plans came to naught. Or else, as it sometimes happens, a team completes a …

Continue reading “A Complete Summary of the Roles and Responsibilities of a Scrum Team”

Isn’t it a thrill to be promoted or assigned to lead a new project? You know you’ve achieved a real milestone when your hard work is recognized and your organization decides you’re ready to lead a team. But then it can be a real struggle getting settled into the new position. Advancing along the leadership …

Continue reading “How Managers Become Leaders: 18 Strategies to Move Up the Chain of Command”

Did you hear what Spanx founder Sara Blakely gave her employees after the company signed a big partnership deal? Every employee received a ticket for two to anywhere in the word…and $10,000 to spend while they were there! Wowzers! THAT sure gave her employees something to be happy about. But that’s easy enough for her, …

Continue reading “7 Secrets to Keeping Employees Happy”

Do you set New Year’s resolutions? Life feels like a clean slate on January 1st, and it’s so exhilarating to pursue something you’ve always wanted. Maybe it’s to lose weight, develop a new skill or finally get out of a dead end job. But then, it’s so often the case that once the Superbowl party …

Continue reading “How to See the Forest and the Trees: Setting Short Term and Long Term Goals”

Have you ever tried to make dinner for people with two very different tastes? That’s a delicate tightrope to walk. Managing costs on an agile team can feel similar. Between the team and the leadership, it’s like you’re trying to appeal to two very different palates. First there’s the preferences of leadership (and accounting). Particularly …

Continue reading “Effective Ways to Manage Cost in Agile Project Management”

For many of us, the commute to work used to take at least an hour, and we’d either be navigating traffic or train schedules to and fro. Nowadays, for many, the morning commute takes less than ten seconds, as it means walking from the bedroom into the home office. And back in the day, people …

Continue reading “From the Gig Economy to the Hybrid Model: Shifting Priorities in the Workplace”

In the bestselling book The Goal, author Eliyahu M. Goldratt works as a manager for a chaotic production plant that’s drowning in work-in-process inventory and chronically misses shipping deadlines. He seeks the advice of an old friend, Jonah, who counsels using the Socratic method, focusing on the simple question: “What is the goal of your …

Continue reading “How Workplaces Scale and Adapt Using Strategic Agility”

The objective of any project is to successfully deliver a product within the given scope, budget, and timeline. Quality is a central component as well. While working within these constraints, every project manager aims to meet, or even exceed, the client’s expectations. To some, the agile method of project management looks like chaos, and spells …

Continue reading “Surefire Ways to Ensure Quality in Agile Projects”

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ~ Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of …

Continue reading “Why Are Secondments Important? Some Key Advantages and Disadvantages”

When you’re mapping out a project, do you ever find yourself getting caught in a web of “shoulds” and “musts”? “We should let the team work independently, but we must let key stakeholders oversee and gauge progress.” “We must stay within budget, but we should allow for the flexibility to adjust and tweak the deliverable.” …

Continue reading “Crossing a Gantt Chart With a Kanban Board: Agile-Waterfall Hybrid in Project Management”

Do you ever go through periods at work that feel like a constant game of whack-a-mole? Just when everyone swarms to solve one problem, a new one surfaces, and you never get a chance to clear your head and get anything in order. Proactive problem management is about rooting out some of these “work surprises,” …

Continue reading “The Undeniable Benefits of Proactive Problem Management”

In the Greek myth “Sisyphus,” the crafty and power-hungry Sisyphus tries to cheat death and life forever. In retaliation, Zeus curses him with the punishment of eternally pushing an immense boulder to the top of a hill, only to have it roll all the way back to the bottom, where he resumes the exhausting task …

Continue reading “10 Strategies to Overcome Resistance to Change in an Organization”

Did you ever get your car repaired, and it ended up taking WAY longer than the person on the phone told you it would? What’s to account for this sort of inaccuracy? Sometimes the job is too huge and complicated to make an accurate estimate. Or else, the person making the estimate isn’t the same …

Continue reading “Mapping Out the Daily Grind: Iteration Planning in Agile”

Did you ever watch The Patty Duke Show from the 1960s? It was a sitcom that followed the misadventures of cousins Patty and Cathy Lane, both played by Duke, living together in Brooklyn Heights. “They laugh alike, they walk alike, sometimes they even talk alike,” the intro song sings of the duo. “But they’re cousins, …

Continue reading “What is the Difference Between a Project Manager and a Product Manager, Really?”

Do you keep an umbrella in the back seat of your car? That is such an awesome fix for those times when you pull into a parking lot just as it starts to pour. But an umbrella certainly doesn’t stop rain from falling (if only!). It simply lessens its impact on you. We face risks …

Continue reading “A Stitch in Time: How to Use Mitigating Controls in Project Planning”

Do you look forward to football season like a lot of people do? There’s nothing quite like a lazy Sunday afternoon, where everyone is sitting in a cozy armchair or lounging on the couch with a beer in hand, and there’s a half-eaten pizza on the table. Between gossiping about friends and chatting about the …

Continue reading “How to Handle Criticism at Work Like a Professional”

Have you ever planned a car trip? Sometimes when you finally get out on the road, everything works like clockwork: the highways are empty and the sun is shining the whole time. However, on other occasions, all the hotels are booked, or you hit inclement weather that delays the trip for days. Planning a project …

Continue reading “The Craft of Smart Planning: How to Handle Defects in Scrum”

If a genie granted you one wish, what would you ask for? To retire at 40? A second home in Hawaii? What if he granted you three wishes? Since this is just fantasy, let’s go ahead and dream really big…..imagine you had ten! Chances are, with ten wishes, you’d be tied up in knots, flummoxed, …

Continue reading “How to Use the MoSCoW Prioritization Method in Agile Project Management”

“Pst! He isn’t paying his child support!” “Pst! Did you hear what happened last week? This project’s getting scrapped.” “Pst! They’ve been together a lot lately. That can only mean one thing…” Wink, wink. It’s easy to spot workplace gossip. People speaking in hushed tones at the end of the hallway, or ending conversations abruptly …

Continue reading “The Truth About Trash Talk: How to Deal With Gossip in the Workplace”

Charting a course for a distributed agile team is no small feat. Practicing agile fundamentals like face-to-face communication is totally outside the realm of possibility. And it’s pretty tough for teams to feel cohesive when most people haven’t even met one another. Any sense of “team” easily breaks down when everyone works from separate locations. …

Continue reading “7 Common Challenges Faced by Distributed Agile Teams…With Solutions to Boot!”

Do you find project management to be a master juggling act? Whether you’re working through team issues, assuaging a client, resisting scope creep or encountering the unexpected, there’s always something coming at you. With so many balls in the air, you’ve probably more than once wished you had a third arm! The good news is, …

Continue reading “10 Powerful Hacks for Handling Project Management Challenges”

Are you new to agile? Just learning the ropes? There’s a whole lot of lingo, huh? Yep, with its own ceremonies, frameworks, artifacts, and even a Manifesto, agile certainly is a world of its own. For someone unfamiliar to the terminology, listening to people throw around phrases like failing-fast, kanban boards, mental agility, and scrum …

Continue reading “Who Wants to Improve Their Agile Fluency? 45 Important Terms Every Team Should Know”

Have you ever been out driving on a winter morning, when the fog is so thick you can barely see a few feet in front of you? Just to keep from veering off the road, you have to crawl along at ten miles an hour. The funny thing about fog, however, is that even while …

Continue reading “Mastering the Art of Prognostication: How to Value a Startup With No Revenue”

Do you have those friends who can’t seem to go anywhere without complaining? They’re aghast by the sauciness of a waitress, the carelessness of a driver, the incompetence of the lady at the salon. And they’re always receiving freebies and coupons on account of the treatment they’ve had to endure. But let’s be honest. It …

Continue reading “In a Tangle? How to Be the Solution, Not the Problem”

Bees are busy, hard working creatures. They’ll travel up to four miles from their hive, and pollinate as many as 5,000 flowers each day! And the fruit of their labor is sweet indeed. But their team structure, let’s face it, is kinda weak. The entire hive is dependent on that one queen. If she flies …

Continue reading “The Secrets of High Performing Scrum Teams”

Do you remember those ball cages they used to have on the playgrounds at fast food franchises? You’d jump into a pool of colorful plastic balls, then sink helplessly until nothing but your arms and legs showed above the surface. Navigating conflicting priorities feels a little like one of those pools. It’s a sinking sensation, …

Continue reading “When it’s All on the Front Burner: How to Deal With Conflicting Priorities”

If you’re taking a trip and you know the destination, packing is pretty simple. A tropical location means you’ll bring shorts, a swimsuit and sandals. Whereas traveling to a wintery climate means you’ll be sure to bring boots and a heavy coat. But what about packing for a trip when the destination is unclear? And …

Continue reading “Going Agile? 8 Tips for a Successful Transformation (And 4 Pitfalls to Look Out For)”

Yes, we get it—you’re not lazy…You’re just phlegmatically innovative! It’s just like when I had a long stick beneath the bed to turn off the light so as to not have to stand up. Or maybe it was just me? Anyway, being a couch potato won’t make you the lean, mean, and productive working machine …

Continue reading “How to be Productive: The Ultimate Daily Checklist”

We’ve all known those people who manage to maintain strong bonds with pretty much every person they’ve met since kindergarten. Every time they turn around, they’re shaking hands with an old friend, and each year they send out a stack of Christmas cards that’s over two feet high. It isn’t hard to imagine that amassing …

Continue reading “Making Ties that Bind: The Professional Guide to Onboarding and Offboarding”

The corporate world will tell you that it’s a real hassle to manage project deadlines. Ah, the ever-persistent struggle of trying to meet a professional due date, we’ve all been there. And yet, with no deadline in sight, there would be no feeling of pressure, focus, or desire to put things into motion. It is …

Continue reading “How to Manage Project Deadlines & Never Miss a Due Date Again”

Have you heard the saying that a fish doesn’t know water until he’s out of the fishbowl? The same idea is true of company culture. Each company has so many unspoken rules about how everyone behaves and works together, and they’re not even aware of what they all are! This can easily leave a leader …

Continue reading “Exposed! Eight Secrets to Creating a Culture of Collaboration”

When she first met him, Alice was enrapt with the Mad Hatter. Perpetually trapped at six pm, he swept her off her feet, dancing away with his unbirthday celebration. Eventually, however, his deluge of senseless poetry and riddles drove her away. A manager with an overbearing fixation on time has a similar effect on employees. …

Continue reading “It’s a Matter of Time: How to Get Employees to Track Hours”

Have you ever had the experience of turning your back on a toddler, and in the space of thirty seconds, they’d managed to dump out an entire bag of flour, or spill a gallon of milk across the floor? After one episode like this, you learn to watch them like a hawk. It’s easy to …

Continue reading “How an Agile Coach Creates a Killer Team”

You know that wiggly inflatable guy who floats above car dealerships? One moment, he’s straight as an arrow, then when the wind shifts a moment later, he collapses in half. Then he’s back up again. And he’s smiling the whole time, as though he really enjoys the wild, jerky ride. Flexibility is central to agile …

Continue reading “How To Make a Project Buzz: 7 Qualities of A Good Agile Team”

There are consequences to being a feckless leader. Poseidon thought Cassiopeia was an out of touch manager, so he banished her to live forever among the stars. Plus, teams without strong dynamics leave employees feeling isolated and disconnected. Work performance suffers. Yet, as any manager knows, inspiring a team is no cinch. Do you realize …

Continue reading “7 Valuable Methods to Improve Group Dynamics”

Do you remember the last time you were stuck in an airport for several hours? After browsing gift shops and drinking an overpriced beer, listlessness takes over. At this point, most of us find a place to put up our feet, put on some headphones, and people-watch. Or we curl up in a corner to …

Continue reading “How to Get Unstuck: 15 Eye-Opening Ways to Transform and Move On”

Did you ever see the bumper sticker that read, “Warning: Dates in calendar are closer than they appear?” Time has a way of whirring past us. And unless we find a way to maneuver through the days and weeks, deadlines creep up out of our blind spot, and we’re completely unaware. Effectively managing time has …

Continue reading “12 Powerful Time Management Tips & Tricks for Every Style”

Remember that green face your mom would stick onto all her cleaning bottles when you were a kid? The guy had his eyebrows furrowed and tongue sticking out, like maybe he’d just swallowed a bottle of turpentine. Working in a toxic culture begets a similar sort of nausea. A community that thrives on drama, infighting, …

Continue reading “When You Know Something’s Off: How to Spot and Fix a Toxic Work Culture”

Mercedes never mentally left her job. The hamster wheel in her head spun around comments from coworkers, things she’d done wrong, and interactions with difficult clients. Her life away from work had devolved into social media deep dives, video games and sleeping. By 4 pm on an average day in the office, Lucas had been …

Continue reading “Had Enough at Work? 13 Reliable Ways to Tackle Overwhelm on the Job”

Did it ever strike you as curious that Dorothy got along so well with a heartless Tin Man? Right from the start, she was enrapt—oiling him, fixing him up, attending to him. You’d almost think she was in character, putting on an act. Come to think of it, it’s just as unlikely that a lion …

Continue reading “25 Virtual and In-Person Rapport Activities to Build a Team With Moxie”

Guests wait up to three months for an available table at Canlis Restaurant in Seattle. Their four-course meal is served at tables that sit alongside floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Union and the Cascade Mountain Range. On any given night, the parking valet welcomes two hundred guests to dine. Without fail, he remembers each and every …

Continue reading “When Morale is in Tailspin, Transparent Leadership Really Turns the Tide”

Are you ready to turn over a new leaf? Does the grass look greener in the world of self-employment? Starting your own landscaping business offers an undeniable perk: the opportunity to spend your days in the great outdoors. Not to mention setting your own schedule and being your own boss! Not all of us are …

Continue reading “Striking Pay Dirt With a Landscaping Business”

Goal setting is exhilarating. Reaching for that north star and claiming our dreams generates optimism and uplifts our spirits. But as for making prudent goals, and then achieving them—that’s a harder nut to crack. In order to really reach for the sky, goal planning and execution require deliberate strategy. Many goals suffer from the Goldilocks …

Continue reading “Setting Goals? How to Avoid Pitfalls and Achieve Your Objectives”

It’s easy to wonder how successful and wealthy people thrive and stay on top of their games. It’s not uncommon to hear that successful personalities like Oprah Winfrey credit their productivity to having the best morning routine. By taking advantage of their mornings, they gain control of their lives. You wonder and then wander into …

Continue reading “The Secrets of the Successful: The Best Morning Routine to Effect a Fruitful Day”

@teamly For additional information on this topic, feel free to check out this Youtube video from our channel. Now, onto the main content… Congratulations on landing your new job! Starting a new job marks an exciting period in anyone’s career. It also comes with much curiosity and uneasiness. You’re probably wondering what to expect, and …

Continue reading “Starting a New Job? 9 Expert Tips to Guarantee Success”

Working for yourself has a lot of allure. Setting your own schedule means you can start the day at 10 am without worrying about a punitive boss, or, on a whim, shut down the computer and hit the fairway for the afternoon. Right? Well, for many, unfortunately, this isn’t exactly the case. The to-do list …

Continue reading “How a Virtual Assistant From the Philippines Gives You the Lifestyle You Crave”

Online meetings have become a part of the way we live. And while all of the standard protocol for meetings (agenda, minutes, follow up) remains the same, this transition from in-person to virtual has introduced a whole new playbook. What is the protocol of this new realm? In both our personal and professional lives, most …

Continue reading “The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Meetings”

@teamly For additional information on this topic, feel free to check out this Youtube video from our channel. Now, onto the main content… We have all been to those unproductive, time-suck meetings where the most important thing isn’t even covered. Or meetings that are irrelevant for half the people in attendance. Time spent at a …

Continue reading “Who Else Wants to Create an Effective Meeting Agenda?”

What would you most like to change about your desk? Does it take fifteen minutes to just clear it off before you can get down to work? Or do you have a “desk” that functions more like a pretty piece of furniture, and all your work gets done at the kitchen table? For many, the …

Continue reading “20 Desk Organization Ideas to Keep You Ahead of the Game”

Have you ever shown up to a potluck with a liter of soda and a bag of chips, then helped yourself to a plateful of baby back ribs? Or participated in a book group discussion without having read the book? If we’re honest, we do things like this every day. These are examples of a …

Continue reading “Tired of Slackers at Work? The Secrets Behind Social Loafing: and What to Do About it”

Renew license plate tabs, schedule dentist appointment, empty inbox, go to gym, call air-conditioner repair, purchase light bulbs: if you’re like everybody else, your daily to-do list includes at least one or two pesky tasks you’d just as soon save for tomorrow. The problem is, when we delay these things, the issue compounds. And we …

Continue reading “It’s Crunch Time: How Eating the Frog Cures the Loafer in Us All”