No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, especially as a project manager.  Who wants to deal with the hassle of frustrated employees, realigning expectations, and keeping morale up?  But when bad news rears its ugly head, you should let the team know as soon as possible.  Here’s why: You can readjust project […]

Have you ever noticed that some tasks on your list just don’t get done.  They linger on…days, weeks, months…and you keep thinking, “I should do that.”  But inevitably, other things crop up, the day gets hectic, and the task lingers for another day. There are two ways to approach these tasks: Get ‘er done!  These […]

If you’ve never been a decision maker for a project or team, you might think the decision makers always have all the information.  I’m here to tell you it just isn’t true.  First, taking the time to gather “all” the information necessary to make a nuanced decision would take way more time than you have, […]

Hey, project managers, does this sound like you? Snickers aside, there was some accurate stuff in there. Some of it revealed frustration from a project manager’s point of view (changing deliverables, hard to wrangle team members). Some of it showed how frustrating it can be to work with a project manager (condescending tone, not listening […]

I’ve recently become addicted to an iPhone/iPad game called Tiny Tower.  In this quick-fix game, your goal is to manage a tower of residents and shops such that you can build and build upwards into a huge tower.  There’s no winning scenario – literally the sky’s the limit, as long as you keep stocking your […]

It’s worth stating the obvious: you can’t please everyone. This is especially true in project management, where stakeholders have different agendas: Company Executives want to make as much money in the shortest amount of time possible. Clients want the largest amount of features at the lowest cost in the shortest amount of time. Motivated Team […]

Since I’ve been writing about performance evaluations lately, it’s good to cover the subject of weaknesses.  It should be obvious that we all have some weaker areas in our professional lives.  If you don’t think you have one and you’re generally not a person who’s quoted every other minute for being an expert in your […]

You might have noticed a short blogging hiatus here on the Fellowstream blog.  That’s because my husband and I just had our first baby last month.  Meet Eleanor, our beautiful bundle of joy: Obviously, she’s a keeper.

I’ve worked on a lot of software projects, both online and in the gaming world, as a project manager.  “Project manager” is one of those vague-sounding jobs that a lot of people don’t understand.  I could go on and on about how a project manager is about delivering a quality product within a determined timeframe, […]