Michael Kowlowitz

The following three principles lay out the steps you should be following, to make sure that your projects are completed on time, and on budget, successfully. 1) Communicate Forty-percent of project managers cited poor communication as the leading cause if IT project failures. If everyone involved in your IT project doesn't know what they're working on, when it's due, how to get itdone and who the audience is, how can you possibly expect your project to succeed? All of the other principles that come later on rely on your communication, expectations, goals, resources, deadlines, priorities, reports and budgets all need to be available to your team so that they can do their jobs properly. Yes, communicating all of these things can sometimes be difficult, particularly if it's a short project with a tight deadline, or half of your team is located overseas. It doesn't ma... (more)

Five FAQs Every Project Manager Needs to Read

Here are five frequently asked questions that every PM needs to read: 1. Why use issue tracking software over an Excel spreadsheet? There are many advantages to using Issue Tracking software over an Excel spreadsheet. For one, issue tracking software makes collaboration easy. Users do not have to worry about having the latest information or spreadsheets- the latest information is available to all users. You can also edit information concurrently, as opposed to one user at a time for a spreadsheet. Second, if you have many issues, it might be difficult to save an audit trail to kee... (more)

PMP Certification - Why All PMs Need It

One of the lesser known and highly paid credentials available is the Project Management Professional (PMP). The PMP is the standard certification for Project Management and is offered by the Project Management Institute. The Project Management Institute (PMI) is a non-profit organization who is dedicated towards advancing the project management profession on a global scale. The Project Management Institute claim that PM’s with the PMP certification earn 10% higher than their non-credentialed counterparts. While I can’t verify this fact, at the least, it let’s employers know your ... (more)