You would be hard pressed to find someone that has never heard the term best practice before. Despite most people being aware of the term, it is rather surprising how just about everyone you ask will give you a slightly different definition of what a best practice actually is. Is it quite simply the most efficient way to do something? Is a best practice the fastest way to do something? Or is it just the most logical way to do something? This question was posed to our class earlier today, asking us to define what makes for a best practice. Many students responded, and the terms efficient and fast were thrown around quite a bit. However, as we found out, there is more to a best practice than just that.

Have you ever considered what makes for a good leader? Is it their ability to give inspiring speeches, or to simply have a chiseled jaw, a fine suit, and piles of money? Believe it or not, those are not genuine terms to describe truly good leaders, and today we experienced a unique presentation from Kevin Ciccotti to outline the five attributes that make for exceptional project managers.

As a student that is passionate enough about communication to major in it, I see a lot of parallels in project management that makes proper communication a necessity for success. Despite the largely acknowledged importance of communication, many projects still fail due to bad communication. As a project manager, what can you do to address this before it becomes an issue in your projects?

If you have spent time with enough good project managers, there is a good chance that you have heard of the 7 Ps. Starting as a British Army adage (according to Wikipedia), the 7 Ps stand for: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This adage is often used in project management as well, and can easily explain why so many projects fail. The ultimate goal to success, then, is to create a solid project Master Plan!

Wait, does that say stakeholder and not steakholder? I must be getting hungry. Here we are on week four of our project management class, and I am starting to really identify the key components of successful project management. One key component that comes up quite a bit is the notion of a stakeholder. There is a good chance you are a stakeholder in a multitude of projects and did not even know it. What made you this way, and how do you identify key stakeholders in your projects?

These three terms can not be used interchangeably. This is something that had you asked me a week ago, I likely would have been oblivious to. How does a project differ from a program? Is Project Management the same as Portfolio Management? All of these questions plus more were answered in today's class.