10 Places To Find Project Management Advice

Everyone needs help at some point in their careers, and even experienced project managers know that they need reliable places to go to find advice when they hit problems. So where should you start? Here are 10 sources of project management advice that you can tap into when you need some guidance.

1. Your Manager

The first place to go for advice is your manager. You should have regular one-to-one meetings with him or her and you should feel comfortable enough to ask their opinion or advice on any sort of query from how to use project software to the best ways to manage risk. Your manager will also have a wide professional network, so if they can’t help they probably know someone who can. Ask them to suggest someone who may have the expertise that you are looking for and to make an introduction for you.

2. Your Mentor

If you can’t speak to your manager (or don’t want to), then your mentor is another person you can turn to for advice. Many companies have formal and informal mentoring schemes so sign up to this if it is available. You could also look outside your company for a mentor, perhaps through your local PMI Chapter or another industry group. Mentors are another group who are likely to have good connections so if they can’t help directly they can point you in the direction of an individual or resource that can.

3. Your Peers

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a mentor, so you may find that your best option is to informally talk to some of your fellow project managers in the team and talk your problems over with them. You are likely to get a mix of opinions, which is no bad thing! You can also ask about their successes and failures and what works well in this particular company.

4. Your Project Experts

Your project team is made up of subject matter experts, so depending on the sort of problem you are facing, it’s worth discussing it with the team. They may not be able to advise on the technical aspects of managing projects but they could help with tricky project issues and they may be able to tell you whether they have hit similar issues on projects they have worked on in the past.

5. Blogs

If you’d rather not speak to anyone and find advice online, then turn to the internet for a whole range of project management blogs, many of which include loads of advice about how to run successful projects. You can search for tips that are appropriate for the issues you are facing right now on your project.

Looking for help online is often the fastest way of finding out information as there is so much available. Remember to apply some degree of critical analysis to the information that you read as not all sources are as reliable as others.

6. Corporate Lessons Learned Database

Many companies have a corporate lessons learned database that stores information about what worked and what didn’t from previous projects. These are often in the form of documents produced after a post-project review and can make really valuable reading. This is a great place to look for advice if you need some tips on how to manage a particular stakeholder group or type of project and someone in the company has done it before.

7. Wiki

Project wikis hold a lot of valuable information. If your project management office or team has a wiki then work out how to search it as you are bound to find some useful data in there. It’s also a good place to look for lessons learned or project templates. In fact, someone may already have shared the exact information that you are looking for!

8. Training Courses

The trainers who run educational courses often have a lot of experience in the field and can be very helpful people to ask if you have a specific query. Of course, the actual training material itself can be beneficial, especially if it is tailored to the sort of problem you are facing. A course specific to scheduling, for example, can often be more useful than a general project management course.

The people attending the course with you are also a good source of advice and assistance, so don’t forget to chat to them in the breaks during the training. If you meet anyone who you would like to stay in contact with, don’t be shy about sharing your details and arranging to meet up in the near future for a coffee.

9. Local PMI Chapter

Your local PMI Chapter is full of project management experts and there is bound to be someone who can help and advise you. Many Chapters have newsletters, websites or email groups so you can ask if you can post a question in one of those forums and see who comes back with something useful.

Also take a look at the event schedule – you may find that the Chapter is hosting an event on the exact topic that you are looking for help with. They will get an expert speaker in to present to the group and that can be a very valuable (and cheap) source of learning new things.

10. Online Discussion Groups

There is a lot of information available for free online and in many cases you can ask your question anonymously! 

Where else have you picked up good bits of project management advice? Let us know in the comments section below.