“Unclear project contract“, “fuzzy project goals” or just a simple “we’ve completely talked past each other” – a lot of times a project is missing an important foundation for its success from the very beginning: a clear scope specification, which functions as an essential guideline throughout the progress of the project. Client and contractor should both be clear about what they expect from each other and clearly define what they consider a successful project completion. 

It’s always important to look back and identify what went wrong, but also what went really well, which aspects you can improve and what you want to achieve next. The same goes for our blog so we compiled a list of your, our readers’, favorite posts on the InLoox blog – a little flashback, if you will. 

“Being able to look into the future” is probably on every project manager’s New Year’s wish list. [Tweet this] Unfortunately, that’s not possible. What is possible, is to look at the past and make predictions for the future. 

Photo via public domain archive

Every project has a goal or objective – but it’s not always easy to communicate these goals to the project team. Clear goals are important to motivate and energize the team and to achieve better project outcomes. On the other hand, not knowing or understanding goals will lead to confusion and ineffectiveness. 

Photo by Pixabay User Comfreak (edited)

‘Thought Leader’ is one of the buzzwords in business nowadays. What distinguishes a thought leader from a ‘normal’ leader?  Simply speaking, thought leaders are what the internet would call influencers, they are those with high Klout scores and high follower numbers on Twitter because they are experts in one specialized field. 

Photo by Pixabay User stux

When people hear ‘design’ they automatically associate it with the appearance of a product, but ‘Design Thinking’ goes much further than that. It’s not just about how the end product looks like, it focuses on the process of developing a product and places the human factor at the center. 

You will eventually have encountered the terms PMO and PO at one point, particularly in connection with bigger organizations. Most people know that it has something to do with project management and often make use them interchangeably. In this article, we will try to explain the difference between PMO and PO.

For businesses in general and project managers in particular the Gantt Chart and the Critical Path are vital tools that can make or break a project and business undertaking. This might sound exaggerated, but while they are not a magic cure-all, they can assist in keeping a project on the right track. 

Photo by plantoo47 (Flickr), Licensed under CC BY 2.0

We've all been there: We've walked out of business meetings knowing we're never going to get that time back, wondering why we were invited and what it was that we accomplished. Often, this lack of productivity in a meeting is not the result of what happened during the meeting but rather what didn't happen beforehand: meeting preparation. Planning an effective meeting is as important as conducting one. Here are seven more reasons to create meeting agendas.

A successful, motivating project start is indispensable. That’s why experienced project directors invite their team members at the beginning of the project to a kick-off meeting.

A kick-off meeting is a meeting of all relevant project members which also marks the official start of the project or of a new, important project phase. On this occasion, the team members often meet for the very first time in person. This is particularly important in virtual or distributed teams, because the team members might not meet very often during the implementation phase. 

Usually, the kick-off meeting takes place after the project planning and before the implementation phase begins.