Makeover Season Is Here! 5 Renovation Projects To Work On This Summer!

Two focuses of my blog are Home/Living Discussions and Home/Property Discussions. In addition to being the season for travel and vacationing, the summer is also primetime for home renovation projects. The following contributed post is entitled, Makeover Season Is Here! 5 Renovation Projects To Work On This Summer!

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The Covid-19 pandemic, alongside the lifestyle changes it brought, has encouraged US families to reconsider their priorities and reconfigure their lives. And, as house prices across the nation continue to increase, it isn’t surprising that renovation and remodeling projects have increased by nearly 20% just in 2022.

So, if you have always wanted to renovate your property and create a healthier and more comfortable space for your home, this might be the best time. But where to start? The five projects below are just some of the ones to consider to improve your home environment and increase its value. Let’s start.

Landscape Your Garden and Add a Deck

If you are looking to add livable square footage to your property without looking for a larger home, the first area of the house to focus on should be your garden or patio. Landscaping your garden and adding a deck or veranda are great solutions to boost livability while also creating a recreational area for your family and guests.

Whether you wish to add a firepit, swimming pool, BBQ corner, or reading nook, your home’s outside area can be transformed to support your favorite activities.

Add a Home Office or Private Fitness Studio

If you are looking for a renovation project that will increase the market value of your home as well as its livability, consider reviewing upcoming trends before deciding what to invest in. With the advent of remote working and virtual training courses, adding a home office or private fitness studio can help you improve the functionalities of your property while adding some of the most in-demand features among buyers.

Focus on the Exterior of Your House

Renovating your home’s exterior isn’t just an affordable way to boost its curb appeal, it can also increase the structural soundness of your property and the lifespan of your investments. For example, a high-quality roof can last 10-15 years – but only with property maintenance and care! In turn, some of the projects you should tick off your to-do list this summer should include roof inspection and repair, exterior painting, and driveway renovation.

Increase Your Home’s Energy Efficiency With Better Insulation

As the energy crisis continues to hold several countries in its grip, it has never been more important to invest in creating healthier, more energy-efficient, and greener homes. Of course, this is important to reduce your household’s impact on the environment, but it can also help you reduce your energy bills as energy prices continue to increase.

Some of the best ways to improve your home’s energy efficiency include:

● Installing better insulation
● Upgrading your HVAC system and air conditioning
● Investing in double- or triple-glazed windows
● Getting a new front door
● Investing in clean energy sources and renewables (i.e.: solar panels)
● Upgrading obsolete or energy-hungry equipment and appliances

Downsize!

The house you live in can have a great impact on your finances and health, and, if you have been looking to reconfigure your lifestyle, you might be looking to change home. In this case, downsizing can be a great way to reduce living costs while also living a more minimalist life. And, yes, the best time of the year to make house hunting and moving more enjoyable is summer!

How Does Agile Project Management Help Entrepreneurs?

Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When you’re an entrepreneur, you have to figure out how to manage your multiple projects effectively. This one component will set you apart from you competition. The following contributed post is entitled, How Does Agile Project Management Help Entrepreneurs?

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It’s no surprise that entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for better methods to help their businesses grow. While some would pin this search down as nothing more than a greener pasture, many entrepreneurs turn to Agile Project Management (APM) specifically due to its growth-oriented approach and proven results.

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APM allows business owners like you to spend less time managing employees and more time growing your business. Let’s look at how APM works and how it might be able to make your life easier.

As with any method of management, there are varying levels that one can take in applying these principles. By understanding the different main ideas behind APM, you’ll be able to choose which methods work best for you and your team.

The three main ideas behind APM are:

1) increased project visibility,

2) ongoing stakeholder engagement and other related benefits, and

3) optimized team and organizational performance.

These ideas together provide a framework for how your business should function, as well as the goals you would like it to achieve.

Based upon these principles, we’ll discuss some of the key features of APM that make it highly useful for entrepreneurs such as yourself:

1) Higher Productivity Rates:

APM eliminates much of the wasteful bureaucracy that surrounds traditional project management by organizing business activities around prioritized backlogs rather than rigid schedules. This makes it so teams are only responsible for an iteration at a time, allowing them to focus fully upon each requirement in order to create a higher-quality product with less effort. Given that your employees will likely be more satisfied and feel better supported, this is bound to lead to greater levels of productivity.

2) Greater Collaboration between Employees:

As mentioned earlier, APM encourages increased collaboration among all individuals involved in any given business activity by ensuring everyone’s efforts are based on shared goals. Each work item has its own backlog, which can be modified by other team members, allowing for greater engagement and synergy. This not only makes it easier to manage workflow but also increases the speed at which tasks are completed due to an open exchange of ideas.

3) Improved Customer Service:

By engaging stakeholders in a more regular fashion during each iteration, APM allows your team to better understand the needs of your customers and tailor your products accordingly. Not only will you be able to offer faster turnaround times on customer requests because changes can be made more readily, but you’ll also receive feedback from them much sooner. In addition, by providing regular updates about your progress throughout development cycles, you create additional opportunities for dialogue between yourself and clients.

4) Shorter Development Timescales:

Traditional project management tends to mismanage and overestimate development timelines due to a lack of ongoing engagement between clients and developers. APM, however, facilitates an ongoing dialogue between all involved parties by breaking down tasks into small pieces so they can be completed more quickly. This allows you to better assess the true scope of work required on any given task or project before beginning it, which is managed according to priority rather than a schedule.

5) Better Work/Life Balance for Staff Members:

Keeping your employees happy during their time off from your company is key in retaining them long-term. By working with a shared backlog that anyone can add items to at any time, everyone has a say in what gets seized for a given release or iteration. This allows individuals to select those tasks they feel most passionate about and work toward them as a team instead of the solitary nature of the traditional approach.

In Closing

By taking advantage of these benefits, entrepreneurs can improve efficiency while cutting costs at the same time, thus leaving more money in their wallets once the project is complete.

Running A Business: Here Are Ways To Improve How You Manage Projects

Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Depending upon the type of business you’re in, you’ll need to manage numerous projects. This will likely be key to your business’s growth. The following contributed post is entitled, Running A Business: Here Are Ways To Improve How You Manage Projects.

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When running a business, it is essential to manage projects well. Your business may fail because you can’t keep up with all tasks that should be addressed. Here are tips on how to improve your project management skills and make sure everything gets completed.

Invest in Project Management Courses

Project management courses are a great way to improve how you manage projects. A course like Agile project management certification will ensure that your team is on the same page, and you can communicate clearly about what needs to be done, when it should be completed, and any roadblocks along the way. You’ll also learn new techniques for managing schedules as well as the tools you need to get the job done.

Make Use of Project Management Software

Managing projects with project management digital tools is a great way to streamline your workflow, improve communication between teams, and get better at tracking time. This is a great way to work smarter. It’s easy to check in with your team members when using software like Trello or basecamp for project management. There are many features these apps have that make staying on task a breeze.

You can set deadlines and assign tasks so everyone knows what they need to be working on at all times. This will also help them plan their day better. You’ll get a lot more accomplished when you have everything in one place that is easily accessible for every member of your team.

Use a Project Schedule

A project schedule is a document that outlines the tasks to complete for your business. This allows you to see what needs to be done and create a safe environment for honest communication with your employees such as asking for more time to meet project deadlines. You can also use it as an outline for meetings with team members or even customers since they will know what you are working on at any given time, allowing them to make suggestions easily if they would like.

Ensure You Have All the Resources You Need

When determining how many resources you need for a project, consider all the roles and responsibilities. For instance, if your client requires four revisions of their materials before approval, ensure that your team has enough time and capacity to get it done without compromising quality or creativity.

If your team cannot meet the deadline, identify any bottlenecks you can work on to streamline your project management. Everyone must be up-to-date with what they need to accomplish so that there are no surprises. If changes or additions come up during a project, ensure that all team members know about them.

Use Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication is a skill that every business owner should have. This ensures all employees are on the same page and can produce quality products or services for your customers. Be proactive when communicating with your team members; make sure each person knows what they need to do before handing it over.

Conclusion

Ways to improve project management are prioritizing work, organizing tasks into categories, and delegating responsibility for each job to avoid falling behind. A manager may also benefit from using a time tracker app on your phone while handling projects to ensure they stay on track.

Five Stages Of Project Management

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and a key focus is Professional Development and Skills. No matter what kind of organization you’re in, a key skill to have is project management. The ability to effectively manage projects will assure that your operations continue to run smoothly it will likely assure that you’ll advance in your career. The following contributed post is entitled, Five Stages Of Project Management.

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When it comes to getting your project just right, there are a few phases that you will need to be aware of. Project management isn’t just about managing people – it is about all of the details too. You use tools, skills, people, and techniques in your specialty to bring the project to life.

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Here are the five stages of project management.

Initiation

The start of the project can often be messy, but the goals will now be defined at a broad level. There will be a lot of research to decide if the project is actually possible. There will be some feasibility testing done here too.

All of the critical decisions makers like stakeholders and board members will do their own due diligence to decide if the project will go ahead too. If everything seems to be okay, then there will be a project initiation document drawn up that will outline the purpose and requirements.

Project Planning

Many project managers find this to be an enjoyable stage. Developing a roadmap for critical players to follow. There are a few options that project managers will consider the best goal setting methods. SMART and CLEAR. Here is a breakdown:

SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely
CLEAR – Collaborative, Limited, Emotional, Appreciable, Refinable

The full scope of the project is now clear. The roles and responsibilities are noted, and everyone will not be accountable for their parts. The scope statement, Work Breakdown Schedule, Milestones, TimeLine, Communication Plan, Risk Management Plan will all need to be written up.

Execution

The deliverables are now developed and completed. These will be a lot happening in this phase, many meetings, status updates, performance updates. There are a lot of moving parts in this phase. Here are a few:

Develop a team: if you need to hire in contractors here is where you will do it. Depending on the project, you’ll need designers, government contractors like Salt3, extra assistants, and other skilled workers.

● Resources being assigned
● Execute the project management plans
● Procurement if required
● Tracking
● Status meetings
● Continuous updates of the project status

The execution phase and the performance phases will begin to overlap.

Performance

This will have been running for a short while by now, and it is time to take note of the progression and the performance. This phase will have a heavy focus on the KPIs that were outlined in the first stages. There are several ways to check on project performance, here are a few:

Quality deliverables
● Project Performance
● Effort and Cost tracking
● Project Objectives

There may be some minor (or major) adjustments to the schedules, and some movement of the resources were required to keep things on track.

Closure

This phase is pretty much what it says on the tin. Contractors who have been hired will now be terminated. The key players in completion will be recognised and celebrated in most cases. There will be an evaluation about what went well, what didn’t, and where there is room for improvement for further projects. A project manager will now also create a plan for the company to follow, a final budget and final report too.

Managing More Than One Project

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success and two key focuses are Career Discussions and General Education. A very valuable and lesser known skill when you start a business or when you get out into the professional world, is the ability to multi-task or manage multiple projects at once. The following contributed post discusses this and is entitled, Managing More Than One Project.

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As a project manager, you are going to face numerous challenges throughout your career. Often, managing one project can be challenging and stressful enough. However, when you add even more projects to the mix, the stresses and strains only multiply. Managing a number of different projects at the same time can most definitely be a challenge. However, if you follow the advice provided below, you should find it a lot easier.

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Embrace project management training – There is only one place to begin, and this is with project management training. Project management courses today are designed to equip you with all of the knowledge, strategies, and technologies required to deal with any challenge that comes your way, from remote team management to handling numerous projects at once. It does not matter how long you have been in this career, a refresher course could be just the thing you need to be able to manage multiple projects at once.

Keep distractions to a minimum – It is vital to keep distractions to a minimum at all times, but this is even more so the case when you are managing numerous projects at once. You can use tools like this calendar for HR professionals to assist. There are lots of things that can get in the way of your working day. This includes ad hoc tasks, non-strategic meetings, idle conversation, and emails that are not related to the projects you are working on. Ask yourself: is this task something that is contributing to the bigger picture/meeting the project objectives? If not, it is likely that you are simply wasting your time. To cut down on these sorts of activities, you should make sure you only have meetings when essential, use a centralised scheduling process, and schedule breaks throughout the working day.

Improve communication – Communication is critical to the success of any project, and it is even more pivotal when you are working on more than one project at the same time. You must have a robust communication channel and strategy in place for all team members. Efficient communication regarding new developments, changes, and such like, are a necessity, as they are likely to impact the implementation of the project. A group collaboration tool will come in very useful here, but you need to make sure that everyone is using the software appropriately and effectively. It is a good idea to get your team members to provide a status update of every task they are working on per day. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the project status and that all team members are on the same page. It also makes it easy for you to have an overview of each project so you know exactly where each project is.

Hopefully, you now feel more prepared for managing numerous projects at once. While this can seem incredibly daunting, there is no need to stress. Follow the advice that has been given, and you should find it a lot easier to keep on top of everything.

The Fine Line Between Project Success And Failure

The first principle of my blog is Creating Ecosystems of Success. No matter what kind of project you’re working on, it’s important to understand how to push it through to completion successfully. Many individuals’ projects end in failure. The following contributed post discusses how to successfully finish a project and is entitled, The Fine Line Between Project Success And Failure.

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Knowing what determines project success or failure is important. It provides you with direction; you know what you will be judged on and, therefore, what you will be aiming for. With that in mind, in this post, we are going to assess the factors that are relevant to project success or failure in further detail.

The success of the business project manager tends to be based on how they achieve three key goals. These are as follows:

  1. The project being completed on time
  2. The project being completed within the cost budget that was approved
  3. Good performance – This means that the project delivers the intended benefits and satisfies the specification that was provided

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In order to achieve these objectives, there are a number of factors that are required:

• Quick and fair conflict resolution
• Effective project management training
• Well-motivated team members
• Good project communications
• Appropriate regard for the health and safety of all people that are connected with the project, this is especially the case for the likes of new healthcare projects, for example, saliva drug test advancements or testing for various diseases
• A suitable organisation structure
• A sound quality culture throughout the business
• Technical competence
• Firm control of changes to the project
• Availability of resources, including sufficient funds
• Strong support for the project
• The correct project strategy
• Clear project definition

In some cases, one of the three primary objectives mentioned above may have special importance over the others. For example, it could be critical that the project is completed on time – this could be even more important than performance or budget.

It is important to recognise that this will result in a trade-off decision. If there is more emphasis placed on one or two of the main objectives, then it is going to come at the expense of the other objective(s).

You also need to understand the relationship between quality and cost, as well as the relationship between time and cost. Let’s deal with the former first. Most would agree that quality cannot be attained without added cost. However, there is an even greater reason why you cannot compromise or downgrade quality in order to save money. This is evident when you accept that a product must be fit for the purpose for which it was intended – this is the definition of quality. Downgrading quality simply isn’t an option, as no project manager should ever think about a result that is not fit for purpose.

There is also a vital and direct relationship between time and money. Cost estimates are almost guaranteed to be overspent if a project runs late. Every day that a project exists, be it a non-working or working day, it costs money.

All in all, if your project is to be a success, you need to achieve the three primary objectives mentioned above – deliver it on time, deliver it on budget, and deliver it to the specification provided by the client. You also need to understand how these objectives impact one and other if you are to succeed.