The document discusses common mistakes made by project managers and how to avoid them. It identifies the top 8 mistakes as: 1) Not meeting with the whole team upfront, 2) Not breaking large projects into smaller pieces, 3) Not prioritizing projects/tasks, 4) Forgetting that project management involves people management, 5) Not regularly communicating with the team, 6) Letting changes get out of hand through scope creep, 7) Not using project management tools, and 8) Failure to adjust when things go wrong. It provides tips and advice from experts on how to effectively manage projects and avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Deliverable 2 - Using Visuals to Enhance Viewer Perception
Competency
Analyze and interpret perceptual elements of visual media
communication to identify effective visual messages.
Scenario
You have been hired by a large law enforcement agency to
analyze the images used on advertising billboards in both urban
and suburban regions. The billboards visually display a new
campaign message to improve neighborhood safety.
During your analysis, you find that the images used on
billboards in the urban areas are exactly the same as the images
used in the suburban areas. Both images show parents happily
talking with law enforcement officers while children run over
green lawns having a fun balloon fight. You decide that these
images are not sending proper perceptual messages. You decide
to create a visual analysis video for the law enforcement agency
to share with the administration
For the video visual analysis, you realize you will need to find
two new images that are quite different from one another. One
image will be used on the urban billboard, and the other image
will be used on the suburban billboard. In your video
presentation, you will compare and contrast how each image
utilizes the following:
1. Compare and contrast the visual elements of cultural
familiarity. Explain why it is important to use culturally
familiar visuals that are quite different in the urban and
suburban billboard images. Include specific visuals in your
visual analysis.
2. Identify specific visual examples of the following cognitive
elements: memories, experiences, and expectation. Compare and
contrast how urban and suburban viewers may be affected
differently by those specific cognitive visual elements.
3. Explain the difference between urban and suburban viewers'
emotionally engagement with each of the billboard images.

2. 4. Identify visual semiotic codes in both images: metonymic,
analogical, displaced, and condensed. Discuss the importance of
using these codes. Include specific visuals in each part of your
visual analysis.
As you outline your ideas for the video, you decide to record
your verbal analysis while analyzing the two visuals in less than
seven minutes for added clarity.
/
FEATURE
8 common project management mistakes — and how to avoid
them
IT executives and certified project management professionals
reveal the most common reasons projects get derailed and
what project managers can do to keep them on track.
By Jennifer Lonoff Schiff
CIO |
JUN 28, 2017 3:00 AM PDT
So many projects, so much mismanagement. That's the refrain
of many IT executives. Indeed, even with project
management software, IT projects often wind up taking longer
(much longer) than planned and costing more than
budgeted.
While no two projects are exactly the same, the issues that can
affect — and potentially jeopardize — them are

3. often quite similar. And even good project managers can make
mistakes when wrangling a big, complex project —
or when being bombarded with change requests.
Here's what IT executives and project management
professionals told us are the all-too-common mistakes they see
project managers make — and advice for avoiding them.
Mistake #1: Not meeting with the whole team and setting goals
upfront
“It’s important for the entire team to know roles and
responsibilities and deliverables” right from the start, says
Shami Ahuja, director of agile practice at technology consulting
firm Nisum. This is why it’s a good idea to hold a
kickoff meeting with all stakeholders.
[ Tips, strategies and best practices — all this and more in our
project management professional guide. | Find
out how to pick the right project management methodology for
your team and beware the 10 project
management myths to avoid. | Get the latest project management
advice by signing up for our CIO newsletter. ]
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“A kickoff meeting helps [define and set] expectations — and
[ultimately] makes the team more self-dependent and
self-organized. It also instills a higher level of accountability
and ownership [of the project].”
Mistake #2: Not breaking down (big) projects into smaller
pieces
“Breaking [a] large project into small, manageable pieces will
make the team feel more comfortable and confident
that they can successfully tackle what may seem like an
impossible project and [accomplish] each task,” says Sid Soil,
owner of document imaging and storage provider DOCUdavit.
To avoid leaving your team feeling overwhelmed, “take the time
to understand each facet of the project.” Then

5. “break the project into small pieces, and break those small
pieces into smaller pieces if you can.” And assign each
task to the team members who are best suited to accomplish
them.
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Related video: 7 goals every project manager should aspire to
achieve
Mistake #3: Not prioritizing projects and/or tasks
“Many IT departments have multiple, concurrent projects
running, for both internal and external customers,”

6. explains Cortney Thompson, CIO of data center services
provider Green House Data. And “too many times, we see
staff keeping their head down on a project that is a lower
priority while a higher visibility project starts to slip.”
That’s why it’s important for — and the job of — the project
manager to let team members know what tasks should
take priority and when priorities have changed. “Clearly
communicating project priorities can help save a lot of
hassle and headache,” he says.
Mistake #4: Forgetting that project management is also people
management
“Too many project managers get bogged down focusing on the
scope, quality, cost and timeline associated with
their projects” and forget about the people who are actually
doing the work, says Irfan Kapasi, managing director,
strategic solutions and services, at IT staffing firm Computer
Task Group. Failing to properly manage team members,
or micromanaging them, can “lead to delays, impact quality and
result in cost overruns.”
To avoid this problem, “make sure everyone understands how
and why their role is important to the success of the
project and schedule time for periodic check-ins,” he advises.
“This includes sponsors, team members, executives,
suppliers and other stakeholders. This way you can make sure

7. everyone shares the same vision for the project.”
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Mistake #5: Not regularly communicating with team members
“While nobody will refute the importance of constant
communication to successful project management, once a
project is underway it's easy to miss times to meet with the team
or provide updates to key stakeholders,” says Bob
Drainville, president of time tracking app maker Timesheet
Mobile.
“Establishing the right foundation for regular meetings, who
will attend these meetings and who else needs to be
involved will help keep things on track." Drainville also
emphasizes the importance of having the right number of

8. people involved because "too many people can bog things down,
as people may feel they need to comment at
every turn.”
Mistake #6: Letting changes get out of hand
“Scope creep is pervasive in project management and difficult
to manage because, as the name suggests, it creeps
up on you,” says Kofi Senaya, director of product at mobile app
development company Clearbridge Mobile.
“Additional requests and added features strain resources and
can affect the focus of the product vision. And without
the proper control, [they] can severely affect project success.”
However, “scope creep can be curtailed by strong
project management and product ownership."
“When adding features [or considering changes] you need to ask
yourself a few questions,” he says. “Do new feature
requests align with the product vision? Do the proposed changes
add value to the end user? Are they critical or nice
to have? Clearly defining product goals and identifying success
factors can help ensure that change requests and
added features that aren’t aligned to objectives don’t threaten
timelines.”
Mistake #7: Not using a project management tool
“Many solid project management tools, like Asana or Trello,

9. have great visual representations of the status of [a]
project,” says Kean Graham, founder & CEO of ad optimization
companyMonetizeMore. To help keep projects on
track, “it's important to use these tools to know where the
project is, to make sure it is on pace to complete by the
deadline and to identify opportunities for additional efficiency
[or spot problems].”
Additionally, “project documentation should be updated
weekly,” says Cerila Gailliard, a certified project
management professional and consultant. “If something of
importance comes up [e.g., a change in task or scope or
deadline], the PM should update the documentation within 24
hours. This will give everyone on the project accurate
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information [about] the project.”
Mistake #8: Failure to adjust course when things go wrong
As every project manager knows, sometimes, despite your best
efforts, things go wrong or the project fails. And “the

10. fear of failure can sometimes lead a project manager to an
exercise of futility in trying to salvage a doomed project,”
says Brandon Evans, CTO of project portfolio management
software provider Changepoint.
That’s why it is essential to “create a vehicle for transparent
and truthful reporting… [that] provides executive
stakeholders with information that allows for good, timely
decision making,” he says. That way, “if the project is
strategically important, [and something goes wrong,] the
business can change course and [help the project to]
become successful by adjusting [the] budget, resources and/or
delivery expectations.”
More on project management
Project management guide: Tips, strategies, best practices
What is a project manager? The lead role for project success
10 project management myths to avoid
15 essential project management tools
How to pick the right project management methodology for
success
Top 11 project management certi�cations for 2017
6 traits of highly effective project managers

11. Agile project management: A beginner's guide
Project management salaries: Talent gap reveals long-term
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Project management: 5 tips for managing your project budget
Project management: 7 steps to on-time, on-budget, goal-based
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Copyright © 2017 IDG Communications, Inc.
� 7 secrets of successful remote IT teams
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Jennifer Lonoff Schiff is a business and technology writer and a
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FEATURE
Budgetary black holes
10 mistakes that can suck the funds out of your IT project
budget -- and how to avoid them
By Mary Brandel
Contributing Writer, Computerworld
AUG 16, 2004 12:00 AM PST
IT projects are notorious for being over budget. In fact, Gopal
Kapur, president of the Center for Project
Management in San Ramon, Calif., estimates that 77% of
projects blow their budgets, with an average
cost overrun of 169%. As for the remaining 23%, Kapur doesn't

20. have a lot of faith in those project
managers. "They just lie about it," he says.
Perhaps if project managers knew where the biggest money
wasters were, these statistics would
improve. With that in mind, we spoke with experienced project
managers and other experts to find out
where the black holes of project management are and how to
avoid them.
1. Scope creep. It can begin early, at the requirements definition
stage. "People say, 'We're spending the
time and money anyway, let's add this and this,' " says Mark
Reilley, director of IT at the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting in Washington. "This expands the scope
way beyond what you can accomplish or
really need."
[ Further reading: What is Asana? Task management tracking
made easy ]
Even well-planned projects expand up to 2% on their own each
month throughout a project's duration,
says Capers Jones, founder and chief scientist of Software
Productivity Research LLC, a consultancy in
Marlboro, Mass. One reason is "technical gold-plating,"
explains Gregory Fouquet, a consultant at

21. Ouellette & Associates, a consulting firm in Bedford, N.H. "It's
where well-intentioned programmers add
features and functionality that haven't been specified but are
neat or slick," he says. "It eats away at
productivity and introduces difficulties in testing."
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Solution
: Keep to core functionality by defining requirements as "must
haves," "should haves" and
"nice to haves." To keep developers in check, Fouquet advises
rigorously specifying must-have

22. requirements and tracking them through the development
process. "This is trickier for project managers
who come from the business side and don't understand technical
complexities," he says. For these
managers, enlist the help of a good, credible IT person. Reilley
also suggests lowering user expectations
by releasing something small in scope that you can add to later.
"Usually Version 1 is the prototype, and
when users see it, it's good enough," he says.
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2. Building a too-sophisticated GUI too early in the project.
Most graphical user interfaces change
dramatically from the requirements definition stage to the final
release, says Johanna Rothman,
president of Rothman Consulting Group Inc. in Arlington, Mass.
And yet developers are always tempted

23. to perfect the GUI in electronic form at early stages in the
project.
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