As taught on our PRINCE2® Training course, PRINCE2 is a methodology that can be tailored to any project. Therefore it is necessary for there to be a project management structure that can also be tailored to any project.

Using this structure allows us to identify who does what on a project without knowing anything about its size or complexity. The team structure is divided into roles, not jobs and so can be allocated individually or even combined.

Here is our flexible project management team structure:

Here at Silicon Beach Training we pride ourselves on our successful PRINCE2 Foundation training having a 99% pass rate. It must be something to do with the Brighton air, or maybe it's the quality of our training!

Defining the project management team structure

The corporate/ programme management site at the top but pass the decision making down to the Project Board. If you want to sit at this level you need MSP training, which is the next step after completing your PRINCE2 Practitioner training.

The Project Board are also busy on roles outside of the project and so delegate the day-to-day running of the project to the Project Manager. They are there to make the key decisions but if they believe they don't have the time or the right skills then they can appoint somebody to Project Assurance to monitor the project for them.

UPDATE JULY 2014: Google has now withdrawn authorship photos from SERPs. We still recommend implementing authorship as results will still have a byline and your content will rank better for your Google+ connections.

Possible name for Author Rank update in 2013: Shakespeare Panda

Two years ago, after attending a much smaller BrightonSEO, we wrote a post about the death of journalism. Now in 2012, at a much bigger BrightonSEO, James Carson believes it is rising from the grave to take back the internet from anonymous personas.

The importance of authorship on the internet was a hot topic on Friday. As well as James Carson’s excellent 20x20 presentation 'I Believe that Authors are The Future', it also came up in a number of the other talks and prompted some follow up discussion on Twitter and on blogs. Coincidently a blog post on authorship appeared on SEOmoz two days later.

Make sure you've read our other write ups of BrightonSEO including the 'Ask the Engines' panel, morning session, afternoon session and 20x20 talks.

The meat of James’ talk was that authorship will be important for SEO in the future as search engines look to find a suitable replacement for link ranking factors that have become skewed thanks to paid link building, link spam and the ongoing pursuit of SEOs to gain more and higher authority links to boost their rankings. Even social ranking factors aren’t that reliable due to paid followers and shares.

One of the great things about PDFs is that they work with assistive technology like screen readers to allow people with disabilities to access your documents. Those with blindness, low vision or limited mobility do not always have the same access to the web that general users take for granted.

Using Adobe InDesign CS5.5 you can create and format your documents so that they are machine-readable for screen readers and assistive devices.

Not only does this make your documents accessible to more people but it also helps search engines successfully index your content – something you SEOs should be fully aware of!

Adobe InDesign is the industry standard document creation tool. However, it isn't the easiest to get to grips with. That's why our InDesign Training course is popular with those who wish to move away from basic Word documents to creating professional looking PDFs and eBooks. In fact, InDesign is steadily replacing Word as the de facto program for creating documents in businesses, therefore it is essential to upgrade your skills to meed demands. We also offer courses in other Adobe Creative Suite products including Photoshop Training, Illustrator Training and Premiere Elements Training.

Think of this guide as SEO (search engine optimisation) and AO (accessibility optimisation) for your documents.

Creating accessible documents is something that rarely comes into consideration these days, but if you think of it as a web page then you may be alarmed by how little thought goes into accessibility.

When building websites, developers think carefully about assigning tags and marking up the page for readers, and this is something we should start to do for PDF documents also. After all, if you want Google to index them you need to make it easy.

Here is how Adobe describes the workflow from InDesign to Acrobat:

Here is the step-by-step to creating accessible PDFs with Adobe InDesign CS5.5:

Adoption of Collaborative Software Solutions

The use of collaborative technologies is on the rise. The use of Google Docsand SharePoint is becoming more commonplace. Virtual workers and projects require efficient ways of communication and collaboration.

Automatic and central distribution and control of documents has never been easier.

Agile Project Management

As projects become increasingly complex, project managers need to be increasingly flexible. Businesses and organisations are beginning to adopt Agile Project Management practices and combining them with traditional project management. Many are using Agile to inform and develop a new set of strategies for coping with projects, adapting methods for team collaboration and communication.

Agile Project Management Training enables you to gain Agile Practitioner Certification, enabling you to successfully manage Agile projects.

It is very easy to open up your website on a smartphone or tablet and make the snap judgement that because it loads and the links work you can leave it as it is. However, how many businesses go the next step and think about how usable their site is on mobile devices? Or how attractive it is?

In this blog post, we have produced a checklist to help businesses perform a mobile site audit to ensure their site is as mobile-friendly as possible. Click the image to download theSilicon Beach Training Mobile Web Design Checklistand then read through this blog to find out why each point is so important.

Come on one of our Mobile Development Courses to learn how to create mobile websites and apps from scratch from our industry expert trainers. We run a beginners Mobile Web Design course which is suitable for all skill ranges and aMobile Web Design Week workshopwhich is more advanced, containingHTML5, CSS3andJavaScripttraining alongside an overview ofmobile web best practice. For the more experienced programmers, we also provideiPhone App Development trainingandAndroid App Development Training. Read on to find out why mobile should be a top priority for business in 2012...

Why Go Mobile?

Regular visitors to the site will know how strongly we believe that the future of technology lies with mobile. Our recent mobile post highlighted howApple sold more iPhones and iPads in 2011 than they sold computers in 11 years. That is a staggering stat. Another recent figure claims that1.45 million mobile devices enter the world every day compared to 317,124 births.

For whatever reason, mobile devices have achieved something that desktops and laptops never truly managed - they have become a consumer device. Nobody sees a desktop sitting at home, but people go out of their way to flaunt the latest smartphone and read the news on their iPad on the way to work. They have become a fashion accessory as much as a communication device.

As a result of this, more and more people are accessing the internet on the go on smaller screens. Any business that has not considered a mobile strategy is potential missing out on interest and sales. Mobile use has been proven to have a higher click through rates and higher average spend. So not only are some businesses missing out on potential customers but those customers are likely to spend more money!

Silicon Beach Training Mobile Web Design Checklist

This downloadableMobile Web Design Checklistis not a definitive guide to styling websites for mobile devices but it is a useful list of features to consider to ensure a website works properly on a mobile device.

• Sincerity
• Honesty
• Integrity
• Trust

With usual sharp wit, Alex responds “so you want me to help them get their s**t together.”

Customer service has never been more important in my opinion. The family were under the impression that their customer service was good. They then demonstrated otherwise by keeping customers waiting without any explanation of when their vehicles would be ready. Not only that, but customers were made to wait in an area that in her own words “one would want to slit your wrists in”.

In the training business, there are times when clients need answers to questions that only trainers can respond to, so sometimes although we prefer to give all clients immediate responses to their questions we may need to wait for a response ourselves. It is important at all times to keep the customer informed of progress. A polite email or phone call is all it takes to explain any delays so the customer knows exactly when they can expect what they are looking for. It is imperative to keep communication going, nobody likes to be ignored.

A lack of marketing seems to be a common theme in the series. Alex suggests to the garage that they revisit an old idea “Women at the Wheel” where women were invited to a free session enabling them to learn to change a tyre, fill their oil and water etc. Everybody loves a freebie, and if it encourages potential clients to revisit you, even better.

Once customers receive a great or free deal, you have built a relationship with a potential paying client - you now have their trust and have gone a long way towards sorting your s**t out!  These potential clients are much more likely to come back, and loyalty is what you are looking for especially in the service industry.

The highlight of the programme for me was when Alex turned up to the “woman at the wheel” event dressed in leathers.

Alex Polizzi in Leathers

I loved the look on the daughter's face when she emerged from her car!

Stand up meetings - also called Scrum meetings - are an important factor of Scrum project management. Scrum is a form of agile project management that breaks projects down into smaller, easier to manage chunks that are completed as sprints.

Daily Scrum meetings are important as the method is so changeable. They ensure that everybody is on track and minimise the chances of two team members performing the same task. However, because they are daily they must be kept short and so Scrum meetings are usually stand up meetings.

Learn more about Scrum and become accredited with Scrum Training. We run accredited ScrumMaster Training and Scrum Product Owner Training. If you wish to learn a different Agile methodology then we also provide APMG accredited Agile Project Management Training. We train to both Agile Project Management Foundation and Agile Project Management Practitionerlevels. 

The Scrum process is explained in the graphic below:

For more information on Agile and Scrum read What Is Agile Project Management?

Check out our updated post with cover photo templates and dimensions for all the major social networks.

Facebook Timeline has arrived. First announced in October 2011, Facebook Timeline's official release has been put back, and back, and back again. You've always been able to install it using a Developer preview but at the end of January Timeline went live to the world. Now, it is about to become mandatory.

However, the first thing you will want to do is to customise your Facebook Timeline cover photo! Something you've never been able to do before!

It is a given that by the end of the year, business pages will also have Timelines. This will be a fantastic tool for marketers to make their Facebook page stand out from the rest so use our guide so that you already know what to do when business Timeline is released! For a full course on social media marketing you should come on Social Media Training. We offer some fantastic deals when booked with SEO Training and Content Marketing Training!

As our Google+ profile design template proved so popular we have been kind enough to do the same for Facebook Timeline.

Download the Facebook Timeline Cover Photo Photoshop Template.

You can get really creative with the new cover photo so we have included some of our favourite designs so far at the bottom of this post.

Leave a link to your profile once you've customised it in the comments section below and we will publish our favourites over the next few weeks.

If you haven't already then make sure you have added us on Facebook for all the latest news, offers and resources: 

How to Customise Your Facebook Timeline

We have included a full step by step guide to using the Timeline Photoshop Template in our Complete Timeline Guide. The guide is also useful for changing your privacy settings and delving into all the new features before making your Timeline public.