Refrain from assuming every project will fail! To successfully manage projects within budget and keep learning new techniques for project management, here's our list of project management practices you should become acquainted with to reach project successes in whatever stage your project may be at. We hope our list provides some answers!
Organizational success can often be determined by the projects it undertakes, with company expectations that project teams perform consistently and quickly due to modern industry competition. Your performance will improve significantly if you use effective project management techniques for project teams.
Project managers organize, plan, and oversee resources to optimize team efficiency and productivity. According to reports, successful project management requires possessing both technical and business acumen - essential soft skill sets in driving business transformation forward. This guide is here to assist your initial endeavor into project management so you can meet strategic goals more easily. Are You ready? Get Started Now.
What Is Project Management?
Project management involves applying specific knowledge, skills, and techniques to produce successful outcomes. Project managers use processes and project management methodologies to plan, initiate, monitor, and control business activities for maximum productivity and value creation.
Project Management Phases
The project management life cycle can be broken into five distinct phases and encompasses ten areas of project management knowledge for each phase, such as integration, scope, and cost management, human resource administration, communication risk procurement, and stakeholder management. Project managers and teams can utilize these processes together with their associated technical knowledge areas to organize themselves effectively when working on complex projects.
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Initial Phase:
- Integration Management: Develop project charter.
- Stakeholder Management: Identify key stakeholders.
Planning Phase:
- Integration Management: Develop a project management plan.
- Scope Management: Define the scope, create a work breakdown structure (WBS), and gather requirements.
- Time Management: Planning and developing schedules, activities, and resources. Estimating project timelines and resource availability.
- Costs Management: Calculate costs and budgets.
- Quality Management: Identifying quality requirements is the first step in managing your business.
- Human Resource Management: Planning and identifying human resource requirements is the first step in managing your human resources.
- Communication Management: plan stakeholder communication.
- Risk Management: Plan risk mitigation marketing strategies and perform qualitative and quantitative analysis of risks.
- Procurement Management: Plan and identify required purchases.
- Stakeholder Management: Prepare for the expectations of stakeholders when managing stakeholder relations.
Execution Phase:
- Integrative Management: Directing and managing all project activities.
- Quality Management: All aspects of quality management are performed.
- Human Resource Management: Management of human resources: the selection, development, and management of project teams.
- Communication Management: Managing all communications.
- Procurement Management: Secure the necessary purchases.
- Stakeholder Management: Management of stakeholder expectations:
Monitoring And Control Phase:
- Integration Management: Integral management is the collaborative process of monitoring and controlling project activities and managing any changes that may be necessary.
- Scope Management: This involves validating and controlling the project's scope.
- Time Management: Project scope control is key to time management.
- Costs Management: Controlling costs is a key element of cost management.
- Quality Management: Monitoring the quality of delivered products.
- Communication Management: Monitoring all communications between team members and stakeholders.
- Procurement Management: Stay on top of all necessary purchases.
- Stakeholder Management: Own stakeholder engagements.
Close-Out Phase:
- Integration Management: Integrate all project phases.
- Procurement Management: All project purchases should be closed out.
Project Management Best Practices
Project Management Best Practices include:
Create A Business Case For Your Project
Each project starts as an idea; to turn that idea into something meaningful and effective, however, requires carefully outlining every stage. Take some time to collect all your ideas in one spot, identifying all project requirements, available resources, potential obstacles, and workflow requirements that must be achieved to reach success.
Projects require significant resources, whether time, money, or people. When undertaking any endeavor, one must take an overall business goal as well as short and long-term objectives into consideration when planning what project to work on next.
Once this has been determined, your organization or team should assess if they have enough resources available to them to complete a project successfully. While this shouldn't put off trying new ideas or taking on challenges, being prepared with answers for any inquiries will ensure the success of any venture undertaken.
Association for Project Management states that every business case must address four essential questions about any proposed project: strategic context, potential ROI, risks/rewards evaluation, as well as availability/budget allocation to complete it successfully. This business case will help guide a project schedule that is both specific and easy for everyone involved to comprehend.
Kick Off Your Meeting
At this first meeting, project goals will be discussed at length, and all project stakeholders will be invited. Furthermore, a kickoff meeting serves to establish an efficient communication plan by uniting everyone under one banner.
Create A Brief For Your Project
Project briefs (also referred to as charters) are an essential project management practice you should abide by. A concise document that gives an overarching view of scope and project; think of them as providing your "true North."
Assuring everyone of its importance will help get everyone on board, and ensuring approval from all participants in your project is essential to its success. You should revisit this brief throughout its progression; its goal should be simple. A project brief doesn't need to be long or tedious. Your project description should, on the other hand, be simple to understand and include at least the following:
- Name of the project
- Customers
- Overview of the Project
- The SMART acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic Time-based
- Scope
- Deliverables
- Milestones
- Success Metrics
- Budgets, timelines, and resources
You're now ready to enter all of the details into your software for team management. Save time by using our template to add your objectives, milestones, and budget.
Plan Your Project
Before we get underway, you must be clear on the differences between a brief and a plan. Your project brief should be concise. Keep it at a high project level for maximum impact. A project plan details how you intend to complete an entire project from its inception through completion, providing details regarding management strategy and team activities necessary for meeting its goals. What makes a project plan good:
- Mission and scope
- Schedule
- Budgeting
- Employees
- Evaluation and Control
- Risk assessment
- Standards of quality
- Analysis of variance and tracking
- Issue management and escalated issues
- Change control and authorization of work
As part of your project plan, consider your team's workload carefully if bottlenecks arise and lose momentum quickly. Planning a project requires careful consideration of many variables, including team workload. When finalizing the plan for your project, ensure you possess the project management tools necessary for identifying bottlenecks and managing workload efficiently.
As part of your effort to hold your team more accountable for completing upcoming projects on time and within budget, remember to log or track time spent working on them - especially if clients will ask you for additional details regarding them.
Communication That Is Clear And Consistent
Successful project managers understand that effective communication is the cornerstone of success. Communication should take place both ways between your team members and clients alike. Keep all internal communications organized into one location to reduce confusion over where information can be obtained or documents transferred, or updates given.
Instant messaging chat software can be invaluable when setting up project areas; its benefits become even greater if integrated into a project manager's management software development suite. Problem-solving and making decisions more quickly become possible when you have direct video or chat access with members of your team or the entire group.
Establishing and maintaining clear lines of communication among all of your stakeholders, regardless of which platform they prefer, is paramount for effective leadership and problem resolution. Face-to-face communication is the ideal way to build rapport among team members, even if that means their faces appear slightly blurrier as time progresses. Regular project meetings may be conducted either physically or via video conference call to evaluate progress and increase accountability.
Communication is key when it comes to successful project management. All parties involved should remain fully informed throughout its lifecycle; first, meet all stakeholders to understand their expectations to craft an ideal project plan that serves the interests of everyone involved in your endeavor. An effective communication plan among team members can drastically enhance the final quality of any finished product.
Read More: Adopting An Effective Project Management Strategy For Software Development
Keep A Regular Schedule
An effective project management practice revolves around looking after your team while meeting deadlines. It would be best if you strived to make sure that no one feels overworked while making progress toward meeting their objectives. Set yourself an achievable schedule to ensure the project can be finished on schedule.
Develop your schedule by working backward from your projected completion date, noting the milestones that must be met and critical tasks you need to finish before that day comes around. Be mindful when planning events based on dates alone - take time to consider your team's resources, budget, and availability as you make decisions based on dates in a calendar.
Initial schedules are developed on assumptions, experience, and estimates. Project teams do not possess an abundance of resources; therefore, resource management becomes essential as team members and the experienced project manager often have multiple projects underway simultaneously. Resource plans provide a snapshot of available and utilized resources. Project management software offers easy ways for you to allocate and track available resources in an organized fashion.
Plan For Setbacks And How To Take Corrective Action
Project failure often stems from unexpected changes that arise unexpectedly. According to the same study mentioned earlier, three main contributors to project failure included changes in company priorities (39%), goals of the project (37%), and its original request (35%).
No matter how well-planned a project may be, complications will inevitably arise and require solutions - whether this means changing budgets or timelines to adapt. Tracing differences within your team is an invaluable way to prepare. By understanding why things don't go according to plan and taking measures against future occurrences, team members will gain valuable insight.
If your project's budget exceeds what was allocated, reassessing its scope might be necessary. Some projects take longer than expected, so reallocating resources or altering your timeline might also become necessary. Projects that fail often morph out of control due to a lack of early, decisive actions taken to address issues that arise.
Monitor Your Project Closely For Scope Creep
Scope creep is one of the primary dangers to project managers. Scope creep occurs when the requirements of a project alter so drastically that its completion must meet its planned deadline and budget constraints. Beginning your project can seem straightforward; however, once implemented, it's easy for its boundaries to shift unexpectedly as soon as you enter the implementation phase, and its scope expands without you realizing it.
Learning from past errors and making improvements are longstanding strategies of great managers. Discuss with all members your project weaknesses and what project management strategies must be put in place to overcome them. Be certain your clients and other stakeholders understand any possible repercussions for changes made to the scope of a project, updating its plan as required to reflect these modifications and informing everyone involved of them.
Track All Project-Related Information
You need to take care of more than just people. You also have to keep track of the following:
- Track KPIs
- Take corrective actions and manage variances
- Quality assurance is a priority
- Manage risk
- You can check scope creep
Follow this project management practice as a best practice! Keeping tabs on data, risks, quality standards, and costs should help prevent problems from getting out of hand and allow for effective project oversight.
Update Project Documentation
Project managers must avoid falling into the habit of neglecting housekeeping in favor of fighting fires. You must keep all project documentation current. By adhering to this best practice (by regularly updating all essential project documents), you will save yourself considerable time when closing a project. Keeping track of project documents ensures a more streamlined closing experience.
If you postpone these activities, they will come rushing up on you at once, forcing you to update all documents when your focus needs to be elsewhere - possibly detracting from project closure efforts. Keep these documents regularly updated:
- The RACI matrix is a list of Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed people for individual tasks.
- Log of risks and issues.
- Requests for Change.
- Project schedule.
- Project expenses.
- Retrospective log.
You can review the documents when you are ready to complete your project to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Retrospective Meetings Can Provide More Insight
Project management's primary aim is to execute delegate tasks efficiently and successfully; no matter your current level, there's always room for growth in project administration. Retrospective meetings should take place after every project. Retros may be especially common among designers or developers working sprint-by-sprint, but they're effective no matter what project.
Your retro meeting should include all participants involved with your project - team members, stakeholders, and supporters alike. Understanding what went well and didn't with past projects is of vital importance, as well as understanding where improvements could be made in future endeavors. To get key insights, all members of your team need to provide their thoughts - yes, everybody.
Even if they played only a minor part in a project, someone might have seen where tasks stalled or fell through the cracks - even brief observations can provide valuable feedback that helps optimize and refine a future attempt at it.
Emotions may run high if there are problems with a project (small or large). You must diffuse any tension among team members by treating this meeting not as an occasion to blame but as an opportunity for growth and learning.
Read More: Project Management Software - Six Factors to Think about
Form A Team To Respond To Risks
Projects will always involve risk, so effective project managers must do everything possible to minimize it as much as possible and have prepared contingency plans should any unanticipated complications arise. A risk response team is essential as they have been equipped to respond swiftly should any threatening situations arise that would otherwise delay your work.
Transparency Is Essential In Any Project
Transparency within teamwork ranks high on the list of best practices for project management, especially agile project teams that thrive under these conditions. Collaboration becomes easier if everyone shares one vision and works toward it together.
Change Requests Are To Be Expected And Accommodated
Project managers must always have a plan in place for managing change, from small changes that add up quickly, such as those caused by scope creep (affecting over 50% of projects) or client requests to documenting each request for change submitted by clients as good project management practices.
Ensure Proper Documentation
An effective project journal must include full documentation that details every step. Doing this allows new team members to become up-to-speed quickly. At the same time, you and other project managers may refer back to previous issues should similar problems arise later on. Stay on your guard. Too often, project managers get lost in documentation issues of a project and forget its actual goal.
Add Realistic Milestones To Your Project
Everyone wants to outdo their competition and stand out. Unfortunately, some project managers go too far by setting unrealistic milestones or promising features or deadlines that they cannot fulfill. Clients sometimes force this faster completion process upon them as well.
Project and team performance suffers as a result. Forgoing caffeine for multiple nights each week to work can significantly erode team morale while impacting quality output; effective project managers understand these limitations while sometimes speaking up against clients for change or growth opportunities.
Request Feedback
One can always improve, and using feedback in project management processes to implement an improved end product should meet client expectations. Through feedback, you can learn from mistakes made and prevent further ones in the future by learning from previous ones and preventive action taken after they happen.
As a project leader, seeking feedback from your team members will allow you to discover both weaknesses and strengths and improve project management abilities. Involve your whole team and let this practice help with personal growth - it also enables project leaders to identify team members in need of training for future project leadership abilities.
Project Management Roles
According to a wide range of factors - industry, the scope of the project, team composition, or team size - schedulers may be essential components of PMO/EPMO controlled environments, along with functional leads and sponsors who possess effective leadership abilities. Below is a comparison between the three roles. All require strong managerial capabilities.
Project Manager: Takes on the crucial role of the project manager in terms of planning, execution, monitoring, control, and closure. One or more project managers can be found in an organization.
Program Manager: A program manager is a person who oversees and manages several projects that are similar or have ties to each other within an organization. Typically, one or more project managers will report directly to the program director.
Portfolio Manager: This is the role at the top of the PMO/EPMO hierarchy. It is in charge of overseeing all project and program alignments and directions. The portfolio manager will usually report to program managers.
PMO And EPMO
Successful organizations organize project management activities under an umbrella organization, such as a Project Management Office (PMO) (or Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO). PMOs (Project Management Offices) are internal or external groups that set direction and maintain standards, best practices, and the status of project managers in an organization. Before now, however, PMOs were only sometimes effective at aligning strategic goals effectively.
EPMO stands for Enterprise Project Management Office; this term encompasses its functions along with one additional high-level aim - aligning all projects, programs, and portfolios to the strategic goals of an organization. Organizations increasingly adopt EPMO structures, so project managers, programmers, and portfolio managers can take part in strategic planning from day one.
PMOs and EPMOs both enable organizations to implement an established approach for overseeing projects from start to finish, from their conception. The following are the benefits of PMOs or EPMOs in setting up standard approaches:
- Project teams should be aware of the following ground rules.
- A common language that facilitates communication between project managers, leaders, and stakeholders while ensuring expectations are understood.
- Increased visibility across the organization and greater accountability.
- Increased agility in adapting to new initiatives and changes within the organization.
- The ability to quickly identify tasks, deliverables, and milestones.
- Key performance indicators to measure project performance
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Conclusion
Following these best practices for project management can greatly enhance your project management skills as a project leader, yet not exclusively so; successful project outcomes often depend on following these practices for projects led by project leaders who use these best practices effectively. If this has led you to this point in the past few weeks or so, then that should indicate success.
Your team performed admirably, while you also ensured they would excel even further the next time around by employing best practices in project management and using appropriate tools - look for an integrated project management platform that does more than manage projects alone.
