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Project Management Tips: Good project management practices are essential for any team tackling a large project. This is relevant especially in the tech industry, where individual tasks are often highly specialized, complex and time-sensitive. Without a definite process in place, it’s easy to lose track of the project progress and issues arising from it from time to time.
10 Project Management Tips that Guide Your Employees
Following are some of the project management tips that can guide your employees during the course of the project –
Right from the beginning, you should set a clear path for your employees to follow by letting them know about your expectations from the project. These should include your expectations about the quality of work, who is responsible for which tasks, and how your team should communicate with each other. The sooner this is done, the more focused people are for their job. It will also ensure everyone is working towards a common goal and will eradicate any confusion from the outset.
The first step in the project planning process as a project manager is defining its scope.
To do this effectively, you need to understand the projects –
Deliverables – What are the expected outputs and outcomes?
Costs: Is there a set budget?
The time required – How long will it take to complete the project?
Available resources – What resources you have at your disposal in terms of physical, human resources and financial sources?
Stakeholders – Who are all involved in the project? Who are the major influencers, decision-makers, and recipients?
When managing a project, there is no need to waste a great deal of time or effort in creating something that already exists.In case this is your first project, source document templates that you can use as a starting point. It will make your job much easier.It also means you will have a set of workable templates for future reference. It is good to keep a log or diary of your work and detailed notes of how you handled certain problems. If a similar situation arises in the future, you will have a ready reference.
A project plan is the road map for your project and it essentially contains detailed information about the project’s approved scope, cost, and schedule. You may ask questions from time to time to review your progress on the project like
Q. Are tasks being completed as decided previously?
Q. Are the original deadlines still realistic compared to how fast work is being done? If not, is there a requirement to focus more on certain tasks?
Q. Do you still have the right team members necessary to complete the project?
Regular review of the progress of your project, using updates and feedback from your team, is important. This should be made a priority during team meetings so that you’re able to address issues as they arise and adjust the Project-Based Employment if required.
There should always be a time frame decided for each specific project task. This actually makes the teams working on the project more efficient when a large chunk of work is broken down into smaller tasks and milestones set for each task. The time limits set should not be unrealistic as this may place undue stress on project resources, resulting in the poor quality of work and team member burnout.
As a project manager, meeting your team on a regular basis to look for and communicate project updates, is necessary. This will show the successes and issues.
If you are working in a virtual project team, find an appropriate time that is suitable for the majority of team members. Working across different time zones can be a challenge. To ensure that the same people in the team are not subjected to the middle of the night conference call, again and again, rotate the meeting times. 10 Project Management Tips that Guide Your Employees
A project generates a lot of paperwork with several documents created and amended. Managing them can become a task if you do not keep track. You may end up wasting a lot of precious time looking for the latest version of a document.
A proper filing system with clearly defined document naming conventions will ensure a consistent approach to project file management. Check first whether your organization has set naming conventions. If not, follow some of the best practice examples. Just make sure to be consistent in any approach you take.
The most important skills that a project manager should have is to be able to delegate tasks efficiently. Once you have mastered the art, it’s easy to take the pressure off from your shoulders and give your team members a sense of responsibility and achievement. Instead of burdening each team member with a large chunk of work to be completed, break everything into smaller tasks.
Be clear when giving directions to your team and make sure each of them knows exactly what they are doing and when they need to complete it. Also make sure the person you are assigning the task to, has the correct information and ability to complete it.
In an ideal situation, issues will not arise during the project, particularly when there are strict timelines to adhere to. But this is rarely the case. To prevent your project plan go awry, develop and keep the risk and issues registers up to date along with addressing issues as soon as possible. If there is a serious issue threatening to stop your project in its tracks, following a predetermined process will reduce anxiety.
It will make it much easier to approach the problem objectively and find an appropriate solution. There should be regular two-way communication with key stakeholders to ensure there are no surprises along the way.
Last but not least, effective project management software should be kept handy for the use of project managers in today’s predominantly web-based world. Nothing can beat online software solutions if you are looking for a way to keep all your key documents in one place, share information with your team and manage tasks in a central hub.
10 Project Management Tips that Guide Your Employee
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