How PMs Enable Project Success

Managing projects successfully is not a choice anymore. Project Management is as much about strategy as it is about being tactical.

A lot goes into getting your house in order and the ducks aligned to meet your project goals.

Projects are meant to take your business forward, make your company more agile in delivering its products and services and to achieve financial success at the end.

And the Project Manager is at the heart of all the action. He is the string master. And if he doesn’t do his job right, everything crumbles.

Why a Project Manager?

The project environment is very different from that of a typical day to day operations. The landscape has changed. It’s just not possible to know everything.

The project management turf is changing, and it’s changing faster than ever now. New techniques, frameworks, and tools are disrupting traditional players and undoing long-held beliefs.

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Usually, you don’t need a complex methodology for small businesses. But when it comes to managing a project, a Project manager can do wonders for you. It’s seen that the majority of high-performing projects are led by project managers.

Having a Project manager increases the chances of a project to be successful and profitable.

He is seen as a catalyst for result-driven project execution.

His expertise helps in analyzing and giving efficient solutions to boost productivity in organizations. Also, there are other sectors where a project manager can excel….shooting up your growth in the coming years.

Plan and Schedule Management

The project manager captures the objective and vision of the project and gives it purpose and direction.

Taking the right steps begin with making a plan and sticking to it, come what may!

Savvy project managers; depute significant thought and efforts before taking the plunge. They focus on the primary objective, what is required to achieve them and how.

To this effect, they start with identifying the right stakeholders, decision-makers, vetting their requirements and timelines at which they would want the project delivered.

Based on these inputs, they build a robust project execution plan, account for the required project team, the skills to fit into the desired delivery schedule.

He takes stock of available resources and plans out efficiently to ensure business success.

Project managers focus heavily on the scope throughout the lifecycle of the project by continuously tracking project KPIs and taking proactive measures where needed. This, in turn, saves efforts, costs and keeps the project within schedule.

Resource Management

The project manager works with the project team to identify the tasks which need to be undertaken in order to complete the project, and in what order they should be moved. This ensures that they are completed efficiently.

He can identify if the project is running over schedule and adjusts the team’s workload to deliver the project on time without any obstacle.

Doing resource allocation can help you in managing team workload. It can help you to check the task lists of team members and let you know who is overloaded with tasks and whose schedule has more capacity.

As a result, it increases the team’s effectiveness and later it leads to successful project completion.

Task Management

Having a robust task breakdown structure is critical in project execution. Tasks are the building blocks that make the whole project come together.

It requires breaking large complex tasks into smaller manageable sub-tasks and linking them together with the right task labels.

Knowing exactly how long it takes team members to complete a task is important too. This helps inadequate resource allocation and defining realistic timelines.

By allocating resources the project manager draws an accurate picture of actual time taken by the team members to complete the project.

Moreover, task management helps in transparent task assignments to the right resources minimizing delays with optimum quality.

Cost Management

Performing seamlessly and delivering timely and within budget are two critical success factors (CSFs) of any project. Effective resource utilization checks waste of money and boosts productivity.

Focusing on quality is another aspect to keep the project costs low. If the defects are on the rise, rework double leading to more hours that add to the cost that wasn’t planned plus impacts the delivery too.

The Project Manager tracks the performance of team members and it helps to assign tasks to the resource according to the required skills to keep costs low and to get the job done in less time.

Time Management

A project manager analyzes the hours the resource is putting on different activities over a period.

Accurate time tracking helps present the true picture of the project performance.

Performance analysis by the project manager paves way for better resource allocation and management.

This information is extremely useful for estimating future projects, especially if the activities are similar in nature.

Furthermore, the proper time entry enables the project manager to check whether or not the spent hour(s) is exceeding the estimated hour(s) and mitigating the risks.

Time is arguably the biggest challenge of any project. The project manager controls the project schedule by examining milestones, key dates and the critical path throughout the project lifecycle.

Potential Risk Management

In spite of good and meticulous planning, you can’t avoid potential risks in a project.

A project manager can look through the risks that the business is exposed to in its operating environment.

He can identify forthcoming risks –like environmental risks, market risks, regulatory risks, legal risks including some unprecedented ones and take appropriate measures to combat them.

After risk is recognized it needs to be analyzed. The scope of the risk factors must be determined.

It is also important to correlate the link between the risk and different factors within the organization and consequently make a plan to address them.

The purpose of risk management is to reduce the undesirable outcomes (impact) to a project due to a risk occurrence.

Communicate with stakeholders

Communication holds the key to the success or failure of any project.

It is crucial to communicate project progress to both the project team and the stakeholders once the project is up and running.

The project manager communicates the action plans and performances to business leaders in a regularly scheduled report.

Also, providing the team with a central platform to collaborate and share information readily in real-time is a huge plus.

Online collaborative software enables effective collaboration across all stages of the project enabling faster issue resolution and decision making.

Stakeholder engagement is another important aspect of project success. And project managers play a crucial role with excellent and timely communication to maintain consistent stakeholder interest.

From managing stakeholder expectations to keeping them invested in the project, your project management communication skills have the strongest influence on success.

Motivation and Productivity-

A project manager with the help of the right project management software can manage team productivity and motivation easily.

As a leader, he can share all project metrics and performance reports transparently enabling constructive feedback and improvement measures within the team.

Moreover, with the use of task management software, teams can see the real value of work delivered by them and stay motivated to contribute more towards project success.

Final Say

Project execution and delivery are full of complexities. Having the right skills and deploying them correctly needs discipline and experience.

Not all can fix the issues. Money alone can’t solve problems. You need competence.

“Incompetence, at 46%, is the most common reason why businesses fail”, according to a Statistic Brain study.

Experienced project managers have proven their mettle over time and contribute significantly to project success.

Project Managers are the driving force that brings all project stakeholders together, ensure that the agreed commitments of the team are delivered effectively and smoothly.

And in all of this, they have a trusted ally in project management software that runs with them, helps practice the right project management methodology and acts as a central source of truth!