Project Management: Effective Planning and Execution
Project management plays a pivotal role in turning a company’s objectives from ideas into reality. By utilizing the latest innovative techniques, project managers can engage in smarter planning and resource management, reducing the time to delivery. Let’s see what this means exactly.
Understanding Project Management
Project management encompasses all aspects of planning and managing projects, from ideation to completion. You can apply it to one-time projects like organizing an educational webinar or ongoing activities such as developing new software.
Regardless of the scale, project management involves using a wide range of skills, tools, and resources to guide the project through the different phases of its lifecycle. Project managers take the lead when overseeing projects from start to finish and perform the following actions:
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Set goals
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Schedule tasks and timelines
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Manage individuals and teams
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Track progress
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Communicate with stakeholders
Effective project management is essential to any company’s success. But there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to it. Your project management style will depend on your project, industry, specific needs, and other factors.
Here are some of the most common project management approaches that you’re likely to encounter:
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Waterfall Project Management. Like a waterfall, progress flows in one direction in a step-by-step structure. Sequencing and timeline management are crucial for this strategy, as the team must complete every step before beginning the next one.
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Agile Project Management. This is a non-linear approach where you conduct multiple streams and phases of the project parallelly, allowing various team members to work on the project simultaneously. The agile method enables continuous iteration and improvement according to how well the project is progressing toward the deliverables.
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Lean Project Management. Lean management prioritizes the conservation of time and resources. Project managers adopting this approach should eliminate all activities, processes, or resources that don’t directly contribute to the project’s goals. Going lean requires you to map out value streams so that you can identify bottlenecks and pull in extra resources when your team is overburdened.
Key Elements of Project Planning
Project management involves a lot of moving parts. Thus, it’s crucial to engage in thoughtful project planning and map out your overall vision before putting teams to work.
The five main steps in project management are:
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Initiation
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Planning
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Executing
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Monitoring
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Closing
Each of these steps breaks down into sub-categories based on the project scope. But the three key elements of any project planning include:
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Identifying project goals and objectives: The whole team will benefit from having clear project goals to work toward, and written objectives help project managers monitor progress. Schedule regular review sessions to see if tasks and timelines are progressing as expected.
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Engaging stakeholders based on influence: A project’s failure or success directly affects stakeholders, whether clients, end users, or management. However, different stakeholders will have varying levels of interest and influence in the project. That’s why it’s critical to map out all the stakeholders involved and prioritize your level of engagement accordingly.
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Creating a realistic project timeline: Set a realistic timeline to keep things on track and avoid putting too much pressure on the members involved. Defining your project scope, creating a work breakdown structure (WBS), breaking each deliverable into tasks, determining project dependencies, and identifying project milestones will help you do so.
Executing Projects With Precision
When it comes to execution, don’t underestimate the power of collaboration and communication. Otherwise, you increase the risk of redundant work or incomplete tasks.
Here are some basic rules to follow to enhance transparency and collaboration among project contributors:
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Schedule consistent, focused meetings
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Assign roles and take ownership of tasks
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Encourage feedback and constructive criticism
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Establish well-defined goals and objectives
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Stay aligned with company values
Technology can be particularly helpful in modern project management. Many software and tools are available to optimize communication channels and keep everyone on the same page for task completion. In addition, using project management software is the best way to monitor progress and track the mountains of data you can analyze to streamline future project workflows.
Effective Resource Allocation
Resource allocation can make or break your project management strategy. Follow these tips to plan your budget effectively:
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Project your budgeting. Map out the entire budget and prioritize areas according to your financial constraints. Think about physical materials, equipment, tools, and facility usage. Also, plan for more intangible resources, such as costs related to intellectual property or building networks and brand reputation. Remember to set aside a percentage of your budget for contingency costs so that you have something to fall back on if things don’t go according to plan.
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Allocate costs of human resources. Budget for direct contributors who will work on your project day-to-day. Then, factor in costs for other involved parties, such as consultants, who may contribute only for a set period. Allocating a certain amount of the budget for training and development is another excellent practice, as it can help level up the skills and expertise of project team members and, thus, promote project success.
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Leverage technology. Project management tools can help you automate many calculations and budgeting tasks associated with resource allocation and marketing resource management (MRM). Some also offer real-time resource tracking and expense management to boost your efficiency.
Don’t forget to factor in scope creep when allocating resources. While it can be challenging to plan for, one way to combat scope creep is to use data from previous projects to make projections when budgeting.
Ensuring Quality in Project Delivery
Even the best plans are subject to adjustment based on unpredictable factors and timeline interruptions. Follow these best practices to maintain high quality in project delivery:
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Identify critical success factors and set matching key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess whether you’re reaching the mark.
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Schedule routine checkups to keep your team on track and ensure your goals align with organizational objectives at all times.
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Obtain feedback from internal and external stakeholders to evaluate current progress.
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Test and review sessions regularly throughout a project’s lifecycle to ensure you stay true to your original intentions, as it’s easy to get sidetracked in day-to-day operations.
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Continuously look for ways to improve your processes and strategies; reflect after team meetings and client feedback sessions and see how you can use these insights.
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Use quality project management software with the latest tools and technologies to help you plan, track, budget, and report on project progress.
Measuring Project Success
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are critical for evaluating a project’s success. By tracking KPIs, you can measure progress and generate reports that help you communicate the effectiveness of your project management strategy.
Project management KPIs fall into several categories depending on what you want to measure. Here are a few examples:
Budget KPIs
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Return on investment (ROI)
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Cost performance index (CPI)
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Earned value (EV)
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Budget variance
Time KPIs
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Time spent
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Resource utilization
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Schedule variance (SV)
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Schedule performance index (SPI)
Productivity KPIs
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Task completion on time
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Milestones completed on time
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Project velocity
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Conversion rate
Quality KPIs
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Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
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Net promoter score (NPS)
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Churn rate
Whatever KPIs you select, inform all your team members about your decision to keep everyone on the same page. Also, provide regular updates on how your project is stacking up against benchmarks as the timeline progresses.
Last but not least, take time to celebrate team wins and acknowledge high-performing individuals. At the same time, identify areas for improvement and lay out some suggestions for refining processes.
