Managing Project Tips for Success
This post may sound elementary and overly simple, but it is something that even senior and more experienced project managers get wrong.
The following information are the “Basics” of project management, which all project managers should learn to master.
In the Marine Corps, we preached understanding the basics of Marine Corps tactics. We called it “Brilliance in the Basics”. If you can understand and employ the basics, you will be prepared to handle the situation when more complicated scenarios come into play.
So, let us start by stating the importance of project management.
The Importance of Project Management and Managing Projects
The PMBOK defines Project Management, 7th edition, as:
The application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project management refers to guiding the project work to deliver the intended outcomes. Project teams can achieve the outcomes using a broad range of approaches (Predictive, hybrid, adaptive)
This definition emphasizes applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to navigate project activities efficiently. Understanding the temporary nature of projects underscores the importance of effective project management in ensuring swift progress from Point A to Point B at optimal costs.
Project management is how an idea, which will become a project, becomes value-added for the initiating organization. The reason why project management is important is because ideas and organizations would fail without it.
The 7 Tips For Effective Project Management
Now that we understand project management’s significance let’s explore seven crucial tips that pave the way for success. These guidelines provide a comprehensive roadmap for beginners and experienced managers, from setting clear objectives to celebrating achievements.
Set Clear Objectives
Create a Detailed Plan
Communicate Effectively
Manage Risks Proactively
Monitor Progress Continuously
Evaluate and Learn from Each Project
Celebrate Achievements
If you can do all these, you are already on the right foot when managing your projects.
1. Set Clear Objectives
Define Project Goals and Desired Outcomes
Starting up front, you need to know your project outcome and the goals associated with reaching that outcome. Even within agile, your project planning requires up-front planning to ensure that your work will bring value to your organization.
To align your goals and outcomes, we use the project scope.
Ideally, your project scope is already solidified in your project charter or initiating documents. You do not want to start driving down the road without a destination. The project’s scope aligns with the planning and ensures that all objectives align with a singular outcome.
Once your scope is defined, you can jump into what you want to do next by developing the desired objectives that allow you to meet that overall project’s goal.
Ensure Objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART)
Our objectives will be what we must accomplish to meet our project outcome or goal. A best practice for objectives is to ensure that they are SMART.
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Specific: We want our objectives to be clear and direct – anyone on our project team should be on the same page and able to understand what it is and what we are trying to accomplish.
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Measurable: We want to be able to measure the progress of our objectives.
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Actionable: We want enough resources and equipment to manage the work and meet our objectives.
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Relevant: If the objective is irrelevant to our organization, our scope, and overall bringing value to our organization or customer, we might not need it.
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Time-Based: We need to set a timeline for our objectives. We want to avoid Parkinson’s Law where our work expands to fill time, we want time-based, specific timeframes for completing our work.
Example of a SMART Objective
An example of a SMART objective would be “to release an upgraded version of our customer relationship management (CRM) software within the next four months, ensuring a 15% improvement in user interface responsiveness and a 20% increase in overall system efficiency.
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Specific: Enhance the responsiveness of the CRM software’s user interface.
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Measurable: Achieve a 15% improvement in user interface responsiveness and a 20% increase in overall system efficiency, measured through performance metrics and user feedback.
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Achievable: The project aligns with the organization’s strategic goals, and the development team has the required expertise and resources.
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Relevant: Improving the CRM software aligns with customer needs, enhancing user experience and overall system efficiency, contributing to organizational growth.
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Time-bound: Set the objective to complete within the next four months, providing a specific timeframe for developing and releasing the upgraded CRM software.
What we see here is this objective aligns with a SMART objective. It ensures clarity, measurability, achievability, relevance, and a specific timeline for a software development project.
So, remember, setting clear objectives up front is the foundational compass for a successful project. By defining goals and outcomes with precision and aligning them through a well-defined project scope, you can establish a project plan that focuses on meeting your overall objective.
The implementation and usage of SMART objectives further enhance your chance of having a successful project. The well-rounded, thought-through, up-front objectives keep a project on course, avoiding scope creep.
SMART objectives also lay the groundwork for your project plan— which we will overview in the next section of this post.
2. Create a Detailed Project Plan
No project can thrive without a robust project plan. This plan is the roadmap, guiding teams through tasks, timelines, and responsibilities. This process, guided by the steps set in the PMBOK, has proved successful across multiple industries.
Whether opting for traditional or agile methodologies, a comprehensive project plan aligns with the quality of objectives, making the execution phase smoother.
Develop a Comprehensive Project Plan: Outlining Tasks, Timelines, and Responsibilities
There are two ways you can accomplish this task. For your project life cycle here, you must determine which project management methodology you will utilize to meet your objectives.
The two project management methodologies that we will refer to in this article are traditional project management and agile project management.
Traditional Project Management
For traditional project management, our project lifecycle will look closer to the picture above with a Gantt Chart and significant upfront planning. The overall project process for a traditional project operates like a waterfall where one task’s completion leads to the task below it starting.
Like a waterfall, you go farther down your list as you move along.
Within this methodology, you spend much of your time within the ” Initiation ” project management process.” Here, tasks and responsibilities are clearly defined across the project team members, and the project schedule is defined with a set start, endpoint, and various phases.
A project manager and their project team will spend much of their time developing a detailed and comprehensive plan with all the timelines, tasks, and project deadlines.
To be successful in this methodology, you must have a well-thought-out project budget with a stringent change control process. Your project costs must be monitored heavily, and your timeline and schedule must always be protected.
For this methodology to work, your detailed plan is what you will leverage for project success. The project manager is deeply involved with maintaining the schedule and monitoring the budget.
Agile Project Management
This project management methodology also has a comprehensive plan outlining tasks and responsibilities, but the timeline is built differently. In agile, we build project progress more along providing value early and quickly vs. sticking with a plan.
Up-front planning does not go away in agile project management, though. You must still develop a plan; agile does not mean just flying by the seat of your pants. It does mean you are more open to change and, depending on the agile project management framework used, are more or less willing to work on a set schedule.
Pictured above, I have a Kanban board, a popular agile framework. Kanban, although its own framework, can be used within other agile frameworks. It is the ideal picture of transparency and, setting the project timeline/schedule.
Starting in the far left column, you put the “Stories,” which are small tasks. A project team can build these stories in multiple ways; like in a brainstorming session where they put as many stories as they can in a short time.
These are ranked from highest importance to lowest – building the project schedule. There is a significant difference between this and a Gantt chart, though. Within agile and the kanban, change is accepted readily by moving tasks higher or lower on the board – based on the progression of the project, the value of the task, and the need for the task.
Not to go down a rabbit hole around agile, this methodology still requires a comprehensive plan with outlined tasks and responsibilities that build a timeline for project success. It is only open to change as long as it is directed towards increasing value for the customer.
3. Communicate Effectively
Anyone who has been in a relationship would agree that communication is key. For a project manager managing stakeholder expectations, communication is the key to a project successfully meeting its goals.
In project management, the same concept applies. You must be able to communicate with your team members and stakeholders; we mostly do this through regular updates.
Establish Open Communication Channels with Team Members and Stakeholders
Internal Communication
When you are the project manager for a project within your company, you cannot work in the dark and avoid eye contact with everyone you see. Your project’s success relies on your ability to communicate with your team and stakeholders.
When establishing communication channels with your team, it is critical that the entire team can use the platform you use. Team members need to be able to communicate with each other just as much as they need to communicate outside the team with more senior stakeholders.
There are multiple ways to do this, but some favorite in-person ways of internal team communication are whiteboards, kanban boards, project management software, emails, video and voice calls, instant messaging, and meetings.
There is no perfect solution for internal communication – the trick is that your team understands the internal communication method to be used, is proficient in its use (especially with project management software) and is documented in the Communication Management Plan!
Stakeholder Communication
The PMBOK defines a stakeholder as:
“An individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or portfolio.”
You are not going to work on a project and not have stakeholders. Therefore, you will have someone to report on the status of your project constantly. If not, you are probably working for yourself, but it is still good to take a moment to evaluate where you are and where you are going. This is one time in life you can communicate with yourself and not sound crazy!
At the least, your project will have a project sponsor, a direct stakeholder you must communicate with intensely. They are generally an executive within your company and will be your lifeline when you need to escalate an issue. You must have weekly, if not daily, contact with your project sponsor on the project’s health and where you could use some support.
During the planning project phase and stakeholder analysis – you will determine the level of influence and interest in your project. During this analysis, you will determine one of four levels of stakeholders:
High Influence/High Interest = Key Stakeholders; you want to keep them managed closely and updated on the entire project.
High Influence/Low Interest = Keep Satisfied; you want to keep them informed and anticipate their needs
Low Influence/High Interest = Keep Informed; you want to keep them informed and monitor
Low Influence/Low Interest = Monitor Minimally; you can use a minimal amount of contact; keep them involved with the essential information
Once you know how much influence and interest your stakeholders have, you can start building the communication plan associated with the different levels of stakeholders.
Communication Channels
Before we discuss how to keep your stakeholders informed, let’s discuss an important and eye-opening concept in stakeholder and communication management. This concept is around an important concept, communication channels.
Communication channels have an easy formula: N(N-1)/2
N = Number of team members/stakeholders
So, if you have just yourself, your number of channels is: 1(1-1)/2 = 1 channel
But, if you have five team members/stakeholders, the channels are 5(5-1)/2 = 10 channels
If you have 20 team members/stakeholders, the channels are 20(20-1)/2 = 190 channels!
As you can see, the more people you add to your team/stakeholder list, the more channels of communication you have to monitor. As the project manager, you must manage communication across these channels.
So, how do you monitor and ensure all these channels are up-to-speed? Through regular updates on the project status and prompt addressing of risks.
Provide Regular Updates on Project Status and Address All Risks Promptly
A great way to provide all your stakeholders with the necessary project updates is through consistent and easy-to-digest status updates and status boards.
Status updates can come in many ways. You can provide email updates and meeting updates. Using the detailed stakeholder analysis we referenced above – you can utilize this list to determine which stakeholders are on the emails and which are invited to weekly and monthly calls.
How you do this is up to you and your company’s best practices/rules. Again, there is no perfect way to do these updates. Still, they should at least be consistent with information and format – allowing the stakeholders throughout the project to look at and understand the status of the projects quickly.
Status boards are another way to communicate visually. Popular more in agile project management, status boards are permanent visual boards in the workplace that anyone can walk up to and understand where you are in your project with stories in the backlog, stories in progress, and stories complete.
Status boards can also be electronic, which is popular in virtual teams. These status boards are maintained across the team so anyone can pull down their tasks, complete them, and post them to the board for everyone to see.
How you provide the information is up to you, your team, your stakeholders, and the policies of your company – the critical tasks for yourself as a project manager is to ensure that all your products, your status updates, and board updates are being completed and sent to the right individuals.
Keeping all of this together can get quickly overwhelming, so you need to learn to delegate your tasks wisely to your team members.
4. Managing Risks Proactively
As a beginner or even as a senior project manager, risk management is critical to your project’s success. Even the “smallest” risk can become a show-stopper for your project. Risks should be taken seriously and managed proactively, or you will respond reactively – which could either increase costs, extend your schedule, or even end your project unsuccessfully.
As long as you simply follow the five risk management steps – you will succeed with managing your risks!
Develop a risk management plan; I will say this again for clarification – develop a risk management plan.
It is easy to skip this step. Your planning will move quickly, and you will want to take some shortcuts, but the risk management plan (or any of the project management plans) is not something you want to skip, or it will come back to haunt you later in your project.
When building a risk management plan, depending on your organization and size, The Practice Standard for Risk Management states you are going to want to include:
Introduction
Risk Management Methodology
Risk Management Organization
Roles and Responsibilities
Stakeholder Risk Tolerance (good to have that stakeholder analysis from earlier)
Criteria for Success
Risk Management Tools and Guidelines for Use
Thresholds and Corresponding Definitions
Templates
Communication Plan
Strategy
Risk Breakdown Structure
Use the Risk Management Plan to Build the Risk Register
Putting a plan in place for your team to manage risks, identifying risks, and respond to risks will ensure that throughout project execution, you and your project team will not have to worry about a risk ruining your project.
Once you have a plan and move out of the project initiation phase and into project planning, you will need to start identifying risks.
There are many different ways to do an initial project risk analysis. Enough to say that going deeply into the topic will have to be done in another blog. The important part is pulling your project team members together and analyzing your project risks.
During this time, remember, no risk is too small or too ridiculous, take all options and put them into a risk register. Once in the risk register, you can start going through the process of
Identification
Quantitative Risk Analysis
Plan Risk Responses
Monitor and Control Risks
This process will continue throughout the project, but any good project manager would go into detail during this project management process, setting the foundation for the execution of your project.
A book I recommend for increasing your understanding of why planning your risk up front is critical to your project is: “Risk Up Front: Managing Projects in a Complex World” by Adam Josephs & Brad Rubenstein.
Monitor Risks Throughout the Project and Implement Risk Response Strategies as Needed
No matter how successful your work was during planning, you will want to continue identifying, analyzing, responding, monitoring, and controlling your risks throughout your project’s execution.
When putting the risks in your risk register, you must identify whether the risks are threats or opportunities. For each threat and opportunity, you will want to determine how you will plan the response to the risk. The PMBOK explains there are eight ways to respond to risks:
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Avoid a Threat, Exploit an Opportunity
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Transfer a Threat, Share an Opportunity
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Mitigate a Threat, Enhance an Opportunity
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Accept a Threat or an Opportunity
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Escalate a Threat or an Opportunity
Within the risk register, per risk, you will determine which response strategy you will employ once the risk is triggered. After responding to the risk, you must continue to monitor and control, ensuring that your response strategy worked and did not create new, unforeseen risks.
Applying the above risk management processes to your project will ensure you are set up for success through project closure. And its even better when your organization puts a risk manager to supervise this area – giving you time to focus on the bigger deliverable.
5. Monitor Progress Continuously
When you manage projects, you need to manage progress. This will be expected as you update your senior management and various stakeholders – and will be necessary to ensure your project is heading in the right direction.
Track Project Progress Against Milestones
You develop a plan during project planning – your project’s progress should be analyzed against this plan. We analyze project progress through dreadful earned value management (EVM).
EVM is a series of formulas used to determine where you are vs. where you are going. This will be another post in the future, but if you cannot wait to see all these formulas, check out this blog here by Praveen Malik.
The takeaway is that you want to monitor your progress throughout your project. You have to know where you will ensure you make it to your destination, and tracking your project through earned value management is no different.
Adjust Project Plan to Get to a Successful Project Outcome
While monitoring progress against your milestones, you might need to adjust your schedule.
When adjusting your schedule, you can:
Fast-Track – Shifting sequenced work to complete in parallel
Crashing – Shorten the duration of a task with people, overtime, or expediting work
Executing these scheduling adjustments could have budget impacts, but they also allow any projects with schedule issues to meet a successful and on-time project delivery.
6. Evaluate and Learn from Each Project
You will not always be a beginner project manager. Eventually, you will grow more senior and have to supervise other project managers. To ensure you are ready to do this, you must learn from your successes and failures throughout all your projects.
The project management process has a way to build these lessons learned through the project closing procedures. This is the time to take a non-judgemental and unbiased look at yourself, your team, and your actions throughout the project.
Conduct a Project Review and Identify The Good, Bad, and Ugly
When doing your project reviews, we all know we want to evaluate what went good and bad, but you also want to review the ugly parts of the project.
As an instructor for the Marines at 29 Palms, California, I led a small team of trainers during live-fire training exercises. This training was highly complex and dangerous – and my team was responsible in ensuring the training was valuable and also safe.
Every day after training, even if we had been going for 15+ hours and it was still hot out in the Mohave desert, we took the time to review the day and identify the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from the day’s performance. During this event, we also had a rule: rank was not exempt from being called out for anything bad or ugly.
I encouraged my team to critique me as much as we critiqued them.
You will need to do this during your reviews. Management, your project sponsor, and yourselves as the project manager are not exempt from critique. It is necessary to learn and to understand how things went bad, why you missed a risk that was realized at a critical point in your timeline, or how you were able to save money by reducing your timeline.
Do not be ashamed, and do not let your team be ashamed of their mistakes. Use this moment to turn them into learning events for your future projects. As Alexandre Pope said, “To err is human.” we all make mistakes – and that is ok, as long as we are willing to learn from them.
7. Celebrate Achievements
Lastly, ensure that you encourage celebrations throughout the project when you hit a milestone or succeed at closing out a successful project. This increases morale and ensures work stays at a high level throughout the project lifecycle.
Recognize and Celebrate Project Milestones and Successes
As you hit milestones, celebrate with your team. This does not always have to be the stereotypical pizza lunch or drinks after work. It can be as simple as acknowledging from leadership how well the project is moving along – and the work being done from the bottom up across the team.
During my latest project, I had a struggle moving it along. There was a time when we didn’t know if we would even make it, but when our COO made an official announcement on our project. A release was made to the media – you can bet we shared that information with family, friends, and others who hadn’t been aware of our project.
Acknowledgment is just as great as physical rewards. Acknowledging the hard work and dedication of the teams who put all the hours into making that valuable outcome possible deserves acknowledgment.
It is up to you, the project manager, to escalate and make sure you push to get acknowledgment for your team, especially if you don’t see actions by your leadership to do so.
Review of the 7 Tips for Effective Project Management
In the end, effective project management is a responsibility that, when executed diligently, yields rewarding outcomes. As Robert Collier aptly puts it,
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.” — Robert Collier
By adhering to the seven tips and embracing a continuous learning mindset, beginner project managers can set themselves on a trajectory toward success in managing projects.
The 7 tips are:
Set Clear Objectives
Create a Detailed Plan
Communicate Effectively
Manage Risks Proactively
Monitor Progress Continuously
Evaluate and Learn from Each Project
Celebrate Achievements
Follow these tips, study your PMBOK, and lean on your mentors – and you, too, will be successful at your projects as a beginner project manager.
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