For any company project managers have a major contribution to its development. They have a critical role to play which comprises clients conversation, team building, planning, monitoring and more.
In the year ahead project managers jobs will be in high demand. In fact, as per a report by the Project Management Institute, it is estimated that companies will have 2 million project-focused roles for candidates by 2027.
Apart from hiring project mangers for your team, it also important to acknowledge and incorporate new trends and tips of project management.
When it comes to project management, there is not one mantra for delivering back to back successful projects. There are multiple strategies or methodologies which will help your company deliver high resulting projects.
Different organizations or companies leverage different tactics, practise as well as unique exercises. You too need to find what tactics most suit your company. But before you do that have a look at some of the common and result orienting tips big techies use out there:
1. Know the project inside out
Establishing a strong foundation will help you efficiently execute the project at all stages. Start with defining your clickets and stakeholders. Then understand the expectation of your client for the project thoroughly. Next, build a powerful plan that defines the process of the project as well as work responsibilities of team members.
Set different milestones and objectives will help the team to track the project success and measure success criteria.
2. Ensure All Stakeholders Understand the Requirements
Clients’ requirement is the first step of project development, any miscommunication will make you goof up in the later stages. Hence it is crucial for you to thoroughly understand your clients’ requirement and you must also explain your take on the project development.
All the goals and objectives should be clearly explained or communicated to the right prospects which comprise team members, managers, sponsors, clients, etc.
Both client and team members should have the same scope of the project, if not it can lead you to great trouble. Hence clearly defined and assign j project deliverables, goals and quality standards to all your team members before you jump-start the project.
3. Get a Qualified Project Manager
Not everyone has the time to monitor project progress on daily basis. Hence a qualified project manager should be appointed who pay attention to the project progress. Make sure the project manager has all the skills and expertise to handle a team and delivers successful projects without leaving any stone unturned.
One of the core responsibilities of your project manager should be team management. He/She must know how to tackle different personalities in the team and allocate work to the right candidate. The project manager should be able to establish and maintain a productive and fun environment.
The team manager should endow the decisions of all the team members. He/She should expertise in gaining clients' trust and communicate their expectation to his team to work in unison to achieve a shared goal.
He/she should be able to entrust the team with their decisions and should always come to assist when something goes out of hand. He/She should be capable of gaining the client’s trust, communicating client’s requirements accurately to team members and making sure they execute it well through a common goal and team effort.
4. Define Milestone
Dividing the project into smaller milestones makes it more likely to deliver successful projects. It will not only make the process simpler but also makes it easy to track progress and make necessary changes.
Give your project a lifecycle dividing it into phases like initiation, planning, execution and closure. You can run an evaluation test after each phase instead of doing it in the end. This will help you detect easily and save productive time.
The project milestone should include every detail of the project including parts of products, technical documents and more. This will not help you achieve excellence but also meet your client satisfaction. Project Milestone simplifies the work of candidates to a great extent.
5. Monitor and track progress regularly
Project management comprises several parameters and tasks, hence it’s common for team members to lose track of project progress.
To avoid such scenarios companies should encourage employees to indulge the habit of progress tracking and monitoring daily or regular intervals. This practice will save you from last-minute freak-outs and enable you to resolve errors before it’s too late.
The current technology has simplified the work of project managers to great extent. You will now find several software management tools that help you efficiently execute a plethora of tasks such as file-sharing, feedback, communication, work allocation, time-management, collaboration and more.
Select a tool that fits your business criteria and works well for your team. Some of the popular names of project management tools include Asana, Trello, Jira, ProofHub, Zoho Projects, Nifty. These tools provide users valuable insights into clients and their end-users, show valuable resources, progress as well as risk factors.
6. Look out for potential risks
Even though tracking potential risk is an aspect of project monitoring, considering it as individual practice is also highly beneficial to the company. The team involved in risk management must have set clear criteria on how to manage risks; this includes risk identification with deep analysis and monitoring.
When it comes to finding error or risk, even the smallest error should not be ignored. As it can turn into big problems in no time affecting everything from scheduling, budgeting, team morales as well as deliverables quality. Thus risk management is one of the core aspects of project management which should not be avoided.
7. Consolidate all project-related information
Project documentation all you to save experience and knowledge of your company so you can leverage it in future projects and boost productivity with minimum time and efforts.
While you are documenting data, make sure that information is easily accessed by right prospects fitted for the role. The documented data will work as a powerful resource for all the candidates managing the project. It benefits both the existing team and future candidates joining the company.
8. Practice effective time management
Companies often fail in time management because they solely rely on a pre-defined time frame. In most cases project doesn’t seem to follow the exact specification, there might be an error or lack of resource delaying the whole process. Hence you must always consider extra time for changes and resolving errors.
In order to wisely manage your time, create a to-do list which will let you keep your focus on the achievements as objects of projects and clients. When running on strict deadlines, define critical project milestones and perform a real evaluation at the end of each phase.
9. Evaluate the project when complete
In order to improve your project management skills and perform better for the next project, you must learn something new and do not repeat the mistakes from the past. Project management process evaluation at the project end is one one the best practices. It will help the team to look into their performance and learn the next venture.
That’s all folks! These are some of the most practised methodologies for top app development companies and software development companies out there. All of these are pretty simple practices which beginners can incorporate as well. Contact app designer for your future project.
Ankit Thakor is a marketer by trade and a football player by passion. He is a Saas Marketing Specialist at SoftwareWorld. He specializes in using compelling content to capture consumer dollars for world-class SaaS brands, including Zoho, Freshworks, ClickUp, and more.
