Ten Things You Need to Learn From Successful Project Management

Project Management is all about identifying and monitoring the progress of a specific project and using a handful of project management tool for effective traceability and process interventions. There are many factors which will cause a project to be successful or otherwise. We need to always learn from the past experience and ensure that good practices are always there to behold the success of a project.

1. Project Manager is all about making the project happen
It is a discipline of initiating, planning, executing, and managing resources with the goal of completing specific deliverables within budget, quality and time.

A successful project manager is one who can envision the entire project from start to finish, and have the prowess to realize this vision by keeping pace with the business and IT teams.

2. In any project, identification of the key metrics are important

The team needs to define the metrics which are appropriate to represent the whole project lifecycle, especially those which are important to the Business stake-holders. Key metrics like cost, revenue, quality , defects, CPB, ROI, net accuracy , MWD etc are some of the key metrics which are commonly used in projects.

3. Select an effective and user-friendly tool for your project
One of them being Project Management 2.0 which democratizes project management, it makes companies more agile, projects more controllable and people more productive by eliminating the need for extra meetings, phone calls, and e-mail, thus saving you time and letting you focus on getting the necessary done. With project management 2.0 tools, this knowledge is shared and available to everybody on the team at any given moment in time.

4. It is imperative to be putting the right type of people in the right place
Remember that the toughest will survive. The ability to make things happen is a combination of knowing how to be a catalyst or driver in a variety of different situations, and having the courage to do so. The ability to drive is so important to some that it’s used as a litmus test in hiring project managers.

A project manager need to be agile and flexible enough to adapt his skills and knowledge to the situations at hand, and find ways to drive issues to closure.

5. Identify what are the items which are of priority
Things which we must do and cannot possibly succeed without will need to be assigned as priority 1. These need to be taken very seriously as these definitely need to get done as the project will die off without having these priority 1 items fixed.

Priorities 2 are things which are secondarily important and need to get done but not urgent ; while those with priority 3 is actually not that important at all.

6. In project management terminology, the critical path analysis is important
It is the shortest sequence of work that can complete the project. In critical path analysis, a diagram or flowchart is made of all work items, showing which items are dependent on which others and it will show where the bottlenecks are in the diagram as well.

Sometimes, a relatively unimportant component on its own can be the critical dependency that prevents some important work from getting to completion. One will be able to identify the critical path by performing critical path analysis.

7. Planning is very important
It is imperative to make sure proper planning has taken place ahead of time before the real project activities kicks in. The finalized plan should be shared with the whole team so that everyone understands the big picture and what to achieve and target for, and the implications if delays are experienced.

Important guidelines for planning include:

• Plan the milestones and not the tasks
• Break your milestones into small enough deliverables that you can track well
• Assign each mini-milestone to only one lead- Clear responsibility makes it easier to get stuff done
• Plan for weekly discussions to share latest updates among the team. Listen to each of the leads and provide advice when you are asked to. Respect their decision made for each of their responsible sessions or area.
• Share the risk management plan with your clients and stake-holders.

8. Risk Management Plan
There are risks to any endeavor, and no project is of exception. In order to manage these risks well, first, identify what they are; then rank them by likelihood and severity and identify where the project threshold lies for each risk. Someone who has a healthy dose of skepticism will be the best candidate to lead the risk management plan,

9. Do Not Micromanage
The ideal project leaders should have great sense of rationality and flexibility at the same time. Some project managers can be overly analytical and invest too much time in perfecting details, when they should really focus on achieving milestones and the completion of the project. A Flexible project management requires a balance of both hard and soft skills.

10. Open Communication
Sincere and open Communication is vital in all aspects of project management. Adhere to a policy of open communication, encouraging members to voice out opinions and concerns are the best approach. This will eliminate guessing and doubting as well as misunderstanding between team members.