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Today we are happy to introduce you to the project manager's guide to planning a perfect project.
Being a project manager is never an easy job, always under pressure, juggling too many business demands at once and never having enough time on your hands. However, it is a role that can leverage your business and bring maximum value to it. A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that 60% of project fiascoes were due to internal problems that could have been dodged with the help of a project manager. Many companies today have come to realize the importance of having a firm project management to save their company from any failures or mishaps that could occur. A separate Project Management Institute study predicted that between 2010 and 2020, around 16 million new project management vacancies will be made and the industry will grow by $6.61 trillion!
Having said all that, we can see that managing projects is actually quite the opposite of easy, but not impossible. So follow these seven tips to help you set your project up for success:
First you must determine your project objectives, people from outside you company or business can help you with this if a client or outside stakeholder is involved. The objectives of your project should define it properly to avoid a "scope creep" which is a continuous growth in the scope of your project leading to irrelevent information. you should also keep to your given budget and not leave out or ignore any of your project's aspects. Moreover, handing a well-put and good quality work before the deadline is very essential for a successful project.
Seeing eye to eye and sharing your expectations with everyone is an essential point in order to achieve a successful project, help your team achieve the objectives you have already pin pointed by providing a list of deliverables along with a deadline, determine the roles and tasks and provide an adequate communication strategy.
Manage your risks! You should always have a backup plan even if you have everything planned down to the finest detail, you never know what mishaps could befall your project, so don't let it take you by surprise and always be at the ready to minimize the effects of any dangers through risk management.
Although meetings are essential in project planning, they can take up a lot of your time, so doing too many of them with a 50/50 chance of them being productive isn't necessary or "healthy" for your business. A study by Verizon Conferencing showed that only 22% of meetings are said to be "extremely productive" and 44% of them "very productive" which leaves us with 34% of meetings not having much effect at all or just being slightly productive. So next time try using project planning software instead which can save you a lot of valuable time and be just as good as face to face meetings!
The kickoff meeting is verily the most important meeting in the project, so when planning this meeting make sure you keep in mind the following:
Pulling reports using your project management software program is crucial to ensuring a successful project. They help get you on the right path to achieving your budget goals and deadlines.
There are a variety of project management tools for you to choose from, so pick ones that work best for you and your business or at least select a tool that allows you to organize your tasks, facilitates better communication, alters your plan to fit your team's requirements and provides you with information on interface.
So being an incredible project manager is actually not an impossible task, all you need are the right skills and the correct tools that can help you reach your desired goals.