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Project Management Engagement

5 Key Steps to Successful Project Management

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Managing your first project can be daunting. To simplify things, here are five steps critical to the successful management of a project:

Step 1: Initiate the Project by Defining the Scope

This phase typically begins with a business case where you will examine whether the project is feasible and important stakeholders will do their due diligence to help decide to approve the project or not.

Build the project infrastructure based on the problem that needs solving. Put in writing what the expected changes are. What is the end goal? Define the criteria for how the project success will be defined. Determine if there are potential limitations like funding, resources, and time.

Step 2: Create the Project Plan

The project plan is the core of your project and needs to involve all of the stakeholders and gain their buy-in. The project plan should provide direction over the project’s lifespan. Review the plan with status updates.

The project plan should contain performance measures and any process changes that need to take place and who and what will these changes impact. Define how to address risks should they arise. Determine how your resources will be acquired and maintained and how to reward you team members for achieving milestones. Describe the training required for everyone involved in the project. State your expectations.

Step 3: Initiate the Project Plan

It is the project manager’s job to initiate the project plan and identify adjustments as demanded. When you launch the project, confirm the people who will complete the tasks in the project plan and ensure that everyone understands their role and is aware of the process for communication. Inform team members about beginning and end dates and how they will be affected, and keep them updated on the progress.

Manage the project team by providing sufficient training, monitoring resources, and resolving issues.
Use project management software to create, execute and control projects and facilitate communications.

Project management software like TeamHeadquarters gives project managers a full picture of resource availability across all work (not just projects) and trends before they assign them to tasks.

Step 4: Evaluate and Document Progress

Your time will be spent monitoring and communicating to allow you to assess and document the project’s progress and limitations effectively. When you prepare the documents and reports, ensure they are accurate. Catalog problems as they happen, and make certain the key stakeholders are informed about these issues.

If a problem arises, consider the alternatives and the potential effects. Present the situation and the proposed solutions to your stakeholders. Document any new information you’ve learned to your and re-evaluate periodically.

Step 5: Reach Your Goal, Deliver and Close the Project

The final step in project management involves the evaluation of the project’s achievements and failures which are crucial for the success of future of projects. Deliver the results to the stakeholders and prepare a project closure report with input from the entire team involved in the project.

Include and observations on how to improve on future projects through lessons learned. Distribute the valuable knowledge gained by the experience so that you can apply the positive actions to future projects while avoiding the negative incidents. When a project is correctly concluded, team members are motivated and feel empowered to tackle future projects.

Project management, even for first-time project managers, can be challenging. That’s why project management software, TeamHeadquarters, was designed to help you build projects quickly, make status reports, and produce and disseminate project updates easier.

Click here for your free demo of TeamHeadquarters.

How to Measure Project Management Success

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There are several factors to consider when measuring project management success. Yes, the primary goal of every project is to meet the deadline and stay within budget. However, whether or not the project delivered value to the business is also an excellent gauge for success.

Measuring the success of a project once it has come to completion should be routine practice in every organization. A proper assessment of the project’s effectiveness will offer valuable insight and lessons that can be implemented in future projects.

Here are six factors for measuring the success of a project

Stick to the Schedule

If a product launch date or budget relies on the project, there is typically a hard deadline to meet. Ultimately, the success of a project is based primarily on whether it was completed on time or not.

Indeed, there are clients that may be more flexible with deadlines as they view a quality product is much more important than being on schedule. However, committing to a timeline is still ideal to keep team members productive.

Complete the Scope of the Project

The scope is the intended result of the project and everything required to bring it to completion. Your success can be measured based on whether the project was achieved based on the objectives within the given framework.

Get Weekly Satisfaction Ratings

Start by asking the clients how satisfied they were with the results and if their needs were met. To avoid taking up too much of their time, ask them to rate your weekly performance rather than asking them to provide you with a lengthy description of their findings.

Succeed as a Team

Don’t overlook your team. How they feel the project went tells you a lot about its level of success. And because they were closest to the project, they may be able to provide you with insight about roadblocks and how they can be avoided in the future.

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Building PMO Success

Stay On-Budget

Completing the project within budget is probably one of the biggest indicators of whether a project was a success or not. Your team should always be aware of how the money is spent and the roles they play in ensuring they stay on-budget. Clients are typically given a quote at the start of the project, and they expect that you stick to it.

Exceed Quality Expectations

The goal shouldn’t be just to meet expectations but to exceed them. With all projects, do track quality so that you can make adjustments for your future projects. Consider the value of your work as a way to advertise your capabilities. Let the quality of your completed projects be your calling card.

An excellent way to guarantee that you are not only completing your projects but also measuring your progress along the way is by using project management software. Project management software such as TeamHeadquarters provides project management services for all areas of your organization – not just IT.

With TeamHeadquarters, you’ll have total control of project ticket queues, integrated email agents, sophisticated and comprehensive resource management, task scheduling, project groups, portfolio dashboards, integrated status reporting, integrated and customizable reporting, the inclusion of customers on project tasks and tickets and a Customer Self-Service Portal.

For a free demo of TeamHeadquarters, click here

Tips for Successful Project Management

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Successful Project management is a difficult undertaking, often more complex than you might realize before taking on the responsibility. It requires strategic and tactical planning, as well as time, task and team organization and oversight — particularly for complex, long-term projects with many moving parts. [Read more…] about Tips for Successful Project Management

Should I Trust My Project Team?

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This seems like an easy question, doesn’t it? Should I trust my project team? Well, of course I should. They’re on my side. They have my back. They want the same things as I want. They’re trying to accomplish the same things on the project. If we don’t work together toward the same goals then we all suffer and the project suffers and likely fails.

[Read more…] about Should I Trust My Project Team?

Information Technology Project Manager | Getting things done!

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The Go To person in IT – The IT Project Manager

The saying “no man is an island” is so true when it comes to strategic thinking and action in business. You can’t always go it alone but rely on the subject matter experts (SME) to manage certain aspects of the day-to-day business, to get things done.

Without these SME’s to rely on, you have would have to wear many “hats” ranging from accounting, sales, marketing, through to customer support. Taking ownership and driving projects to a successful conclusion is what structures a business and moves it forward.

Defining and implementing business process and infrastructure without a project management function in your business means you will be responsible for managing all the tasks associated with the project; budgeting, planning, process, people, meetings, implementation, timing etc. the list goes on… which can all get on top of you very quickly.

When rolling out IT related projects it is critical to assign an IT project manager to keep things focused and on track. IT help desk are event-driven; many of these events are unplanned i.e. Help desk staff deal with calls for support as users experience problems. There are also planned IT projects that need to be implemented that are critical to support business continuity or efficiency; Server upgrades, network infrastructure upgrades, new CRM roll-out, etc. that are time critical and require participation from many business departments to succeed.

This is where the assigned IT project manager is an invaluable resource as the “go to” person for all IT projects as communication and teamwork are vital to achieve success.

Communication is critical. Ensure there are at least weekly discussions with your IT project manager that include all the key stakeholders in the project, and regular discussion of new issues between meetings. Keeping everyone on the same page will allow you to keep the project deliverables and timing on track.

It is important that the IT project manager keep the IT Helpdesk staff in the loop on the status of IT projects. This way an accurate time-line on projects can be given to anyone inquiring on the IT help desk.

Business is about teamwork, you cannot do everything alone.

Who is your “Go To” Project manager in IT?
Do you have one?

Tips

The best advice you’ll never get

  • Even though you were once a developer, that doesn’t mean your developers won’t get things past you
  • The project budget is harder to manage than you might think
    • Keep the project in good standing because you’ll likely be handing it off to someone else.