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project management

Remote Project Management

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Managing projects remotely requires effective communication, collaboration, organization and dedication.


During the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic many businesses have turned to working remotely. You need the right remote project management software to ensure that your remote team has a central space to communicate, collaborate, and organize work-related data.

Let’s look at each of these further…

Communication

Communication is the key to successfully managing projects remotely. To ensure the success of any project, the team leader takes on the responsibility of ensuring remote team members have the tools and resources they need to be efficient and productive while minimizing the risks of any miscommunication. When communicating online with your team, make sure you are as specific as possible about the project objectives, goals, and expectations.

Organization

When it comes to remote project management, keeping the work clearly organized and visible is crucial to staying on track. As a project manager it’s important that everything is organized from managing documents, project plans, and project status updates ensuring team members are on task. In order to remotely manage tasks, you need to have complete project access via your browser from anywhere. 

Collaboration 

Remote team collaboration refers to the ability to engage with team members in different places. Employees who have the same goal may collaborate more effectively to reach it. The remote project manager is responsible for breaking down projects into smaller tasks, setting milestones, assigning responsibilities, and tracking progress online. Effective collaboration and setting clear expectations will increase overall productivity. 

Dedication

A dedicated project manager plays a vital role improving overall team performance and motivation. Setting aside a dedicated time for the team to review and report on the project while it’s still fresh in everyone’s mind is key. This will ensure that all updates are documented and can be used to update the project sponsors, customers, and project team for effective status updates. You can refer to this data to optimize your processes for your next project so you can continuously improve and scale your project management skills for best practices.

How Smart Project Management Software Saves You Money!

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It may seem that no matter how focused you are on work, there are always times in which you hit a roadblock and lose concentration. This is natural; we are only human. Issues begin to form when you return to work, and you are unsure of how to continue from that point. Whether you cannot find where you left off or cannot remain in the same format as your previous work, issues often stem from being disorganized. It may take some time to regain your momentum of work. Office workers waste an average of 40% of their workday (Wall Street Journal Report). Not because they aren’t smart, but because they were never taught organizing skills to cope with the increasing workloads and demands. Smart project management software saves you money.

From a business perspective, this process wastes time and resources as your maximum work efficiency is being hindered by disorganization. This issue often stems from the systems the business has in place to organize the workload between its project resources and conveying the task needed to be done effectively and efficiently. The typical executive today wastes 150 hours a year, almost one month, searching for lost information. For someone earning $50,000 a year, that translates to a loss of $3,842 (Forbes ASAP). The most straightforward solution to this problem is using smart project management software.

Project management software provides various organization and communication services between employees and their managers that will eventually save the business money. Using the correct organizational tools can improve time management by 38% (Mobile Technology Product). One of the main areas of communication and organizational assistance is in project management. With the software, you can create individual projects that only those involved can access that displays the workloads of each. This is beneficial for the managers running these projects as they can easily see what project team members have completed and have left to do for the project. Through this system, you can visually compute the productivity and quality of each team member and can designate specific work to those more suited to complete it. This will better balance time and resource management.

How Employees or End-Users Can Benefit

For employees, project management software provides a dashboard of all of the projects they are assigned to. This way they can designate their time to assignments that may be more significant or time-based. Through the organized layout of all the work that needs to be completed, project resources will be more inclined to complete one task at a time opposed to multitasking as projects are presented. People who multi-task decrease their productivity by 20-40% are less efficient than those who focus on one project at a time. Time lost switching among tasks increases the complexity of the functions (University of Michigan Study).

Project management software is incredibly beneficial for communication and organization to all levels of business. For managers, they can layout projects and work for project team members in a way that designates appropriate workloads. Project Managers know the workload of team members so they do not become stressed and can better assign the project tasks is a more controlled manner. As for team members, they will be better at designating their workflow in an organized fashion to keep it on track. Overall, this will increase the worth of the business resources as it is going towards productivity as opposed to wasted on confusion.

Information Sources From http://www.simplyproductive.com/2012/03/time-management-statistics/

Boost Workplace Morale with Organization!

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When you are talking about boosting workplace morale, often the blame is laid on the emotional bonds between coworkers and managers. However there is a larger part to workplace morale; it is the employees satisfaction, out look and wellbeing in the workplace. There are aspects of the employees wellbeing that do not include their relations with other co-workers. One of the largest demoralizing factors that many people do not consider is organization.

Not all workplaces have systems in place to ensure employees information is organized. This could lead to confusion between co-workers and managers, company employees and customers or employee and other employees about information, workloads or numerous other potential issues. The constant conflicts that occur will grind team members; demoralizing their mental state in the workplace.

So how can one improve their workplace organization?

A methodology of workplace organization is known as the “five s'”. Developed in Japan, it identifies and addresses the five aspects of understanding organization. These five aspects are sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain. They will each be elaborated on here:

S1. Sort

Spacial Efficiency

Sorting in the workplace is the act of designating information and services appropriately. This applies to all aspects of the business: work distribution, information, supplies, equipment etc all need to be arranged in the most specially efficient way so all those in the work place understand where it is. This will prevent workers from feeling lost when dealing with their own or others information as they will always know its position in the workplace.

S2. Set in Order

Productive Effectiveness

Set in order is about arranging sections in term of maximizing productive effectiveness. This means allocating areas for possessions in their most practical position to create a seamless workflow between tasks. This could be simple changes such as moving the printer to next to the computer opposed to across the room. Employees will be more focused on the task at hand as their concentration in work won’t be broken as easily.

S3. Shine

Visually Appeasing & Accesibility

Shine is about keeping the workplace clean of clutter. This means cleaning up once a task is completed and before you begin another. This visual appeasement will also allow you to access current use items, whereas if it were cluttered it may be difficult to find files you were working on mere minutes earlier.

S4. Standardize

Consistency

Standardization is the act of keeping all aspects of the business be consistent. This means always having the item in their place proper place, exact process when performing a reoccurring task, colour coding and more. Although it may take time for workers adjust to it, it will provide them with a clear state of mind when in the workplace. This will allow them to work to their maximum efficiency!

S5. Sustain

Self-Discipline

You may have already implanted these criteria into your work but have seen little to no results. Why is this? It may because you have to stayed consistent with the implementing. Self-discipline towards being organized is very important. It is an on-going process; not a one time thing.

Now that you know the aspects of workplace organization, it is your job to find the most efficient way of implementing it into your workplace. Each situation is different so most of the workplace organization is up to your work process, however there are some tools that can assist you in your journey. For example, if you are associated in online services, there are project management software applications that can help you organize through online tracking of your resource’s workload and time sheets.

Perhaps the morale of your team cannot be raised through team building exercises; there are factors about your workplace that can be more beneficial productively and mentally to the managers, customers and project resources.

What to Look for in Project Management Software

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Managing an organized work schedule and workload can be difficult. Managing many people’s workloads and schedules can be even more difficult. Having organized project management software in place to organize the resources, events, and schedules will make the job of the project managers a whole lot easier.

Project management software can provide services that will help businesses organize teams and projects in an organized fashion. Not all software offers the same services. Here are the necessities of a good project management software system:

Resource Visibility

When deciding on a project management software, always keep in mind whether it will have complete resource visibility. When acting as the project manager of an operation, understanding the assets you have and how you are going to use them is important to keep organized and on budget. Project management software should visually inform the project managers and users of the resources currently available and what the used resources have pertained to. Additionally, it should contain all team members’ resources displayed for clarity among the team so resource utilization is maximized.

Simple Work and Event Scheduling

A good project management software system should integrate all of the user’s work and events into their system. Calendars such as Google Calendar or Outlook can be integrated so you receive email or notification reminders about upcoming events. You can also create plans or events so it will notify you in advance.

Team Member Work Loads and Scheduling

Project management software should allow for team members to be organized and managed in projects. Aspects such as their workloads and schedules can be organized and altered at any time by the manager. It should also relay clarity to the team members by including information about their assignments. Each team member works with their schedule and the system works with their availability. Finally, timesheets are included so the managers know the effort consumed to complete work. Overall, the project management software should organize the ideas and jobs of the project managers and provide a clear schedule and fair workload for employees.

Quality Project Help Desk

A very important aspect of a quality project management software is to improve customer service through the use of an integrated project help desk. A help desk is an online system where customers can comment, advise or inquire about difficult or confusing aspects of their project deliverables or experience. The customer sends a ticket to the project support team who then answers the request, which is then sent back to them. The software will set up the system and provide the support team with an organized system to address each problem. The system should allow the support tickets to be affiliated with a project since issues will arise as the project is in the development or deployment phase.

Organized Project Management Support

Overall, good project management software should provide support to the project manager through organized UI, automated reminders, visual resource management, team member overview and scheduled events. All of these aspects should be presented to the user in an organized and easy to use way. When all of these aspects are together they form a proficiently functioning project management software system.

Proper use of Project Milestones in the Field of Project Management

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Setting the right project milestones can keep your projects on track. Setting project milestones and developing a milestone schedule is a key factor in the success of a project. By following a little advice from experts in the project management field, you can increase your project success

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Project Management is No Walk in the Park

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How I came to be a Project Manager

What did you want to be when you grew up? A project manager? I doubt that any 2nd grader in the history of the world has ever said that. Ever. From 8th grade on I was going to be an doctor. Not sure why because it doesn’t suit my personality at all. My brother was a pharmacist and my best friend’s dad was a pharmacist – it did completely suit their personalities. Project management was not on my radar.

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