Over the course of my 20-year career as a workplace learning and performance improvement professional, I’ve had the pleasure of taking on the project management responsibility for many projects—some small and involving only 1 or 2 people producing a single deliverable to some very large projects involving hundreds of people and deliverables. I’ve often also been asked many times to teach and coach others on how to effectively manage projects. Based on this experience, I’ve developed a few tried and true rules for effective project management:
1. Start with a clear understanding of scope and roles.
Many projects can derail either because of unclear expectations about what will be done and/or who will be doing what. Even if you’re managing an internal project, some form of a project agreement at the onset of the project will help to alleviate this potential issue. And if you’re an external consultant, the need for a project agreement or contract is even more important.
2. Take the time up front to define the tasks, their interdependencies, and what work needs to happen each week to meet the final deadline
It’s the old “go slow to go fast” adage—and it’s true. An investment of 12-24 hours on up front planning can save you and your team that much time (and more) over the course of the project, plus avoid any last minute scrambling in the final weeks of the project. How you do the planning is up to you. For complex projects I typically use Microsoft Project; for less complex projects Microsoft Excel and a calendar are all I need. Recently, I’ve also been investigating the use of online project management services automation software such as AutoTask.
3. Have someone assigned on the project with the responsibility to manage the project
Project plans can’t just be developed and sit on the shelf (or your hard drive). They need to be monitored along the way, and adjusted to meet the changes that occur over the course of any project. Sometimes scope will change (and if it increases, you need to negotiate for added time and money), sometimes tasks take longer or shorter than planned, sometimes unforeseen delays arise, and sometimes staffing needs to change. For these reasons, it’s important that you not only plan the work but also work the plan over the course of the project.
4. Make sure that the project manager also has the authority to manage the project
If the project manager doesn’t have the authority to manage the project, then no amount of good planning will be effective—instead, there’ll be the very real possibility that the project manager’s efforts will fall on deaf ears. To solve this, ensure that the project manager has not only positional authority but also personal authority (i.e., the respect and acceptance of all team members).
5. Hold weekly team meetings
Since so much of our project-based work is done in teams and is very dependent upon the relationships that are built, holding weekly team meetings is an excellent way to keep projects on track and ensure that everyone is communicating with each other. These meetings don’t have to be face-to-face; they can occur via conference call or (even better) via web conference. They typically cover such things as progress made that week, what’s coming up next week, and what team members need from one another to successfully accomplish the next week’s tasks.
And one more piece of advice related to meetings—keep your weekly team meetings separate from working meetings or sessions; with two different purposes, it can be very difficult to effectively accomplish the goals of both types of meetings within one session. Not impossible, mind you, but difficult to do—especially if you’re trying to keep to a good guidelines of having your meetings be no more than 60-90 minutes in length. You can certainly hold longer meetings, but people often become saturated after the 90-minute mark and need to move onto something else.
6. Track your actuals
I typically recommend that everyone on the project track their actual hours so that you can not only adjust the plan based on an analysis of planned vs. actual hours, but also so that you can build a record of the tasks and hours required to perform different types of jobs. This becomes an incredibly useful resource to help you estimate future projects with greater accuracy.
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So with careful thought up front, and discipline applied consistently throughout, project management can be the key to not only ensuring that you get your projects done on time and on budget but that you also do it in a way that is enjoyable (and a lot less stressful) for the entire team.
- Robin
Copyright Robin Donnan 2007. All Rights Reserved.
Performance Associates, Inc.
