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Project management is a skill that is constantly required by organizations and companies when sourcing talent. Project management entails leading a team to achieve the stated goals of a project within the given period and budget.
Due to its increased need in the job market, many people have opted to switch careers and go for project management. That’s why it’s no surprise that there are plenty of project management courses online now that anyone can take. However, most of these people think that project management is an easy task.
Project management is a vast career that entails more than setting budgets and allocating duties. Due to its vastness, every project manager aims to gain knowledge on how to increase their productivity.
In this article, we highlight some project management hacks that every project manager should be aware of.
1. Choosing Your Team
In project management, you ought to know that you are as good as your team. Your team can easily cause you to fail to meet the project objectives, or they can help you achieve the project objectives within the stipulated constraints.
As a project manager, knowing how crucial your team is, should be your guide when recruiting team members. Take time to scrutinize every application; analyze the person’s abilities and interests keenly.
However, in some organizations, project managers are not given the leeway to choose their team members. In such cases, you should take your time to guide the team members you will work with.
Give the members clear instructions on the work ethic you expect, the goals you aim to achieve, and how you plan to achieve the goals. This will help get the team up to par with your expectations.
2. Project Management Software
In project management, there are numerous repetitive tasks and scheduling tasks. Technological advancements have taken up the task of making work easier for project managers through the use of project management software.
Project management software helps in resource planning, task scheduling and allocation, budgeting, and progress management. There are many project management software that a project manager can choose from. As a project manager, you should be proficient in using at least one of the available tools.
As a project manager, you can get lucky and have the freedom to use your project management software of choice. In such situations, you should opt to use the software that you are most conversant with.
However, some organizations usually have their predetermined project management software of choice. In such cases, if you are not conversant with the software in use, you should take your time to learn how to use the software. Numerous online courses can help you master project management tools.
The most common course is the Microsoft Project Training Classes. The course is popular because Microsoft Project is the most popular project management tool used by millions of project managers globally. Microsoft Project training is free to ensure that you get to grasp the fundamentals of working with project management software.
3. Project Scope
In project management, it is easy to end up having more work done than was detailed by the client. This is why it is important to detail the project scope before embarking on the project.
Project scope defines the specific tasks to be done as part of the project. Having a well-detailed and agreed-upon project scope prevents the client from misusing you and your team to take up more work than agreed upon.
The project scope should be detailed to avoid any grey areas that can cause arguments or debates regarding whether a task is to be done. Project scope can also help save your reputation as a project manager. This is because a client can opt to get defensive and insistent on asking you to do something outside of the scope. With an agreed-upon scope, the client cannot do that.
As a part of the project scope, you should also learn to give a firm No to clients who seek to go beyond the project scope without paying for it. Establishing professional boundaries is vital to ensure your success and overall growth as a project manager.
However, you should be open to scope negotiations down the line if the client is willing to cater to the additional resources required.
4. Avoid Unnecessary Meetings
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An analysis of office personnel reveals that they waste a lot of time in meetings and responding to emails. This thereby decreases the amount of work they can do. This same concern can apply to your work as a project manager.
Project managers need to stay up-to-date with project progress and divulge necessary information to team members. However, as a project manager, you should ensure that you avoid setting unnecessary and lengthy meetings.
Time-consuming, unnecessary meetings, especially in the morning can easily kill someone’s morale to work for the rest of the day. To avoid wasting time in meetings, you should only set up meetings when they are necessary. For information such as task progress, you can ask every team member to send a brief daily report so that you stay up to date on each person’s progress.
5. Task Prioritization
When coming up with a project execution plan, you should list all the tasks to be undertaken as part of the project. After you have listed the project tasks, take your time to go through each and allocate a prioritization level.
As a basis, you can use a 4-level prioritization matrix. The levels are low, medium, high, or urgent. Once you have allocated a prioritizing level for every task, allocate the tasks to the team members based on their priority levels.
Task prioritization will ensure you work on tasks in a structured manner, based on their priority.
Conclusion
Regardless of the field of work that you are in, the fundamentals of project management for the field will be the same. However, there are some tips and tricks on how to handle project management in various industries such as IT, constriction, etc.
When looking up project management hacks, conduct an analysis to ensure they work in your field of work. Implementing a project management hack that is not meant for your line of work can end up with devastating results.
