Effective project management strategies facilitate the critical components to accomplishing any project: deliverables, deadlines, and resources required to accomplish the deliverables and deadlines to hand over a completed project on time and on budget. Project Management is one of the most critical departments in any business because it ensures that the business services are executed in a way that is consistent with company policy, achieves the objective of the project scope, and is an overall positive customer service experience that creates opportunities for future work.
If you are working as a team on a project, it is even more important to coordinate the deliverables, deadlines, and resources and allocate project tasks and milestones accordingly. Project information must be easily shared among team members, ensuring every team member has the most up to date information and can coordinate the completion of their tasks accordingly. If one team member experiences an issue that delays the completion of their task, other team members can be affected causing additional delays in task completion. If project information is shared, and all team members where aware of issues that could potentially impact their tasks, it allows them the opportunity to mitigate the potential impact and subsequent delays in task completion.
The best kept secret of effective project management is project management software. Project management software provides a platform for team members and project stakeholders to view the project status real-time, providing the ability to track project details from a broad overview down to very minute details and project requirements. The ability to generate written and statistical reports of varying levels of detail and content not only supports access to better project information, but it also reduces the manpower requirement to regularly produce reports that are automatically generated or custom generated in the project management software.
Effective project management software will not only track these details, but also provide conflict management when project activities and tasks are at risk for delayed completion. For example, if the manufacturer of your large order of custom built windows experiences a factory fire and delays production of your order, other project tasks that will be directly or indirectly affected by this unforeseen manufacturing challenge are automatically rescheduled with notice to the team members responsible for task completion.
Project management software is also an effective business solution for coordinating tasks between team members by enhancing the ability to break down complex projects in component pieces, ensuring all deadlines and milestones are clearly delegated in a system that is based on accountability, and completion of tasks as delegated. It also assists in managing team member workloads, for example if you are able to see that a certain team member has deadlines for six different projects on the same day, it affords to opportunity to preemptively address the workload issues with the employee to prevent the slippage of scheduled deadlines for work activities. It could also identify if an employee did not have enough work activities, which creates the opportunity to further utilize the employee by assigning other tasks needing attention. This visibility is a great resource for project management because it allows greater control of project resources, and manpower is often the most valuable resource in getting projects completed on time and on budget.
If you are interested in trying free versions of project management software, the following software companies offer free versions: Proof Hub, Teamwork Projects, Volerro, Wrike, and Zoho Projects. Alternatively, if you are seeking project management software with greater capabilities, versions available at a cost include Microsoft Project Management, Workfront, Mavenlink, Teamgantt, Clarizen, Celoxis, and Liquid Planner.
The most important factors to consider when managing each project are the project deliverables, project deadlines, and project resources. With focus and dedication to accomplishing the project and making project information available to all parties involved, businesses can be successful in their project management endeavors in any industry.
