What do you think will happen to a project if its workflow is undirected? What do you think will happen to a team project where the roles of each member are not decided, and the purpose isn't determined? It will fail and cause financial or reputational damage in worse cases.
What can prevent your project from failing? Project management. It enables you to plan everything about the project to prevent it from failing. Project management brings the best out of each team member, specifies objectives, aligns your project's resources with your strategies, and organizes the process well.
What is project management? It is a process that requires specific skill sets and tools to lead a team to complete a task within the decided timeframe. For example, a tech company is creating new software for its client. A team will be put together to work on this project, with each member appointed for a particular task by the team leader. The leader will have numerous tasks such as task coordination, inspiring members, effective planning to complete the job within the timeframe, and much more.
To help you better understand project management, we've discussed its strategies and the importance of project management in organizations.
Importance of Project Management
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
Before implementing project management strategies, you must understand the importance of project management to know why you're giving this process your time and effort.
Here are some points that will help you comprehend the value of project management.
1. Saves Money and Time
Planning your project ahead of time will enable you to see when you will be able to complete the task and the amount of money that will go into it. You can plan how to fund the project and arrange resources on time.
An unplanned project can lead you to overspend and put in more effort. How? Let's say you need specific resources urgently. They may be unavailable for urgent delivery, and you may have to go the extra mile or spend extra money to acquire them.
2. Helps You Repeat Your Success
When you implement project management methods, you can learn what tactics bring the best out of your team members and what don't. It will also tell your team's strong points and areas that need improvement.
You can implement the best-suited project management methods for your team and repeat your success on each project.
3. Improves Communication
It can be challenging to work together across different teams or departments. Efficient Project management methods raise transparency between team members and ensure liability making the collaboration process easy.
4. It Helps You Make Better Choices
It's no doubt that data-driven decisions are better than flukes. An efficient project plan will enable you to see where your team stands, how much time it will take to complete the project, how you're spending your resources and if you'll need more, where your team can go off track, and what issues may arise in the process. Answers to these questions will give you enough information to make certain decisions. Some decisions are critical to the extent that they can make or break your project. Your choices must be based on viable data and not just flukes.
5. Quality Outcomes
Completing a project in the given time is as vital as maintaining quality. If you fail to deliver quality outcomes, it can cause your financial or reputational loss. For instance, a client asked your company to build them custom software. Your team managed to deliver the software within the deadline, but there's a gap in its quality. This will lead to unsatisfied clients. And if that unsatisfied client talks about his experience with others, it will damage your firm's reputation resulting in decreased sales and loss of potential customers.
Importance of Project Managers
Along with the value of project management, you must learn about the importance of project managers because they play a crucial role in a project's success.
If the team members are left on their own to assign tasks, and with other numerous processes, everything will be all over the place. It may also cause conflicts among the employees. Therefore, a project manager is assigned to distribute tasks between the team members depending on their capabilities.
Another aspect where you will see the importance of project managers is planning the process. They break the whole project into small tasks to prepare an efficient method. They use their leadership skills to encourage the team members, make critical decisions, manage risks and crises, determine the use of resources, and look at the project insights.
Furthermore, project managers survey the outcomes of the small tasks and the whole project and ensure they align with the client's expectations. In conclusion, project managers handle everything from developing an efficient plan to delivering results that guarantee client satisfaction.
Project Management Tips
Now that you've learned the importance of project management, here are some tips for managing a project effectively.
1. Use a Project Management Tool
Image taken from Strikingly’s user’s website
Project management tools are another gift of technology to businesses that help users with tedious work. Tedious tasks, such as making duplicate entries, can be tedious, taking your employees' interest away from the main project.
Moreover, project management software act as a central hub for the team. It stores project-related documents, allows users to share files and give feedback, and enables seamless communication.
Ensure the tool you choose includes the following features:
- Instant messaging and comments on the tasks to ensure seamless collaboration.
- Time tracking.
- File-sharing.
- Resource and task management.
- Automation abilities.
2. Understand the Ins and Outs of the Project
The key to excelling in a project is to understand everything about it. You must comprehend the task and research each of its components. Identify the client's expectations and then lay out an effective plan. You also need to define your goals and the time it will take to achieve them.
3. Recognize the Requirements of the Project
Identifying your project's needs will prevent you from overspending and going the extra mile to achieve the required resources. Once you've determined the needed resources, it's time to assign the tasks.
As a project manager, you will break the big project into small tasks and assign each of them to your team members. For that, you need to know your members' personalities and expertise.
You can also communicate with your team members to know what tasks they're comfortable and uncomfortable with. This will ensure their motivation to complete the job without compromising the quality.
If your team lacks a member for a specific task, you can reach out to the HR department. They may be convinced to hire the suited candidate for the vacant position and prevent your future projects from unfilled gaps.
4. Cut Down on Distractions
Distractions can result in delayed tasks and low-quality results. You may find distractions in numerous forms, such as chatty co-workers, unnecessary email threads, social media notifications, office noise, and many other things. It's essential to identify the form of distraction your team might encounter and take measures to kill it.
You can implement common, proven-to-work tips to minimize distractions for yourself and also encourage your co-workers to implement them. Some common strategies are:
- Muting social media notifications while working.
- Involving meditation in your daily routine enhances your focus.
- Organizing your workspace to stay motivated.
5. Ensure Consistent Communication
Consistent and clear communication between the stakeholders and clients and among the team members is key to achieving your project goals efficiently. Communication also prevents "surprise attacks." Let's say your client changes their mind about the specific component of your project. And you don't communicate it to some or all of your team members. Your co-workers who were unaware of the change might try to align their tasks accordingly last minute and, consequently, lose quality.
Consistent communication will ensure no one misses out on the latest updates.
Strikingly's Project Management Feature
Here, at Strikingly, we understand the sheer importance of project management. That's why we offer team management features alongside website building and marketing features.
Strikingly allows you to invite your team members to your website to make specific changes. Here's how you can do that.
If you're new to Strikingly, you must sign up and create a website with Strikingly. You can simply choose a website template and edit it in the website editor.
1. Go to the website editor, and click "Settings" in the left corner.
2. Go to "Team" and click "Add a teammate."
Image taken from Strikingly
3. Now, select their role. Strikingly has six positions from which you can choose one for one of your employees.
- Admin
- Editor
- Store manager
- Blogger
- Agent
- Publish rights
Image taken from Strikingly
4. Enter the email address to which you wish to send the invitation, and click the "Send invitation" button.
Different roles come with different responsibilities; therefore, choose the roles wisely when you're inviting co-workers or employees to your website.
Lastly, the success of a project depends on everything involved, from the resources and communication to team members and the project manager. Therefore, it's essential to plan your steps and keep communication consistent.
