It's time to help your business work smarter. Any project inevitably raises some obstacles to success, but some businesses still fail to find effective solutions to common project management problems.
As a result, taking the time to identify and improve the project management for your business can be an excellent way to increase revenues and decrease costs, leading you and your company to better profits and more success.
Make sure you are using these strategies to project manage like a pro.
1. Create a clear task list
It sounds so simple, but complex projects can run to hundreds of separate steps. Creating a task list may be time consuming but is an extremely effective way to encourage a thorough approach.
The nature of your task list will depend on your project; some experts recommend planning a detailed list of tasks for every day of the project. This level of time management will lead to productivity gains and a feeling of success and motivation from ticking off everything on the list.
Another option is to try the ABC method; categorising tasks into A (urgent and important), B (important but not urgent) and C (unimportant). If you are not employing any time management methods for your jobs and projects, adopting any strategy is likely to improve the performance of your business.
2. Effective, regular communication
A lack of effective communication is also a regular project management failure. It can be difficult to assess how successful your communication is but start with these basic questions: do all staff know exactly what they are supposed to be doing? Is there total understanding between you and the client? This is what can make or break the success of a project, and many project management experts consider communication to be the most important part of any project.
Instead of telling clients or your team that you have an open door policy, it could be a better idea to set out a regular communication plan. Offer to chat with the client once a week at an allotted time about any concerns either of you may have, as well as any urgent contact needed. This is particularly important for a virtual team. Good communication invariably reduces problems in the future and allows your team to work together better, leading to quality performance.
3. Streamline your project management
Keeping track of everyone on your team can be hard. Whether there are two of you or one hundred, problems can materialise from any stage of the project. One such example is keeping track of documents. Time spent emailing your team to request documents is time wasted.
All-in-one project management software can help you take a massive step towards streamlining your business operations. If every team member uploads everything to one secure cloud-based system, this instantly solves a problem and could add up to saving lots and lots of time.
Good integrated project management software allows you to create invoices, track time and purchase orders and reap the benefits of a constant flow of insights and information. You may find it best to use a cloud-based solution; WorkFlowMax is frequently recommended as an end-to-end job management software in an increasingly competitive market.
For a small to medium business, this is an extremely effective way to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of your business. Project management software may cost as little as £10 a month for your company, despite replacing several specialist programs.
4. Tracking progress with milestones
Milestones are a great project management tool because they allow you to keep an eye on the general healthy of your project. While everyday task lists are flexible, your milestones are a rigid tool to track your progress. Although your daily priorities and tasks may change, a list of milestones should be as inflexible as possible - do not let yourself constantly adjust the goalposts.
Create a milestone for each deliverable for your business. If you are consistently missing milestones, this is a sign of bad project management.
The combination of the short term task list and long term milestones is an invaluable aid to a successful project.
The key to success in business is a growth mindset. This means trying new strategies and constantly looking for ways to improve your performance, and ultimately, your business. Adopting some of these ideas should lead to increased returns and allow your business to reap the rewards of improved project management.