As we all know, the right mix of planning, monitoring and controlling can go a long way towards completing projects in the desired time and budget with predicted business outcomes.
But for a winning result, for team managers and leaders, there are some ABCs to be followed to achieve the consistency in the project.
Among them, we have identified a few very important aspects that outline the major differentiator on how your project would finish with some degree of success.
Closing the loop – Of all the best practices in project management, closing the loop is slowly gaining prominence to become one of the important aspects of effective project management. Whether it is to communicate the vision of the project to the team or giving regular feedbacks or to update the status-quo to the client or the organization itself, closing the loop with every stakeholder will define your project success.
Feedback mechanism - This may seem blatantly obvious, but is more than just a simple practice. It is fundamental to being an effective PM. The best PM sends out emails or has in-person interactions with this team routinely to keep them in a regular feedback.
This helps summarizing tasks agreed upon by team members along with the required deadlines. Regular feedback mechanism ensures that all project hurdles are kept in check. This is a key element of any control system where at the end of each phase there is a feedback mechanism before the next phase. This feedback is instrumental to close the loop and verify the deliverables against the scope.
Efficient communication - Whenever obstacles arise - and they somehow always do! - communicating direct with your team and the client is paramount for it keeps the communication lines open to admit the faults and take corrective measures.
To increase the productivity and resolve conflicts that may arise within the project team, and to enhance the overall performance of the project, the project manager has to ensure free flow of communication within the teams.
The project leader needs to continuously monitor and control the progress of the team and align with stakeholders that include internal teams, management, customer and vendor etc. proactively to streamline strategy as circumstances necessitate. This can be achieved only by an effective communication plan.
Contact is key - Thanks to ease of technology, we often tend to do everything remotely through emails and phones. But they are not substitutes for direct interactions. While frequent direct meetings may not be possible with a global workforce, , a few in-person team meetings can be key to project success. When a unanticipated issue crops up while working through a problem, collaboration can lead to increased transparency throughout the project.
To check whether the agreed scope is being met and is in line with the overall strategy of the company or the customer, a Project Manager has to keep his team focused on the original plan and make frequent changes as per the sprints.
Creating a project vision is just the beginning of a story that completes itself only when the vision is clearly communicated, understood and accomplished by the project team. This underlines the importance of effective communication for vision fulfillment.
Communicating your vision to the team is crucial to integrate efforts, remove roadblocks and accomplish project vision.
Maintaining strong communication gives you a structure while grinding through the project details. Following some of these best approaches will ensure you a winning result and help to bring you as a top-class, comprehensive project leader.
