Virtually all businesses have a project manager – the person who plans and manages a project and its stakeholders within a company.
Their role is paramount, providing structure to any business and mapping out a course to follow to achieve success. If your business doesn’t have one, consider hiring one to see better results.
A project manager’s responsibilities include organising and motivating a team, estimating the cost of a project, analysing the risks while driving the project’s progress.
This article will provide you with six tips to set your business up to reach the next level.
The more you know, the better
Many project managers refuse to directly get involved with the project, instead monitoring from a distance. But this approach is not always effective. A project manager should instead be directly involved in the project from the earliest stage, working with other employees and mapping out goals and objectives for the team to work towards.
Remember: the more a project manager knows the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of a project, the more useful they can be. So, don’t be afraid to be more involved!
Be realistic
To be a great project manager requires a somewhat realistic in your leadership. For instance, set attainable dates and don’t be afraid to follow up with stakeholders to check on their progress, ensuring all parties are invested in meeting objectives.
Working to a timeline, being realistic while managing expectations is an great way to set yourself up to succeed.
Communication is key
Regardless of which industry you work in, communication is the key to success. If you don’t effectively communicate with all parties involved, expect mediocre results.
To further improve communication, ask lots of questions. You don’t need to micromanage, but ask enough questions to know what each party is doing and how they’re working together.
If one area of the project is falling behind, you can jump in or allocate other staff to help. If you don’t communicate as a business, then your results will be slow, ineffective, and below par.
Ensure everyone is on board
As a project manager, your role is to create a plan and ensure this is executed as well as possible. However, before setting the plan, run through the plan with all parties, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
If everyone is in agreement, then they are more likely to be motivated to work, especially if they understand why they are doing it a certain way. Should an employee or third-party questions or suggests a different way of doing things, instead of shutting them down, listen. Create a conversation, take another view on board and see whether this could be a better approach.
Take notes, and lots of them
As a project manager, you’re constantly receiving and juggling new information. This can be overwhelming, especially when monitoring a workforce, clients, and third parties. So we highly recommend taking notes, and don’t stint.
You can do this manually or digitally, as long as you keep a record. This allows you to evaluate the current progress, comparing notes between different parties involved to ensure everyone is on the same page to achieve objectives.
If you take notes digitally, be sure to back these up once in a while, just in case.
Custom software drives a project forward
Running a project can be hectic with numerous jobs to monitor. To reduce stress and improve workplace efficiency, many organisations turn to custom software to help manage and drive their projects.
Custom software is software specifically made for your business and operations. For example, a piece of bespoke software could calculate a budget with updates in real-time being aligned to the project. This is a lot more accurate and saves both time and effort that can now be spent on more important tasks.
Furthermore, custom software can be created for a variety of different roles, perhaps streamlining your entire business model or individual project. If there’s a problem, your new software will go a long way to solve or at least moderate any issues.
The bottom line
Being a project manager is no easy task – it involves monitoring various other tasks and roles, and occasionally, being hands-on in your approach. However, becoming a better and more efficient project manager allows all projects to run much smoother, almost always resulting in better results and increased ROI.
If you’re considering the use of custom software to take your business to the next level, making future projects more manageable, then the team at BSPOKE Software can help you.
To find out more information or to contact the BSPOKE team, please click here.
