Published on August 31st, 2019 | by Sunit Nandi
0Why Project Management Is So Important?
Whether you are on a new team at a large enterprise or organization or working at a fast-growing startup, project management is not something your team has prioritized yet. But now, you are finding it increasingly difficult to stay focused, organized, and collaborate with team members and wonder if you need project management – except, that is just a thing for qualified project managers, right?
Project management is a universal skill that helps teams’ complete projects within deadlines and more efficiently. Finding a good way to plan, manage, and execute work is relevant for every team and business. And while you may not need every piece of a traditional project management system, your employees could still benefit from some of the fundamental parts of project management.
If you are still on the fence about whether or not you need to focus on managing your projects before anything else, read on to discover the benefits along with a few simple ways to bring these ideas to your team’s way of working!
Well-defined goals keep you and your team focused
The term may be “project management,” but managing a project is only one piece of the puzzle. First, you need to set goals for your project. Thus, you can give everyone clarity on the purpose of their work and what results they should aim for.
Organized and clear plans save time and resources
If you have ever leapt into a project without a plan, you know how messy things can get. You might end up skipping essential steps in your schedule, scrambling to complete a forgotten task. As a result, the quality of your work and results might suffer as you rush to push your project across the finish line.
Make sure you map out everything that needs to get done in advance. Then, organize your project to-dos in a categorized list or timeline to clearly outline who’s doing what and when.
By outlining a clear project realization plan, you will turn what would have otherwise been a chaotic execution process into an efficient one. You will have a clear idea of the scope & timing of your work and can spot potential conflicts before you have even started. With just a little bit of forethought and planning, you will be able to waste less time and resources—and who doesn’t want that?
If you have a detailed plan, scope creep is what happens when that outline does not quite go as planned. Maybe the customer requested extra work, not in the original proposal, or perhaps they changed their objective entirely. No matter what the reason, the project has taken a different path that may affect not only the deadline but also the budget. This is why it is good to know how to manage scope creep — there a few simple, very effective ways to do so. Just browse the Internet and find out how you can manage and prevent scope creep easily.
Define everyone’s role. This eliminates confusion.
Defining who will be the project manager in charge will prevent your team from dropping tasks, forgetting details, or not knowing who to go to with questions. In other words, by making it clear to others that you are the right person for the project, everyone else involved will know who to go to with any questions or concerns and to look to for updates.
No matter what industry you work in, your team will significantly benefit from adopting a few project management basics. Even a few changes to how you plan, manage, and report on your work can make your team more accountable to their work, efficient, and confident that they are tackling the things that matter most.