Project manager - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

Every organization hopes that their project is finished on time, under budget and most importantly that their project improves upon previous practices. The way to achieve this successfully is through efficiency and proper delegation of project assignment. This article discusses the 10 best tips for a Project Manager that will aide in the planning, organization and resource management. Ideally, best practices suggest that each time there is a new project that is been embarked upon, that the tips below are kept in mind in order to achieve maximum efficiency and success upon the completion of the project.

1. Start up meeting before the project starts.

To start off on the right foot, it is always a good a idea to have a meeting upon the start of a new project. This is the first thing a Project Manager should do. It is crucial that the Project Manager have a meeting with each person that will take part n the team. This will ensure that each person has their duties and assignments and that they clearly understand their responsibility and objective. This will allow the team so start on the same page and will lead to clear communication between the team members as the project moves through its phases.

2. Establish proper communication between all interested parties.

It is not only important to have clear and proper communication with all the internal team members involved in the project, but it is important as a Project Manager to ensure that there is also constant and clear contact with directors, sponsors, clients and important users. It is important to fully understand what clients and important parties wish to achieve with the project and in addition to keep this in mind from beginning to end. For this, the project manager will have to choose the most efficient methods of communication, to inform interested parties of any news that come about along the trajectory of the projecs.

3.Create an emergency team.

No matter what the project is, there will always be problems or issues that can come up at any moment, thus possibly stalling the project. It is for this reason that the Project Manager should always have an emergency team that is capable to deal with any issues and in addition, to put the project back in motion.

4. Create a guide with the assignments of each member of the project team.

One of the most important things for a Project Manager to do is to have each member´s responsibility in writing. It is for this reason that a guide or list that details in full each responsibility,assignment and deadlines is always a good idea. This also helps the organization of the project and ensures that each member is fully aware of their individual tasks.

5. Have a detailed work plan.

The Project Manager should also prioritize each task and assign a deadline accordingly. In order to do this, a project schedule must be created to develop a strategy and to assess all risks. Having a detailed plan for all the phases of the project will allow and facilitate the completion of each deadline and move along the project accordingly.

6. Take note of everything that could go wrong.

Make sure that you write everything down! If any unexpected issues happen make sure that you document what happened, why it happened and how it was resolved. In the future, this can serve as a good reference point for other unexpected issues.

7. Try to find feedback from users.

There is no such thing as a perfect project. There is always room for improvement. One of the best ways to improve in the future is by requesting feedback about the Project Manager. This is a great opportunity to learn about the strength and weaknesses of the Project Manager along the course of the project.

8. Avoid project overload.

As the project moves along, you might be tempted to add new assignments and tasks. However, as the project manager, you must keep in mind what adding new tasks or assignments might mean to the overall project. Will this increase costs. Do the team members already have enough to do. If the additional tasks are crucial for the project, then it could be worth it However, as the person in charge of the success of the project you must think twice with any additions to the current tasks of the project.

9. Establish and create a new contract with any change that takes place in the project.

Make sure that if you have accepted adding new tasks that you add this to the contract. This way, those who have a stake in the project will not only be fully informed of all that is going on with the project but will also be informed if there are any additional costs associated with the changes, along with any changes in deadlines0.

10. Revise the final project once it has been completed and call a meeting for all the members of the team.

Once the project is complete, it is the time to edit, revise or make any changes that need to be made. The Project Manager should schedule a final meeting with the team to discuss every completed assignment, costs, issues that took place, how those were resolved and what could be improved for next time.

By following these ten steps you will be able to succeed in the completion of the project an ensure success as a Project Manager.

Once you have followed these ten steps you will surely achieve the goal that was set at the beginning of any project. However, remember that you are not the only person that works with energy and dedication, but that you should also transmit that same energy, dedication and passion to all your team members. That is what ultimately makes a great leader.

At ITM platform we believe that if you have a team that is prepared to complete all tasks, a team that is motivated and passionate about the final goal and a team that is ready to accept new challenges, you will complete any project with great success.

We make sure to help you with the rest with a system that facilitates good management. A system that allows you to maximize your production and allows a faster and easier way to achieve your objectives.

See all the advantages to using ITM platform by viewing a free demo!

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Manuel Echeverría-Content Manager ITM Platform

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A professional business is only as successful as the projects they do for their clients. Whether they are short or long term, making clients happy is the focus of the company. If projects fail, the business can lose their source of revenue. This, in turn, can end the business.

As your company continues to grow, the risks that come with not managing it effectively do as well. Right now is when you need to focus on avoiding three deadly project management mistakes that managers continue to make!

1. Failing to effectively communicate with clients

According to the results found in a recent study conducted by Accelo, communicating with clients is one of the most important influences that determine whether a project will be successful or not. Over 90% of the participants believed that e-mail is one of the top communication methods to be used while working on projects. The reason this may be the case is because many companies don’t have access to project management tools or softwares that provide them with alternative options. Therefore, they are left with less effective choices such as e-mail.

Solely relying on e-mail is stifles productivity because it creates silos between teammates. Project members have more difficulty quickly communicating with one another because e-mail is built for communication amongst only a few individuals, making it hard to share important information without creating long chains of communication.

As your team begins to grow and you have more work and projects in your hands, it will become increasingly problematic to try and keep track of all of the information being passed around and ensure everyone is aware of even the smallest project details. The solution isn’t to completely replace e-mailing. You should integrate a project management software that will work side-by-side with e-mailing by providing teammates with an alternative platform they can use for immediate communication and collaboration, saving e-mail for less urgent work.

2. Ineffectively tracking your budget

While the logical choice would be to connect a timesheet with your project management software to prevent this from occurring, only 30% of managers choose to do so. That’s right, once again Accelo found that approximately 69% of companies are left in the dark by manually calculating the time and budget needed to complete a project. This can easily lead to long delays and financial catastrophic failures for projects.

Even though this may seem to only impact individual projects, it has the potential to do damage to the entire firm in the future. Projects will need to be consistently monitored with the help of a project management tool. It’s important to understand how your budgets are impacting project success and whether or not the project is profitable. Knowing this information will be extremely beneficial when planning sales approaches for future projects.

Since payroll is one of the biggest expenses for most companies, losing track or creating an inaccurate picture of employee resources and time can be catastrophic. As a project manager, you have to make sure you do not take on any new projects or clients without knowing how much staff you have. Employees can easily end up overworked and stretched to their limits, missing deadlines and exceeding budgets.

3. 3. Not managing all projects- even the short ones

For the most part, professional services have relatively short projects that need to be done. The majority can often be completed in under 3 months. However, this creates a common misconception that short-lived projects require less effort and have a small impact on the company if they fail. In return, over 27% of service projects end up going over budget. And since Accelo found that the average profit margin of firms is approximately 15% per project, this would mean that failing at a single project could wipe out all revenue and profitability for that company for an entire year. All in all, the business would need to then have two successful projects in order to make up for the money lost in the unsuccessful one.

All growing businesses need to take a step back and re-evaluate their project management team. See if any changes need to be made and consider implementing new technology into the business to help ensure success in the long run.

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Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”

The famous words spoken by Benjamin Franklin should be those which all project managers live by. What’s the point of trying to exercise proper project management if you aren’t capable of finding the time needed to do so? This is where time management comes into play.

Start off by assessing yourself before you do anything else. This will give you a good sense of whether or not you will need to change your current time management methods and what you can do to improve. Ask yourself how often you complete tasks before deadlines? Are you normally punctual or late? Do you ever leave things to last minute or feel as though you are running out of time?

The truth of the matter is that time is an extremely valuable resource to all project managers and is a terrible thing to waste. You want to be able to develop a strong reputation for yourself and never let down clients. As a project manager you aren’t only required to manage your own time but also the time of the entire team. Start off by creating a schedule that everyone can follow on a day-to-day basis. A simple scribble on a paper won’t do. Implement a project management software, such as ITM Platform, into the business. Great tools such as those provided by ITM Platform will assist you creating calendars with important deadlines and setting time limits for tasks. Furthermore, you can set reminders and check on the progress of your co-workers. This will help everyone maintain their focus and complete work on time.

Time management is best done when each of the following things are completed:

Defined Activities

Depending on the level of detail of a task, known as granularity, high-level tasks will first be broken down into different activities which will all be found in a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Sequencing all of your Activities

The activities you just identified in the previous step will now be used to create an activity sequence. This is extremely important because it will allow you to execute tasks on time and in a specific order to stay organized and on time.

Resources necessary

This is when you will need to estimate the amount of resources required for the completion of each task. This step probably sounds very familiar and that’s because it is frequently listed as being crucial for project managers to do. The reason why is because the duration of the task depends on how many resources will be allocated. You’ll need to know all of this to be able to accurately manage your time.

Effort Estimation

Many companies will follow the WBS mechanism previously mentioned in order to estimate how much time and effort will be needed to complete tasks. After you feel as though you have fairly educated predictions you should identify your projects critical path. This will allow you to calculate approximately how long the entire project should take to complete.

Create a Schedule

You can’t just skip to this step because you’ll need to input all of the information you previously received in order to create an accurate schedule. Trying to do this on your own or manually will be difficult and time consuming. Your best option would once again be to use a software like ITM Platform which can assist you in creating a reliable and effective project schedule.

Schedule Changes

Nothing can be perfectly planned. There is always the chance that something unexpected could occur and you will need to make changes to your original schedule. Don’t panic! To make sure you don’t fall behind, continuously update your schedule to reflect any project alterations. This will prevent you or your teammates from experiences shock if something unanticipated occurs.

Just like anything else, time management requires you to put in effort. The more you know, the better you’ll do. This is why you should familiarise yourself with other common project management tools and practices which can be found at http://www.itmplatform.com

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When implementing a project portfolio management (PPM) model in an organisation, acquiring a project management software is not enough; usually the organization needs to adapt to the new way of working.

In this article we present some keys elements of success that we have learnt from our experience in implementing ITM Platform in more than 300 organizations: These advices are going to facilitate the adoption process as well as promote a truly project based management policy.

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Company design

1. Centralization:

One of the first aspects to keep in mind when adopting a project-oriented management style, is to decide what to merge and what to centralize.

Those are some of the most frequent aspects:

Terminology: To accurately communicate internally in a company (or externally with suppliers or clients), you must be able to convey precise feedbacks such as the state of the projects. Vague or ambiguous descriptions like “going well” do not help, because they don’t indicate the real state of a project and do not provide information that the sender or the receiver can truly understand.
Monitoring criteria: projects should be frequently monitored and quantitively measured. It is important to have everyone’s agreement on which criteria to use when measuring the project’s development.
Resources management: Depending on the nature of the project, centralizing the management of resources can be necessary. This decision will affect the organizational structure, the project manager’s work and the way day-to-day work is planned and executed.

These elements are the key to information and quantification. It is advisable for every department of the company to use a common reporting system to be able to rely on the necessary information to make decisions.

Other elements that should be consolidated are the processes (when a project is approved, when a project changes status, who must take those decisions…), standard costs or document formats to be used.

To sum up, you first have to think about what to centralize and afterward decide on how to do it.

2. Agile, predictive or both methodologies

Another critical decision that needs to be taken before starting a project is to decide which management methodology to apply. Each methodology has its advantages and disadvantages and, depending on the nature of the project, you should select the most appropriate.

Agile methodologies: The agile methodology is very good to manage uncertainties. It is ideal for those projects in which the results are not certain, or when you have an idea about the objective, but you do not clearly know how to reach it. It is frequently the case for IT projects, Start-ups and projects with high levels of uncertainty.
Predictive methodologies: Predictive methodologies are good to manage projects with low levels of uncertainty, for example projects in which processes are well known as well as the expected results. An example could be a project to produce a component that was already produced in the past. In this case, given that the processes are known, the objective is to maximize the productivity.

Both methodologies share some common points: tight monitoring, quantifications and measurements.

To fully take advantage of each methodology you should employ project managers that have expertise in both methodologies and who know how to adapt to one or the other depending on circumstances.

If you decide to use both methodologies, these will need to coexist in the same portfolio. Check out this webinar on how to make the 2 methodologies coexist.

3. Responsibilities of a project manager

It is fundamental to clarify the responsibilities of the project manager before the start of a project. That will empower him to properly do his work, focus on the most important tasks and properly report the results of his work.

Here are some of the most common decisions a project manager has to take:

Monitor the project progress
Canalize and encourage communication
Assign resources
Manage risks
Control Purchases and Revenues of the project

4. The Project Management Office (PMO)

Another relevant aspect is to decide whether a project management office is necessary or not. There are companies with high amounts of projects that do not rely on a project management office, while there are cases of less project intensive companies that actually need one.

This difference is motivated by the specific conditions of each business and by other factors. The most relevant are:

The level of maturity of the organization as well as their specific situation. Some companies are in a stable period with little variations in the business while others are in a phase of transition with high level of uncertainty and variability.
The complexity of the organization.
The nature of the business. For example, there are sectors where projects management offices are common because of the intrinsic nature of the business model.
The existence of interdependencies between projects. When such dependencies exist, the project management office is particularly important as it allows to coordinate the projects to take advantage of the interdependencies.
The degree of maturity of the project’s directors. Experienced project managers sometimes can cover the full scope of the project portfolio, thus becoming a one-man project management office. Unfortunately, this is not common, and it will be often necessary to create a dedicated team to constitute the project management office.
Strategic alignment. A project management office is particularly important when projects are not properly aligned with the overall strategy of the company.

To sum up, a project management office provides a strategic focus and allows the organization to reach levels of coordination that would not be possible otherwise.

5. Methodologies and structures in PPM

Another aspect that should be considered is the methodological framework. The guidelines provided by PMI or Prince2, for example, are very helpful. However, our advice is to adopt these guidelines with common sense and without applying them too rigidly. It is advisable to adopt only the aspects that best match with the organization and its needs.

Some key aspects that should be considered:

Process standardization: processes should to be standardized, be as simple as possible and be close to reality.
Inspiration from existing models: There are international associations that facilitate models of standardized project management. You can take inspiration from them, keeping in mind that it is best to adopt the best of each one.

We have explained how to design the organization to make the change possible, but we are still missing a very important part: How to do the transition? ¿Which method should be chosen to be successful?

Change management

To make a successful transition, the organization should fulfil several requirements and follow a series of steps.

1. Definition of the driving force

The initiative of a transition towards project-based management should come from the company’s top management. Directors should promote the use of project management systems and be the ones to lead the change.

It is important also to have the support of the management of the departments most affected by the change.

2. Implementation of change management

The transition can be done using 2 approaches, that we call the “pincer approach “.

On one hand we have a top down approach, where the use of new systems and methodologies is presented as a duty or obligation.

When adopting this approach, control models and reporting systems are key. They permit to verify that the new project management model is being applied correctly while, at the same time, monitoring the added value for the company.

For example, you can decide to use only the data previously registered in the system during follow up meetings.

On the other hand, you can adopt a bottom-up approach, with training and active listening. Employees know the reality of work circumstances and how to translate those into the new way of working.

Furthermore, team members should be persuaded that the change to their way of working adds value to the entire company, from which they are going to beneficiate in the medium and long-term.

Enthusiast employees motivated to adopt the new methods may greatly influence others. This can be an even more effective implementation strategy than having managers or directors forcing the adoption.

To guarantee the final success, it is necessary to start with relatively easy projects where the results should be quantified and compared with the ones pre-adoption. Make sure to successfully achieve the first steps and you will favour success in the next ones.

To sum up, it is advisable to progressively evolve, with clear and feasible objectives, reaching perfection step by step.

Webinar ITM Platform: Agile Deployment of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) from ITM Platform

Isidora Roskic-ITM Platform

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Perhaps the most important part of project management is that of control. Once the decision has been taken to launch and implement a project, the project manager must assume the responsibility for ensuring that each person involved completes their assigned tasks in order to thereby guarantee that the project runs according to plan.

The concept of project control is very simple: a project is created with certain targets after studying the resources available and drawing up a schedule to reach those goals. Control is what ensures oversight of these plans, ensuring that no team member deviates from the course set. The completion of control-related tasks will ensure achievement of the targets as they were defined in the planning stage.

After planning a project, it is recommended to implement a control system. The main requirement to begin with will be for the project to be fully defined and approved by the steering committee or shareholders’ meeting and, as appropriate, by the sponsor of the actions to be carried out.

These lines of action will indicate the costs, the scope for the project and the schedule to be followed for meeting the targets:

Cost base: this specifies the costs to be incurred by the project, with a distribution over time that will be coherent with completion of the tasks over time. This is very useful when wishing to compare estimates with actual cost.
Schedule base: a timeline with the targets set for each stage of the project will be created.
Scope base: formed by the various activities that comprise the project and that will enable the deliverables to be produced. All this is reflected in the WBS that was approved. The scope base allows the progress of each activity and each deliverable to be known.

Once these baselines are defined, it is time to get to work on project control. Of course, it is very important to consider certain factors when doing so.

Scope: This will control the tasks that should be carried out by each member of the project and that the result meets the requirements initially stipulated. Whenever a task fails to meet these requirements, it is considered as incomplete.
Deadline: Within project control, it is essential to monitor compliance with agreed deadlines. It should be noted at this point that the first schedule is drawn up without considering a margin for risks. This is because if these margins were to be considered at that point, they would end up being used to cover other issues that are not strictly considered as risks.
Cost: Two factors require control in this regard: the total cost of the project and treasury control.
Risks: It is important to keep risks under control because, in the event of an unforeseen eventuality, this will have an immediate effect on the achievement of project targets.

Professional help for projects: Being able to undertake large-scale projects and fully control them is a process that can sometimes prove rather complicated. It is therefore necessary to have software such as ITM Platform that incorporates the flexible management methods used by major corporations into your company. It is a great tool that will facilitate project implementation and delivery within established deadlines, and that offers advanced solutions to business.