6 Fundamental Steps for Efficient and Successful Project Management
Welcome to a new post on the best data and cloud blog. In today’s post we are going to talk about a topic that is a bit different and at the same time necessary for your projects to be executed on time.
We will discuss an *IMPORTANT* aspect of running a project in the most efficient way and most importantly, providing value to the client throughout the project phase.
In an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment, projects must be managed effectively to achieve the proposed objectives.
Efficient project management is not only about carrying out the proposed tasks, but also about making the best use of the available resources.
Project management is a fundamental factor for the success of any business activity. Good management will allow us to deliver the project within the established deadlines, the correct use of the resources provided and the minimisation of risks.
With this article we will try to avoid these situations that we are sure to be familiar with:
Below we will explain 6 fundamental steps for effective project management:
1. Plan:
The purpose of planning is to try to ensure a shared understanding of the project, i.e. to understand the current state and the target improvement needed by the client.
Objectives must be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound).
Once the objectives have been identified, it is essential to prioritise these objectives, as not all objectives will be of equal importance.
This will allow us to measure the effort we have to spend in each phase of the project and therefore to identify what resources we are going to need.
2. Improvement:
This point is about ensuring continuous improvement of services.
For this, we are personally guided by the following principles:
Focusing on Value, refers to the importance of understanding the customer’s needs and expectations, primarily to generate the highest possible Value. Remember that the main priority is to satisfy customer needs through early and continuous delivery.
Provide information on all performances carried out on the project, to reflect the ongoing work and to be coordinated with the client on all steps.
Feedback on the service provided, either by e-mails during the course of the project or at the project closure phase.
Retrospective, it is convenient after the end of the project to meet with the team to review the sprints and to know together where the efforts have gone in order to implement improvements in the future.
3.Involve:
By involving stakeholders we achieve participation and a proper understanding of needs, as well as transparency and continuous involvement.
To bring this point to perfection, we suggest the following steps:
Stakeholders: The first thing to identify is all the people who have or will have an impact on the project. Clearly identify all the roles and people who will be involved in the project and what their functions are.
Communicate continuously and transparently: We proactively communicate all work done and to be done, while at the same time it is convenient to use different communication channels based on the phase of the project and the roles we are addressing.
Our recommendation is that you draw up a communication plan based on the roles of the project so that you take the following points into account:
Distribution of Information: Try to get the relevant information to those involved in the project. Remember to communicate throughout the project phase.
Below is a visual table that can help you to communicate each phase of the project:
| ID Task | Task Statment | State | Responsible | Coments | End Date |
| Done | |||||
| In Pogress | |||||
| Stopper |
Manage Expectations : Each role expects different expectations from the project, whether it is the end client who expects the project to be executed on time and on budget or the head of the company itself who expects an ROI.
Manage these expectations and remember that they may change over the course of the project.
4.Design and transition :
This point is particularly important, as good project planning will ensure that the project is delivered on time and on budget.
In order to design a good plan, our recommendations are as follows:
Define a project Team: Remember that the team should be composed of people with technical skills to deal with the project and its complexities and business people to deal with the management of the project.
Establish roles within the team:We must define the roles of the team very well and be clear about the tasks to be carried out and the specific responsibilities.
Communicate in a two-way manner: Ensure that communication channels are clear to all parties and that communication is reflected throughout the team. Selecting the right method and message for each audience is critical to success.
Plan: Establish dates for each phase of the project, and make sure that everyone is clear about the dates of action and the priorities of each step. On the other hand, within this phase we must also plan all the interventions that we are going to make and what Plan B we are going to follow in the event that an intervention does not go as expected.
For this, we suggest that you implement a Request for Change (RFC) for each intervention to be executed, as we will communicate in detail all the steps, roles and responsibilities in the whole process.
Here is an Request for Change (RFC) as an example:
5. Obtain/Build:
Here we need to focus on ensuring that service components are available when and where they are needed, i.e. that all required tools, capabilities or skills are available for execution in all phases of the project.
For this point, our recommendations are:
Assess the needs of the projectAcquire the right tools for project implementation and monitoring:: At this point we evaluate what type of technician we are going to need based on the complexity of the project, what resources we are going to need in terms of tools…
Acquire the right tools for project implementation and monitoring:Once the needs have been assessed, we need to acquire those resources, both the appropriate technical resources and the tools for the implementation and monitoring of the project.
Implementation and monitoring:Once we have the resources acquired, we need to implement them and make sure to monitor these resources to evaluate performance, identify possible improvements and make changes if necessary.
6. Deliver and support:
This last step is to ensure that services are delivered according to the specifications agreed by the client, addressing all end-user requirements and expectations.
To this end, we suggest the following recommendations:
Project Closure Document:Prepare a document showing both parties’ approval of the project closure, while detailing in as much granularity as possible everything that has been done.
Finally, here are some tools that can help you to manage the project:
https://blog.hubspot.es/marketing/herramientas-gestion-proyectos
And this is the end of today’s article, I hope it will be of help to you when it comes to improving the management and processing of your business projects.
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Request a free 30 minute consultancy and we will advise you on how to improve your databases.
Project Manager.
