1 – Define Objectives & Expectations
Each client/employer or person involved in the project can have different goals and expectations, and the success of the project will depend on having a clear goal. Therefore, the first step to manage a project is to find out what the goal are and define them in detail formally in writing.
2 – Communicate with Stakeholders
Stakeholders are all those people who are affected by the project and/or can affect it. Therefore, it is very important to identify them from the beginning to ensure that you are correctly managing these most important figures. This management should include their identification, definition of how they can influence and expectations, and foster appropriate communication that encourage each stakeholder to behave the way you want to do regarding the project.
3 – Plan in Sufficient Details
Delays are one of the main reasons for dissatisfaction and failure of projects, so to manage projects correctly, we must meet deadlines. For this, it is advisable to divide the project into individual tasks that are easy to quantify and estimate, which will give a greater degree of precision to the planning. During the execution, having detailed planning will allow you to know the possible delays beforehand and will give a greater capacity to define countermeasures.
4 – Project Management Templates
A good project management template is a highly effective tool and the good thing about them is that they can be used later on for new projects as well. Thus, you must develop the necessary project management templates for the efficient project management in present as well as in future projects.
5 – Manage by Milestones
A problem in many projects is the coordination of tasks among the different stakeholders, who often have their own schedules or do not pay due attention to the integrated project schedule due to their complexity.
In these cases, a good solution is to define milestones in those points of interaction between the main stakeholders, so that each member has a concrete data to complete his or her assigned task.
6 – Encourage Communication
We cannot forget that any project is executed by a group of people who must coordinate to reach the defined objectives. In this regard, one of the most important aspects is communication which must be two-way i.e. from the project manager to the team, client and stakeholders, and in the reverse direction.
7 – Manage Changes
The lack of control over the changes in scope is a reason for failure, so to ensure the success of the project, you we must apply a correct change management and must not forget that the objective of the project is to comply with the initially defined scope and so any modification on this scope should be avoided or be passed through the corresponding process of analysis and approval.
