Project Management Simplified: Project Manager best practices
Leading projects needs-to-knows for business technology enthusiasts looking to become great Project Managers.
Introduction
Great project managers leverage their diverse business acumen by paying attention to detail, keeping open lines of communication, leading proactively, creating systems, and validating deliverables to bring about project success.
In this article, we shall look at a project manager’s key aspects of business acumen, Critical success factors, and some of the best practices for project success.
Project Manager's Business Acumen
Companies often seek technically sound project professionals with good leadership and business strategy skills, yet most project managers who have the technical ability often lack either leadership or business strategy skills. And in some cases lack two of the three components of the talent triangle.
Great project managers should have a well-rounded talent triangle in order to deliver projects that achieve good business realization.
The project management talent triangle consists of;- Technical Project Management, Leadership & Business Strategic Management (business acumen).
Technical Project Management (now Ways of Working)
This is the technical know-how that makes a project manager stand out from the fold, e.g. understanding concepts like critical path, communicating work breakdown structures(WBS), and using various business analysis/project management tools effectively.
Leadership (now Power Skills)
The skills Project Managers need to effectively lead projects are not unique to project professionals but they are essential for project management success.
Effective Project Leadership can be achieved using the DIRECT project leadership frameworks: – Define, Investigate, Resolve, Execute, Change & Transition.
Strategic Business Management (now Business Acumen)
Project managers should be able to effectively conceptualize organizations & businesses' operations, in order to deliver successful business process improvement leading to business benefits realization.
Critical Success Factors for Project Managers
Pay attention to detail
Fact-check every detail of the project progress and keep supporting data for all activities and project deliverables. this is key when communicating with stakeholders or making decisions as a project manager on the next course of action.
Create systems & Methodologies
Ensure that the necessary guidelines and frameworks are in place to empower the project team to make the right decision as they deliver on the project per expertise.
Validating deliverables
Before holding meetings or communicating project status with key stakeholders, ensure the completeness and accuracy of all project artifacts. Remember decisions are being made based on your submission as a project manager.
Keep open lines of communication
Endeavour to have healthy two-way communications with all project stakeholders. Important stakeholders that have the potential to impact project delivery should be on a “constant need-to-know basis” regarding project progress.
A project manager can achieve this by providing regular status updates and reports, or arranging meetings if necessary.
Leading Proactively
Start by gaining stakeholder buy-in early on to set clear expectations, then proceed to execute effective project leadership to the project team ( developers, QA/SQAs, Testers & Designers, product lead, etc), upper management( Project owner & project sponsors) and Outside parties who success of the project impacts (Suppliers, Auditors, End-users, or Clients).
Qualities a Product Manager with good Business Acumen possesses.
Project managers often align projects with business strategies by understanding, defining, and communicating the triple constraints of a project to clearly state the role of projects in your business strategy.
- Aligning project scope, schedules budget, and timestamps when managing projects helps Project managers recognize business functions and how they translate to the various business realization benefits an organization or business/client the project is meant for.
- Ability to clearly describe the operational, strategic, and tactical aspects or perspectives of projects toward a business objective(Business Process improvement).
- Ability to define the strategic goals of a project and the necessary needs to achieve those goals. A project manager can utilize the SMART technique for this.
- Project managers should be able to clearly define and communicate demonstrable process improvements & benefits like cost management, business brand improvement, or reduced waste the project intends to deliver.
- A good project manager should be able to identify, forecast, and plan for risks of a project way ahead of time even if the likelihood of those risks happening is minimal.
Project Success Best Practises for Project Managers.
Have a signed project charter
A project charter designates the project manager as the single point of contact for a project and gives him/her the authority to officially commence the project.
This is a high-level document that describes the project, and its approach. The Project Charter also includes the various stakeholders of this project, making it easy to gauge stakeholder buy-in & clarity of the project vision.
Managing Scope Creep
Being able to pin-point scope creep and prevent it is very key to project success and can be achieved through;-
- Having in place a change request form.
- Conducting root cause analysis.
- Documenting project activities.
- Seeking stakeholder approval before any major activities that can impact the project.
Implementing a change control system
It’s important for project success to have a change control system that helps manage approved changes by providing project stakeholders with a formal way to make change requests.
Managing Costs and budgets
Avoid going over budget can be avoided by hiring qualified personnel, and monitoring & forecasting regularly.
Business benefits realization.
It is important for all project stakeholders to understand and buy into the business benefits the project is proposing to deliver. This ensures that time and resources don’t go to waste.
Conclusion
In today’s ever-changing environment, Project Managers are required to easily adapt to changes as they deliver project business process improvements.
And this requires certain skill sets and practices to be able to achieve business benefits realization for the client.
The Talent Triangle has been updated to now focus on Ways of Working (formerly Technical Project Management), Power Skills (formerly Leadership), and Business Acumen (formerly Strategic and Business Management).
