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6 best project management software techniques

Have you ever been in a situation of having too many projects to manage but wondering how to tackle? If yes, you are not alone. Many project managers go through these problems every now and then. Only 25% Project Managers have an action plan ready and confidently execute the project whilst leveraging the challenges as opportunities for bringing about innovation in processes. And even these project managers can make mistakes when managing a big, complex project or when overwhelmed with changes.

Venkat Sai 8 Stories

Wednesday June 13, 2018 , 4 min Read

Let’s look at the six best techniques for effective Project Management:

Tip-1: Meet the whole team and set goals upfront

It is very important to allocate roles and responsibilities and deliverables to the whole team right from the beginning. For this, keeping a kick-off meeting with your team fulfills the purpose.

The most important benefit of setting goals, defining roles and responsibilities is that it invokes a sense of accountability and ownership. Also, each and every team member is clear of what is expected of them and could lead to the surfacing of doubts and role clashes which could be sorted out immediately.

Tip-2: Break down a project into manageable fragments

You may have heard, “Divide and rule is the best policy”. Here it does not refer to creating differences in the team and managing them, rather it means to break a large project into smaller and manageable pieces. Creating small inter-connected pieces help in easy tracking of project progress and also make the team comfortable with the amount of work they can tackle successfully one at a time.

What may initially seem to be a herculean task at project level initially will gradually transform itself into easily manageable tasks at an individual level. It is also important to understand the requirement of each smaller fragment to better allocate resources and assign it to members best suited to accomplish it.

Why a software requires right project management tools

Tip-3: Prioritization of projects and tasks

Almost every business has multiple projects running simultaneously and not knowing which project is of strategically higher importance and vice-versa could be dangerous in long-term. Projects or tasks not categorized into high, normal or low priority could make employees work on a low priority that is also majorly easy to accomplish.

That’s why it’s very important for a manager to evaluate projects and tasks and telling team members which ones are of high priority and likewise to concentrate their potential in strategically important projects.

Tip-4: Use a project management tool

With so many projects on the line and keeping track of each one of them with their tasks and activities manually could be a cumbersome job. Some project management tools, like OfficeTimer or Asana, gives a visual representation of the status of projects, tasks deadline and its

allocation, etc. can help manage projects easily. Companies using these tools for project management have found an increase in their employees’ productivity by at least 15%.

With the help of these tools, you can also set notifications and reminders regarding deliverable deadlines. For example- in OfficeTimer, an email is triggered for approaching and missed the deadline. Features like this can help you in taking appropriate action at the right time.

How Project Management Software Is Going To Change Your Business Strategies.

Tip-5: Regularly communicate with team

As a project manager, you would have felt at times that keeping in touch with your team is crucial as it gives information, progress and dispels doubts. For regular communication, it is not always necessary to call a whole team for the meeting rather it could be team members involving specific task or involving only team leaders responsible for sub level tasks.

Though keeping meetings are important, but they can reduce team’s productivity also. Therefore, one thing should always be kept in mind that these meetings should add value and do not interrupt in team’s workflow. So, plan for regular meetings that are issue specific and short but don’t bog them down with a lot of them.

Project Tracking Software will Eliminate Redundancy at Work

Tip-6: Have a Backup Plan ready

Every project manager at some point in time has gone through the phase of failure despite putting all efforts by himself and his team. But putting efforts more than actually required is like killing yours and your team’s productive time which could have been used somewhere else.

So, it is important to have a backup plan in place from the very start to change the course of the project when it is absolutely necessary. This will ensure you complete your project and achieve the deadline comfortably without compromising much on team’s productivity.