Jun 02 2008
Project Management – Steps to Success
Project Management – Steps to Success
Wikipedia’s definition of Project Management: Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
My experience lay in websites, sharepoint sites, multimedia and creative in general, but project management can apply to many different industries. Projects have a beginning and a definite end–if not, what you have going on is a process.
There are varying PM (Project Management) methods, but they primarily revolve around scope, quality, time and budget. Project Managers are professionals who make sure the project is completed, i.e., they manage the project, though they likely do not actually ‘do’ the work required towards completing the project.
- Identify sponsors and stakeholders
- Make sure you have a “Champion” in management
- Figure out the goals of the project, and the associated deliverables
- Plan
- Create a methodology
- Secure reliable resources
- Create the team that will participate
- Communicate constantly will all stakeholders
- Establish metrics that are clear and concise
- Don’t fall behind
Following the above steps doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, but it absolutely helps to make sure you’re doing your best. I’m not going to go into each of the above steps–I think they’re pretty self-explanatory, at least if you’ve managed projects in the past, even if you didn’t have the kind of success you wanted.
For more detailed information, check out the below sites:
About.com’s Management section
BNET
Project Steps
DM News
Tech Republic (A webcast; the presenters illustrate five basic steps in Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007 to create a plan for the business projects.
4 Responses to “Project Management – Steps to Success”
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Quite a handy list there. This is more like a check list. It’s more psychological in nature. Which is important. Project management i believe requires a mindset as well. You’ve addressed that part of it really well. Along with that, i think certain tools are also needed to streamline project management processes – they automate a lot of things and make this checklist more relevant. I’ve been using Deskaway (www.deskaway.com) – a great tool i must say! Its handy and quite cost effective and it helps me focus on the psychological part of project management more.. Its not the only tool around – there’s BAsecamp (www.basecamp.com) – which i think is a little expensive and not so feature intensive with respect to relevant augmentations. Zoho has a good PM tool (www.zoho.com) – that too is feature heavy at a competitive price – but i liked the Deskaway interface more so i went for that. Anyway besides that – in a media company like mine, these psychological, communication relationship aspects are key! Thanks for the list!
Aditya,
Thanks for the comments. I’ve used Basecamp before, but feel that it’s lacking. I haven’t used Deskaway, but will look into it–although I think MS Project will probably be what I use–
Thanks!
I found an realy interesting blog not so long ago. It’s about project management 2.0 – managing projects with the help of 2.0 tools. It’s not a simple “how to” blog. The author tries to establish a new project management concept. Some posts are questionable of course, but there are some fresh ideas too. I thought you might be interested to have a look http://www.wrike.com/projectmanagement/03/25/2008/Bridging-the-Three-Gaps-in-Project-Management
Eric,
Thanks for the post, and the link. There are some very good–and true–details in the link you posted. One of the main hurdles I’ve had to go through as a PM is under the “There is a gap between e-mail and project management software that made project management software inefficient” section. It’s a battle, especially when you have very hands-on clients, and especially when you have team members who need to be hand-held the entire project or for whom English is a second language.
Thanks again!
Cully