Best Practices in Project Management

Definition of Best Practices in Project Management

Managing a project could be a gruesome process if best practices are not followed. Be it any kind of the project, one needs to apply project management methods and techniques to deliver it successfully. In this topic, we are going to learn about Best Practices in Project Management.

List of Best Practices in Project Management

Here are some best practices listed to help you in managing your project effectively:

1. Laying down objectives for the project

• The first and main step in managing any project is to be clearly aware of the objectives of the project.
• Before start working on the project, one should make sure that they have a clear and concrete understanding of the scope and objectives of the project as it would enable them to accordingly determine the amount of work which needs to be done and estimate how much time will be required to complete it.
• Also, the stakeholder and the project manager should be on the same page on the understanding of the project.

2. Defining the deliverables

• After starting the project objectives move on to defining the deliverables for the project and also get it reviewed by the key stakeholders to ensure that they agree to what has been enlisted.
• A lot of work could be done, but what if the stakeholders do not expect it? Therefore, it is very important to know what outcome is expected of the project so you can save your time and only do the required.
• The deliverables should be noted down and shared with everyone working on the project to put their best efforts to produce them correctly as specified.

3. Project planning

• The project manager usually does the planning of the project. The project manager needs to sit with the stakeholders to decide the budget of the project, resources required, and people to work on it.
• After finalizing the team, the project manager should discuss the plan with the team members to get their insight about it and estimate the effort required by each one of them to create a work calendar for the whole team and then share it with them, stakeholders, too.
• Creating a work calendar would greatly help in keeping a tab on the progress of the project according to the timeline decided and also calculate the work hours for every individual in the project, so they have an understanding as to how much work needs to be done by them and in how much time.

4. Communicating with the team regularly

• Just making a plan for the project is not sufficient to ensure that it will be executed, the project manager should interact with the team on a regular basis so as to understand how much work has been done and also if it is in accordance with what needs to be delivered by them.
• Effective communication should be there between the project manager and the team members, and the stakeholders so that everybody is aware of their responsibilities and are doing the right activities as assigned to them for the project to run smoothly.

5. Tracking the progress of the project

• After the commencement of the project, you need to keep track of the progress of the project so as to check if everything is getting done according to the work calendar or not.
• If any deviation is noticed, it should be taken care of and informed to the stakeholders, so appropriate measures could be taken to bring back the project on track in time.
• There could be change requests as well in the course of the project if the stakeholders change their minds, and hence the team should be prepared to handle them. However, not all the change requests could be accepted without adverse effects on the project’s delivery time or the budget estimate.
• Hence, the manager should wisely make the decision to incorporate them or not. Managing these change requests effectively will help the project run smoothly and getting delivered on time.

6. Risk management

• Risk management is essential to any project, and the project manager needs to be adept at it. No one can guarantee what risks may arise in the course of the project, and if no planning has been done beforehand to tackle them, it could introduce a delay in the delivery of the project and increase the cost of the project. Not handling the risk effectively can also lead to the failure of the project.
• The team should be ready with the alternatives in advance for the risks that might arise specific to their project. If it arises, they don’t have to waste time devising a plan to handle them and can directly start working on it the alternative. In this way, they can ensure that the project is still delivered on time and is cost-effective.

Conclusion – Best Practices in Project Management

Projects can be of a different kind and hence would require management techniques specific to them to successfully complete the project on time. But following the above-mentioned best practices would surely help in advancing to the successful completion of the project. These are some basic and generic practices that can be applied to all kinds of projects to deliver them successfully.

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