Skills Library

Project Management

What this looks like:

  • Plans, executes, monitors, and controls projects from start to finish while ensuring high quality of deliverables

  • Manages an efficient and transparent process with identified goals, objectives, responsibilities and milestones

  • Coordinates available resources, stays within allocated budget, manages risks appropriately and meets target deadlines

  • Remains in constant communication with key stakeholders to report on progress, obtain feedback, and ensure project deliverables are on track and aligns with business goals

  • Gets things done by managing relationships with project stakeholders, team members, subject matter experts 

On-The-Job Practice

  • Involve the right people. A project is successful when it has the right people playing the right roles in the process.

    • Try this: Use the DACI model to ensure you’re not leaving any important people out of the decision-making process during the project i.e., who needs to lead the project, who needs to approve steps, who needs to consult, who needs to be informed, etc.

  • Use pre- and post-project meetings. It’s important to get key stakeholders (and even end users) involved in the project planning and post-mortem phase to anticipate areas you may have not considered and to obtain feedback to improve the process.

    • Try this: Before initiating the project, hold a pre-project planning meeting to anticipate possible problems that could occur throughout the duration of the project i.e., issues with budget, resources, knowledge, timing, competing priorities, etc. Create a contingency (backup) plan in case that problem develops. The more options you have, the more prepared you’ll be throughout the project.

    • Try this: After project implementation, hold a post-project obtain feedback from people involved in the process and also end-users. This meeting can last 30 minutes or longer, but try to keep it at 1.5 hour maximum for optimal focus. As you facilitate the conversation and write down main points on a (virtual) whiteboard, a team member should type these points into google docs. After the debrief, share the debrief-recap document with your team. This HBR article on debriefing presents four key questions to ask your team:

      • What were we trying to accomplish? 

      • Where did we hit or miss our objectives? 

      • What caused our results? (This is a particularly important question where you and your team must do a “root-cause analysis,” according to the HBR article. “Don’t be satisfied with answers like we didn’t try hard enough. Keep digging and ask why you didn’t try hard enough.”) 

      • What should we start, stop, or continue doing?

    1. Try this: Publish meeting agendas at least one day in advance to allow time for team members to understand the goals and desired outcomes of the meeting, prepare updates, questions, etc.

  • Create milestones and adjust accordingly. Every large project should consist of several mini projects/tasks/steps to help keep the project on task and completed within the target deadline. Creating a consistent cadence will help team members anticipate expectations, stay on task, and hold each other accountable.

    1. Try this: Create milestones for the project that clearly lays out which tasks need to be completed by a specific deadline. Track the completion of each step. If you’re behind schedule, determine the root cause of the delay and adjust the timeline if necessary. Communicate to the stakeholders of any changes.

    2. Try this: Create an update cadence and determine how to communicate updates during each milestone e.g., send email updates on a weekly basis of project progress, hold a bi-weekly meeting to update on project progress and celebrate successes, etc.

  • Leverage project management tools. There are different tools, charts and programs you can use to visualize and better manage the project cycle.

    • Try this: Apply different types of charts in your project plan and presentations to help visual, organize and analyze project timing, cause and effect, process/workflow, etc., for your stakeholders.

    • Try this: If you’re taking notes on google docs or (heaven forbid) writing everyone’s tasks down on a notepad, good luck to you! You’re working hard, but not working smart. Plan and track your team’s projects by using a Gantt chart, PERT chart, or other project management tools (see list of options below). These visualization tools will make your life easier by managing workflows, scheduling and coordinating to-do items, and facilitating team work. Let the tool do the heavy-lifting for you. 

Resources for more inspiration

BOOKS

Articles

PODCASTS

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