5 Principles of Successful Project Management (Part-I)

Like sales and accounting are inherent part of doing any business, these days project management has become must-practice ingredient of any business, be it about new product launches, new product development, internal process improvement or technology implementation, plant setup, construction, external marketing activity, sales drive or recruitment drive/hiring activities. Over the years, organizations have realized the importance of doing things in right manner, and the right manner is about repeatable process with predictable outcome. Having repeatable process with predictable outcome is about project management.

As organizations realized importance of doing-things-right, they have started investing in project management. And once a business invests in anything, it carefully evaluate return on investment (RoI). It is only sound and effective project management that can deliver return on investment, consistently for an organization: thereby delivering things on time using limited resources and of desired quality.

So how to achieve such respectable project management process? Let’s look at five principles of successful project management.

Be Agile (Not Necessary to Fail-SUPER-Fast or Always-Keep-Experimenting)

Doing Business in 2016

Doing business in year 2016 is all about being proactive and not reactive. If you wait for time to understand the change and then respond, you will be left out and possibly see business going south. Just look at Nokia, it failed to understand the market, it failed to adapt and respond on time. Once undisputed market leader, Nokia’s future is now blurred and is in somebody else’s hand.

What Business Disruptions Means to Project Leadership

Business disruptions are forcing market leaders to change the way they have been doing things for decades. It is a time to be agile. It is a time to be proactive. If business is taking old, traditional project management route with 5 years project plan will possibly find its project plan becoming obsolete in next two year.

Being Lean and Adaptive

The broad business goal is now broken down to limited scoped smaller projects. These projects are managed using project management tool and tracked for optimal results in shorter cycles. Project team members are shared across project, their contribution from one to another project is flowing even on a daily basis as per business need. Hence effective project management in 2016 requires transparently collaborative team environment with lean project management approach. But being lean does not mean that you have to fail-super-fast or keep on experimenting, what I mean is taking a disciplined approach in being adaptive to the changing business dynamics.

Help Project Team to Learn | Give Them Ways to Balance Work-Life

Knowledge Generation (KnowGen)

Unlike in the past, the new generation of project managers, project teams are hungry for knowledge. For them, “there is sea of knowledge out there”. As a business leader, you will have to help them to learn more and more, be nimble to technological changes, process changes.

Striking the Balance

There will always be projects which are routine activities like Business-As-Usual, and there will be activities involving new learning, new challenges. Business leader offers right balance of such routine activities and challenging work to project teams. Some organizations requires its employee to go through different roles, giving them exposure to various aspects of doing business, on a rotation basis. This approach ensures routine project receives experienced drivers as well as challenging projects receives fresh minds and energies.

Learning opportunities and ways to balance work-life are the most sought after things by employees. If you as business leader can provide these to your project teams, you will have a platoon of capable and loyal employees.

In next post we will see how organization should prepare itself for next generation project managers.

Your life can be become easier with the right project management system. ZilicusPM is the right PM tool for you and your team. Get started now.

Additional readings about project management, leadership

• Case Study: What Happens When Project Team Has Dual Reporting
• Avoid These 10 Most Common Mistakes That Leads to Project Failure
• Back2Basics: Ultimate Project Management Guide: Project Planning
• 8 Reasons to Decide Whether Your Organization Needs Project Management Office
• Compare the best project management software 
• All in one project management software
• Guide to selecting best project management software

Do you know ZilicusPM project management software offers comprehensive project planning, project tracking, project collaboration capabilities such as

• Gantt Chart
• Time Tracking
• Budgeting and Cost Management
• Resource Planning and Management
• Issue Tracking
• Risk Management
• Change Management
• Meeting Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Reporting
• Document Management to help you manage and deliver projects better?

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

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