Best Practices in Project Management

Astitva Ghanmode
5 min readJan 14, 2022

“Why it’s such a valuable skill, and the tools and methodologies that can help you on your way”

The ability to effectively plan, execute, and review projects is a skill that’s useful across all industries and sectors. It’s one of the reasons why project management is a highly sought-after ability. But what exactly is it? Why is it so useful? And how do you get started with project management?

So far, what is Project Management? What are the Best Practices in Project Management? Let’s see some answers of these questions Further in this blog.

What is Project Management?

Project management is the discipline of managing all the different resources and aspects of the project in such a way that the resources will deliver all the output that is required to complete the project within the defined scope, time, and cost constraints.

These are agreed upon in the project initiation stage and by the time the project begins all stakeholders and team members will have a clear understanding and acceptance of the process, methodology and expected outcomes. A good project manager utilises a formal process that can be audited and used as a blue print for the project, and this is achieved by employing a project management methodology.

Best Practices for Project Management

1. Planning Project

The project needs to be fully clarified before you can start requesting resources. If you want to speed up your project, take a step back and organize your ideas in one place. Think of the various project requirements, resources, potential obstacles, and workflow needed to reach the finish line.

Whether it is time, budget, or people, projects need a lot of resources. Look at your business objectives and your long-term and short-term goals to understand how this particular project fits into the big picture.

Fig. 1 Planning

2. Develop a Project Brief

One of the best ways to manage a project is to create a project report, also known as a project document. Use it to quickly get everyone’s authorization and purchase. However, you should also visit the project briefly throughout the project to keep everyone on the same page. It does not have to be a long and tedious document. On the other hand, your project should briefly be easy to digest and at least include: Name of the project, Client, Project overview

3. Create a Project Plan

It is very important to know that the project plan is not the same as the project short. The shortness of your project should, well, be short. It needs to be a high level of focus on what you want to achieve.

On the other hand, the project plan outlines exactly how you will complete everything in the project. Here are some of the ones that include a good project plan: Scope and function, Planning, Budgeting, Staff, Monitoring and control, Risk assessment, Quality standards, Tracking and analysis of variability, Promotion and content management.

4. Establish clear and consistent communication

Regular communication is the best basic practice for successful project managers. Whether your internal team, stakeholders, or your clients, communication should act as a two-way street. Instant messaging software makes life easier when you create project spaces. This is especially true if you can integrate it with your project management software.

Access to direct or indirect video chat, with one member or your entire team, enables problem solving and decision-making quickly. No matter what platform you use, it is important to establish and maintain clear communication channels so that all participants stay informed.

5. Maintain a Schedule and Cadence

This best project management project is all about taking care of your team as it is about reaching your scheduled dates. Your goal is to avoid overloading your team while making steady progress. Your initial schedule will be based on guesses, past events, and ratings. All right. But using a tool like Team Schedule Views gives you insight to make better planning decisions.

Fig. 2 Maintaining Schedule

6. Plan for setback and how to take corrective action

It’s important to know some of the biggest reasons why projects fail are due to unexpected changes. Even the best projects will eventually have an issue that requires changing timelines, budget, task management, or solving it directly from the root cause. Whether it requires scheduling, budgeting, or job management, you need a plan to address the issues directly. Another way to prepare yourself is to track diversity within the group. This will help your team understand why the project may be unorganized and allow you to prevent any problems from arising and from happening again.

7. Closely monitor your project for scope creep

One of the most commonly considered risks in project management is the increase in scope. In fact, the increase in scope is when the needs of a project or activities are so altered that it puts the project at risk of not completing a set deadline or within a set budget.

Make sure clients and stakeholders understand the implications of making changes. And if the scope should change, update the system and notify everyone. Scope creep is easier to handle than most people think.

8. Track everything related to the project

Data are not the only resource you need to manage it. By looking at your data, risk levels, quality, cost, and other information — and by minimizing variations from your initial estimates — you will be able to take care of problems before they get out of hand. The reporting features team allows project managers to do just that. Easily manage your KPIs associated with the benefits of each project in the Performance Profit Report.

9. Keep project documents up to date

As a project manager, it is easy to quit Data maintenance jobs and focus on putting out fires. But you need to keep your project documents upgraded throughout the project. This best practice will save you a lot of time (as long as you regularly update your important project documents). As long as you stay on top of your documents, closing the project will be easier. Spaces Solution serves as the central point of all processes and documents for each of your teams.

10. Hold a retrospective meeting for more insights

Project management is about making the project as efficient and effective as possible. That’s why at the end of all the projects you need to hold a retrospective meeting. Even though retro is very common on the Scrum road, often used by engineers or designers working with sprints, these conventions work well for all types of projects.

An example of a scrum approach

As a kick-off meeting, your retro is for everyone involved in the project: team members, participants, and support people.

References

[1] https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/lifecycle-and-methodology/introduction-project-management.php

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advantages-disadvantages-project-management-shepelyuk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

[4]https://www.greycampus.com/blog/project-management/an-introduction-to-project-management-basics

[5]https://kissflow.com/project/project-management-best-practices/

[6]https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/best-practices-effective-project-management-8922

[7]https://www.fool.com/the-blueprint/project-management-best-practices/

[8]https://www.wrike.com/blog/project-management-best-practices-infographic/

[9]https://www.cio.com/article/228109/project-management-tips-strategies-best-practices.html

[10]https://www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/introduction-to-project-management-effectively-manage-projects

Written by : Astitva Ghanmode, Kartik Tiwari, Shruti Nikam, Kalyani Vidhate, Omkar Dalwai

Please do like our blog and share your views on it in the comment section.

Thank you !

--

--