What Are the Benefits of Project Management to Your Organization?
Your organization is constantly working on projects, whether you know it or not.
However, you may not think of project management as a specific discipline.
Sometimes it only manifests as your top management saying: “We need to get this done by the end of the quarter. You’re in charge.”
Now, everything you do after receiving a complex task to complete is effectively project management. Especially if you’re working with a team under you and organizing work.
And even if you haven’t received professional training, you can still experience all the benefits of good project management.
How?
Let’s take a look!
Importance of Project Management
Today, if you’re a manager or a team lead, you’re a project manager. However, the difference between approaching every project with basic planning, and approaching it with proper project management processes is huge.
If you know project management basics, you’ll be able to create reliable processes.
Let’s say you’re meeting with a new client. If you don’t have an established process, you’ll have to remember everything you need to define:
- Stakeholder expectations
- Deliverables
- Project scope.
And so on.
You’ll jot that information down in an informal document and forget about it until problems occur. And if you haven’t thought of covering change policies with your new client, you won’t be able to say no to them. Cue stress and going over budget.
The majority of organizations struggle with their project management processes.
We’ve all been pushed into working more and taking on more responsibility without the proper training for it. Organizations think of project management as just that – managing projects – and not a complementary discipline with plenty of tricks up its sleeve.
In the 21st century, project management belongs to everyone. Not just dedicated project managers.
And that’s exactly why project management can help you, your team, and your organization complete projects in time and without a nasty headache for everyone involved.
But the benefits of project management don’t end there.
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5 Benefits of Project Planning and Management
Having structure around project management and knowing how to use the techniques to finish your projects in time comes with innumerable benefits.
However, there are five immediate benefits of good project management:
1. Project Management Improves Productivity and Reduces Costs and Workload
The ultimate goal of project management and planning is efficiency. You want to do as much as possible in as little time as possible.
Project management helps you create an optimized methodology.
Once you create processes, templates, and procedures, you’ll be able to reuse them with every project and know exactly what you can count on.
This will automatically mitigate risks and improve your efficiency.
How to Improve Efficiency with Project Management
- Create a project plan that contains: information you received from clients and other stakeholders, resources, a work breakdown structure, and a timeline with milestones.
- Break down the project into tasks and clearly define task owners, task dependencies, due dates, and resources.
- Use Gantt charts to monitor individual team members’ workloads and ensure no one is biting off more than they can chew.
- Keep your clients and top management in the loop, and agree on check-in points where you’ll update them on the progress.
- Create a change policy before starting the project. If the project grows in scope or clients want to make changes, make sure you reference the policy to assess if it’s viable and if you’re risking going over budget or being late.
- Try Kanban or Scrum project methodologies for project tracking.
- Get your team’s feedback on your project and task plans. Make sure they can always access the project plan, as well as update it. Consider using a project management tool like Project Central to improve transparency. Try it for free.
2. Project Management Improves Collaboration
If everything related to your project is structured and team members know exactly what they need to be doing at any given time, it’ll be much easier to manage them.
Plus, everyone will do their best work.
How to Improve Collaboration with Project Management
- Use PM tools to keep everyone on the same page. For example, you can use a Microsoft 365 project management tool. Everyone will have immediate access to tasks and task details, and they won’t have to waste time looking for information.
- Define your own and everyone else’s roles clearly and accurately. When you delegate tasks, make sure the task owners understand their responsibilities. Periodically check in with them to offer help or feedback, and make sure they’re staying on track.
- Understand your stakeholders and create communication plans. Firstly, you have to understand your team and what drives them. Then, don’t forget to analyze clients and top management. Create a communication plan for every stakeholder group so no one’s left in the dark.
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3. Project Management Improves Customer Satisfaction
Let’s be real: you are the project manager. You are the one responsible for keeping everyone happy.
Now, this can be a tricky thing to do.
But with a little project management magic added to the mix, you’ll see how easy it can be to meet customers’ expectations.
How to Improve Customer Satisfaction with Project Management
- Understand customers’ expectations and communicate clearly. In the initiation phase, make sure clients are clear about project objectives and their own expectations. What are they hoping to accomplish? Once you understand their expectations, structure clear deliverables and get their approval.
- Prepare the necessary documentation: Project Initiation Document / Project Business Case, Project Charter, and Change Policy are some of the most important documents.
- Monitor risks and prepare a plan for mitigating them. Assess your project clearly after creating a work breakdown structure. Are you likely to go over budget? Do you think you’ll have to make changes to the scope? Understand the risks instead of ignoring them.
4. Project Management Helps You Improve Your Performance
When you have an organized way of tracking your performance and results from project to project, you’ll be able to understand it.
And if you can measure it, you can improve it.
Without a structured process, it’s anyone’s guess why a project failed.
But if you stick to outlined processes, you’ll easily notice bottlenecks and understand the variables putting your projects in jeopardy.
How to Improve Your Performance with Project Management
- Use a central tool for project and task management, tracking, and reporting. Make sure all of your data is in a central location where you can access and analyze it.
- Create post-completion processes. Get your stakeholders together and ask for their feedback. Did they notice any problems, were there areas or things they struggled with?
- Create a document with all the lessons you’ve learned (both from data and hands-on experience).
- Implement changes. Once you understand problematic areas, make an improvement plan.
5. Project Management Helps with Problem Resolution
Finally, there are always problems in projects. After all, there are a lot of moving parts involved.
However, when you’re using a PM methodology, you know exactly how to approach a problem.
A structured way of organizing work can even help you nip problems in the bud or notice them before they wreak havoc on your project.
How to Resolve Problems with Project Management
- Establish risk management processes.
- Note every change and problem in your change/issue log.
- Create communication plans for every stakeholder group, and stick to them.
- Update your project and task plans with every new accepted change to understand how they’ll reflect on the entirety of the project.
And there you have it!
It’s time to stop worrying and embrace the relief project management brings to your organization.
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