(Newswire.net — May 31, 2019) — Have you ever had a think about why project management is so important? If you haven’t worked alongside a project manager in the past, it is easy to be tempted to forego the expenses that are in favor of managing your own project by yourself. Project management can be an expensive investment financially, which is why people like to learn how to do it on their own. However, this isn’t a good idea. When it comes to being a good project manager, you need to make sure you are the glue that holds the whole project together and ensures the objectives and quality are met at the right time while on a budget.
Organizations who undervalue management of a project have a reported fifty percent of their projects failing. The projects that have failed can derail the initiatives of your business fast and can even prevent your business from growing. Project management consists of more than just keeping track of deadlines and setting up a budget. A reputable project manager is able to take control of a project from start to finish, making sure that the goals and initiatives are aligned strategically. They also ensure the company has stakeholder support available for the project and that everyone understands what’s going on.
Project Management Explained
Understanding why project management is important is the first step to doing it right. The Project Management Institute’s (PMI) definition of project management is applying skills, knowledge, techniques and tools to envision activities and to meet the requirements of the project. The basic management lifecycle should cover the following stages: planning, execution, initiation and closure. To summarize, the principle of project management is to successfully organize and deal with a set of objectives and deliverables and to complete them. It involves finding out and managing the risks, managing resources, being smart with a budget, and communicating clearly across a number of stakeholders and teams.
Project Management Importance
When it comes to understanding this mindset, joining the agile revolution by undertaking an agile training course is a great way to start. At sites like findcourses.com, you can get yourself up to date on the methodology to enhance success rates and efficiency by transforming your process. Due to the complexity of projects and the involvement of many different stakeholders, making sure a company has a project manager to help lead and keep all the people involved updated is critical for the success of a project. The PMI states that organizations that use the methodology of any kind of project management are better when it comes to meeting a budget, meeting quality standards, expected benefits, meeting scope and keeping on schedule.
The following are reasons why you need to make sure you use project management:
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Being Realistic About Planning a Project
The importance of the planning should not be underestimated. Organizations tend to overestimate how fast deliverables can be achieved, while misjudging the costs. This happens more often than it should and, when combined, it is a recipe for failure. Well-trained project managers will always consider the bigger picture, and the budgets, timelines and goals will all be set at an achievable and realistic level. Without managing a project, getting off track before the project has even begun can happen quickly. To set the budgets, timelines and goals to a realistic level, the project manager should be able to communicate to the other stakeholders to make sure they understand the initiatives of the business objectives and the strategic priorities. Based on the project manager’s research, the outlines of the project plan should be able to balance out the priorities within a budget and time limit. Estimating costs, managing resources and a risk assessment are all the processes involved in this.
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Making the Objectives and Focus Clear
A project manager is there to help hone in the priorities of an organization and to define the objectives of their project. When a team is left to handle project management, it is easy for someone to muddle up the objectives and scope. This unclear focus tends to lead to deadlines being missed, a scope creep, and spending too much. Without having a project manager to keep an eye on the plans of a project and to break down the tasks, the majority of teams may not see the potential risks if they arise. If the evolution of a project’s risk is not addressed, then the team may not prioritize the right facts. Keeping a close watch on all of the factors so that the team focuses on the right ones at the right time and adapt when they need to, is key to being a good project manager.
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Strategic Alignment
If an organization isn’t good at managing a project, then the amount of risk put on the delivery of a strategy tends to be too much, according to the leaders of PMI. Basically, organizational strategy is the driver of project management and if this doesn’t apply to the initiatives, then you will be missing out on a crucial growth opportunity. Project managers are there to look over a project’s plan and execution and they make sure that the overall goal of the project and the subsequent milestones and tasks align with the company’s strategy. Making sure that strategic alignment is used at all levels of the project and keeping all the stakeholders well informed helps to ensure that the initiatives drive the business forward.
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Managing Processes
Making sure that the right people perform the right tasks exactly when needed is a proactive process involved in project management. Without setting a method of project management, a lot of teams will reactively work by handling the issues when they become visible, instead of proactively planning for risks that are known, plus setting parameters and goals of a project from the start. Project managers will be able to help teams break down a project into pieces that are easier to manage. By doing so, teams can be directed more efficiently and will be able to react to problems with more agility.
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Controlling Quality
This is an essential part of project management. If the quality standards are not met, but all the budget and time parameters are, the project is still sure to fail and this trap is often fallen into. The pressure teams are faced with to make sure a project is completed on time and within a budget is high, meaning that the work can be rushed and the execution can end up shoddy. Having a project manager to manage the objectives and deadlines, and to check how the tasks of the project are executed, is a role they are required to play.
So, without project management, both your team and your clients will see nothing but chaos. Your objectives will be unclear, there will be a lack of resources, projects will run over, and the quality of what you deliver will suffer. If a project is managed and controlled in the right way using the right resources, then you can expect success every time you set up a project. Your team will also be engaged, motivated and happy, and this in turn will mean happy clients.