Project Management: 3 good resolutions in order to manage effectively and efficiently

Christmas Break is extremely useful in order to “trace a line” both of the work that has been done and the work that will be done next year. PM, during this time of the year, need to make an analysis regarding the on-going projects measuring efficiency and effectiveness of commissions that their companies have got till this moment: it’s crucial to have the right skills and instruments to do so.

As we already told you in some articles we have written during the past months, Project Management is nothing more than an approach needed to manage the complexity both of structured business projects and the daily operatibility of each and every activity.

This last (2018) article is a summing-up of the 3 good resolutions that you need to keep in mind in commissions’ management, be them big or small.

2019 PM’s Good Resolutions

1. Knowledge and pro tools

You can’t improvise to be a PM, study and a deep knowledge of methodology and assets is crucial. A good PM needs to have strong technical-methodological knowledge, but this knowledge alone isn’t enough to guarantee a project’s success. The most important skills to be a PM are across-the-board and management knowledge, such as pro-activeness, negotiating and relational skills, and open-mindness.

The given instruments are what make a difference, if combined with PMs’ Knowledge: tools we chose in our PM activity can be the key to manage effectively and efficiently all our companies’ commissions.

Iamboo developed its own tool, which is dedicated to commissions’ efficience measuring.

Keep Control is a web app, a cloud based Saas (a software as a service web app, which is developed in AngularJS and Java) product, which is able to implement management control that allows a service company to control the employment of its human resources on a particular project in a easy, immediate and across-the-board way:

Infact, Keep Control is able to:

- Set up a budget either to projects and to small activities within the project;

- To have an intuitive Graphic User Interface for the resources that, while working,can keep track of their activities through a very detailed Time Sheet (it’s divided into type of activity or inactivity – such as absences, sickness and other kind of problems).

- To evaluate the progresses of the time spent in from their resources related to the set-up budget;

- To obtain detailed reports to send to the customer with the work progress status and the related invoices;

- To have comparative graphics among the ongoing projects to relate budget, time, issues, single resources productivity, the workload distribution and profit margin.

2. How to manage a project: the importance of mandate and to-do lists

Nowadays, mandates are more and more known to be a benefit in project management, but it has to be a goal to the PM to mandate in a continuous way. It’s not useful anymore to have a one man project, since it’s crucial that all human resources experience a growth in knowledge and skills, and that they could take more and more responsibilities.

When a PM needs to mandate, he mustn’t participate in the practical phase of work execution, since the mandate “flows” through the division of work and responsibilities. PM’s main focus must be to manage and organize the project comprehensively, and this impacts greatly the use of time and resources.

It doesn’t mean that a PM shouldn’t make a daily to-do list in order to know how to manage his own time. Experience and tools such as KC help to stay focused on the strategic management while taking care of the day-by-day management.

3. Planning and control

You need to link  to the previous point work’s planning and control.

While planning, you need to consider that the day-by-day management is the trickiest one: you’ll have to manage exceptions, deviations to the chosen path or technical problems on a daily basis.

So, when you decide on a clear and complete project’s plan, you must stick to it no matter what since it helps to respect the deadlines you fixed before.

Last but not least, work’s control (while working and when it’s finished), measurement’s instruments of commissions’ efficiency, such as KC, allow you to measure how your works is progressing in terms of time and “used” resources, they allow to have some easily readable detailed reports that can be easily understood by either the customer and the PM, and they allow to create graphs that compare different projects and budgets, time, problems, productivity of resources , distribution of work charge and profit margin.

Christmas Bonus Track: a good decision in 5 steps

This is the right time to do so, so we gift you with an outline you have to keep in mind every time you need to make a decision for no matter which project…Enjoy your read and Merry Christmas to all of you!

Take a good decision in 5 steps:

1. Design the map of decision you need to make:

a) to analyze the situation;
b) to make visible all the point of view;
c) to divide the topics and to underline the difficult parts.

2. Link themes and people

a) toexplain the different point of view;
b) To define the solution's contest;
c) To create a common starting point.

3. Find some different solutions:

a) To identify and analyze solutions' proposals;
b) To develop the proposals;
c) To evaluate the criteria in order to evaluate the proposals.

4. Decide!

a) Define the rules to decide
b) Decide
c) To let people know who decided on what.

5. Communicate the decision