The project management guide to successful projects
Essential to the smooth running of a project, project management meets strategic challenges. Organized into 4 crucial stages, it requires rigorous upstream planning and regular follow-up.
In this article, we're going to help you master these different stages in order to establish an effective project management strategy.
What is project management?
Project management involves guiding decision-making and adapting strategies, thanks to regular, reliable data collection.
Project management objectives
Project management fulfils 3 main objectives, including :
- meeting deadlines and costs;
- constraint management ;
- precise visibility of project progress.
What's the difference between project management and project monitoring?
Project management and project monitoring are often equated, but they differ in the scope of their actions.
- A strategic vision
Like corporate management, project management involves a strategic vision, responding to decision-making issues, and includes stages such as :
-
- Measurement
- Anticipation
- Simulation
- Adjustment
- An operational dimension
Project management focuses on the dimension operational dimension of the project, with a more limited strategic vision. It essentially involves monitoring production on a day-to-day basis.
What's the difference between project monitoring and project management?
Project monitoring and project management are also often confused.
In fact, project tracking is an integral part of project management and project monitoring.
- Collecting data
Monitoring involves collecting data that will be used to make decisions.
Tools such as dashboards, time tracking and meetings provide the basis for this data collection.
- Compare data
Focused on ongoing activities, project monitoring must be continuous and regular.
The data collected and analysed help to identify and assess discrepancies between actual and the forecasts.
How do you set up a project management strategy?
A successful project management strategy requires a structured approach to ensure that objectives are achieved, resources are used efficiently and risks are mitigated.
Setting goals for clear direction
Show clear direction
Defining objectives is the first step, providing direction.
These must be determined according to the company's needs:
- strategic vision;
- its current and future market context;
- available resources: material, technical, human and financial.
Identify evaluation criteria
To ensure that these objectives are met, project evaluation criteria need to be identified.
These establish tangible elements for evaluating the success of the project.
If compliance with costs and deadlines are still common evaluation criteria, other criteria can also be taken into account: quality of deliverables, customer satisfaction, etc. In the event of risk, should we give priority to the quality delivered or the profitability of the project?
It should be noted that objectives vary with the company's life cycle, and depend closely on the strategic vision of the project portfolio.
Define project scope
A number of elements need to be defined in order to set up effective, relevant project management.
Understanding the issues
Project management involves identifying the issues at stake and, in particular, the impact of the project, whether it succeeds or fails. Indeed, some projects can have an impact on others within the company, jeopardizing or strengthening collaboration...
Every project involves issues that need to be identified in order to measure its repercussions, both positive and negative.
Setting priorities
The urgency of the project and its priority in relation to other projects in the portfolio must be determined.
Analyze available resources
You also need to take the time to analyze the resources available to you, to see whether they need to be expanded or reduced.
This means taking stock of your available resources as accurately as possible.
It's worth noting that human resources are unpredictable and require a high degree of flexibility and reactivity.
Define a budget
Budgets are bound to fluctuate. Anticipating risks helps limit uncertainty and helps you build a realistic budget.
Prevent risks and adjust quickly
Identify potential risks
A project evolves in a context and is confronted with potential risks:
- changes in project scope ;
- the evolution of a schedule, either from an internal demand within the company or an external one (the customer);
- changes in the economic landscape and fluctuations: for example, inflation or higher wage demands in a market, which can affect a project's budget;
- regulatory or legal developments, such as a change in the law requiring adjustments.
Anticipating risks is part of an effective project governance strategy and must be considered from the outset of the project.
Stafiz gives you the responsiveness you need. For each unexpected event, you can visualize the impact on each project and on your company as a whole, and modify projects in just a few clicks.
- A project has been postponed? With just a few clicks, everything can be changed: tasks/phases can be shifted and all the resource planning collaborators, invoicing deadlines...
- Are your employees' salaries changing? You can instantly visualize the impact on each project.
Quick adjustment
Risk response takes two forms.
Corrective action, when the risk has been realized.
The project manager analyzes the situation and needs to be reactive in devising solutions. Predictive tools will prove invaluable in proposing solutions.
Preventive actions are used to identify potential risks.
They involve thinking about alternatives even before risks become apparent. Monitoring, scenario forecasting and training are preventive actions.
What are project management positions?
Project resource planning
Organize resources with profitability in mind
The project manager must anticipate resource requirements and allocate them with profitability in mind.
This is a key issue for service businesses such as consulting firms, which need to ensure that their consultants are allocated as much as possible to billable assignments.
To maximize profitability, working times must not exceed planned times. This means having a precise view of working times and accurately analyzing any deviations.
Distribute the load evenly
Employees must not be overloaded overloaded or underloaded.
Everyone must have a distribution distribution in order to maintain their well-being, thus impacting on the company's productivity. To measure the distribution of employees, the resource planning rate is a relevant indicator.
In addition, the distribution of employees can change rapidly, representing a risk that needs to be considered. Availability needs to be considered, both in the short and long term.
