10 Ways to Accelerate Project Success
By Jennifer Whitt
Are you looking for a Project Manager that will lead a project to success? The following is a list of 10 behaviors that great project managers exhibit that you can use in your search.
- Diplomacy. Project managers really need an understanding of the environment and system, and to know how to work with not only team members and stakeholders, but also different organizations internal or external to the project.
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Commitment to Task. Staying committed to getting things done keeps the project on time and on task, and deliverables completed.
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Team Building. It’s critical to keep the team engaged, committed and collaborating so that deliverables move forward and the project stays on track.
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Reading the System. It takes skill to not only read the system of all the 2 environments and groups involved, but also to determine whether or not people are engaged. If people aren’t engaged in the project, they will be unwilling to give accurate, timely information and more than likely will not get their deliverables completed.
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Organization and Planning. A PM must be able to organize and plan projects effectively.
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Communication. Especially significant is the ability to communicate effectively among groups where there are cultural differences, or where there are differences between organizations and communication has to occur at varying levels.
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Decision Making and Problem Solving. The PM needs to be able to quickly assess what’s happening on the project, engage and involve people, and get risk and issues accelerated and completed in a timely way.
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Process Management. Project and process management go hand in hand. The PM must follow some type of systemized project and process management for the team and project.
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Change Management. Effectively managing changes that occur on the project involves knowing who to go to and how, and understanding the process that quickly involves stakeholders in determining what has to be done.
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Leadership. Ultimately, he should know the difference between managing and leading, and be able to inspire and keep the team going even when times are tough.
In addition to these ten critical behaviors, there are four equally important tools:
- Methodology. It’s very important that a project manager has experience using a system or methodology of approach, and can document and communicate it to the team. People need to know what’s going to occur, when, where and how.
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Techniques. With project experience we add tools and techniques to our tool belt. Those techniques are very beneficial for a project manager to share and pull out at specific times.
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Software. The software that is used should enable project success. We are all familiar with the previous generation of project management software that was so complex nobody really used it, defaulting instead to paper or sticky notes. Today, project management software is very collaborative, often customizable, and widely available. Many also have social tools built-in to enable project collaboration.
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Templates. Developing templates that can be mobilized and quickly and effectively implemented is very simple today. The benefit to your team is that being able to reach for a template saves a lot of their time and effort. Templates also help to keep work processes more consistent and standard; your team will know what to expect and when.
While the above lists are not exhaustive, they do provide a good indicator of success if a project manager possesses these skills and tools.
Jennifer Whitt, PMP is a speaker, trainer, Certified Performance Coach, author, and company president of PDUs2Go.com. She is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and knows how difficult it can be to make time for classroom or online learning so she has developed a new way for Project Managers to Earn n’ Learn while on the go. For more information, please visit http://www.pdus2go.com
