Mastering Project Management for Non-Project Managers: Essential Guide
Structured project management brings unprecedented organization and efficiency to complete even highly complex initiatives. This 5000-word guide covers everything non-project managers need - from key terminology and popular frameworks to practical steps for building plans, managing teams, and using tools to drive repeatable success.
Equipping yourself with these essentials will bring tremendous benefits for your projects and career advancement.
Why Bother Learning Project Management as a Non-Project Manager?
Many ambitious professionals take the initiative to skill up despite not carrying formal project manager titles. They recognize PM competencies are invaluable for accomplishing business objectives smoothly amid shifting priorities. Even fundamentals around scheduling activities, allocating resources judiciously and communicating with stakeholders effectively can help managers execute better.
What’s at Stake By Not Learning PM Basics?
Without structured processes, projects often flounder haphazardly until eventually:
Scope Creep Destabilizes Resources: Uncontrolled changes derail budgets and timelines
Poor Communication Irritates Stakeholders: Misalignment risks support/funding
Loose Deadlines Result in Rework: Delayed feedback multiplies iterations
Unforeseen Issues Become Crises: Insufficient risk planning causes fire drills
Lack of Accountability Breeds Disengagement: Progress stalls without individual responsibility
No Lessons Learned Means Repeating Mistakes: Post-project reviews enable continuous improvements
Disorganization frequently breeds cost/time overruns, eroded quality, disengaged teams, frustrated stakeholders and repeat headaches. It also risks non-project managers’ reputations and career mobility.
Conversely, PM skills help managers thrive amid chaos using structured playbooks. Benefits include:
Break large goals into stepwise work batching for flexibility
Standardize and sequence processes for consistency
Forecast realistic budgets and timelines applying past learnings
Clarify metrics and expectations upfront to align stakeholders
Identify risks early to control impact degree
Adjust quickly by monitoring leading indicators
Enable accountability through better task segmentation
Build knowledge repositories and best practice templates
Thus project management is well worth learning for non-project managers despite some effort involved.
Project Management Methodologies: Key Frameworks and Approaches
Myriad approaches exist for managing initiatives effectively. Four dominant project management methodologies provide useful mental models.
Waterfall Project Management
This sequential process flows linearly through discrete requirement gathering, design, development, testing and deployment phases. Stages run one after another with minimal feedback loops. Waterfalls suit predefined solutions with fixed scopes. But they lack flexibility to change easily.
Agile Project Management
This nimble approach built for complexity embraces iterations, constant collaboration and continuous deliveries. Instead of sequential roadmaps, work gets divided into short sprints for regular stakeholder feedback to incorporate learnings. Teaming is central to agility values.
Scrum Project Management
Scrum is the leading agile framework structuring delivery into short, regular fixed-length sprint cycles that each produce working increments aligned with priority needs. Daily scrums enable teams to inspect progress and adapt quickly. Sprint reviews drive accountability and continuous improvement.
Kanban Project Management
This visual method displays tasks on boards with work-in-progress limits to expose capacity constraints early. New items pull into flow based on bandwidth. Key metrics help balance throughput. The goal stays centered on optimizing value delivery through incremental evolutionary change.
While more PM methodologies exist, these four provide an excellent starting point to understand popular proven practices.
Crafting an Effective Project Plan: Key Components
Every project requires a plan outlining activities, schedules and resources needed for completing scope on budget and on time. Robust planning greatly boosts likelihoods of success.
Following a structured seven-step approach ensures thoughtful coverage of all essential planning areas:
1. Clearly Define Scope and Objectives
Detail project goals, desired outcomes, key requirements, quality expectations, approval protocols, implementation success criteria and performance metrics aligned to business objectives.
2. Carefully Identify Stakeholders
Determine all parties with vested interests who could impact project direction either positively or negatively:
Project Sponsor – Approves/funds initiative
Steering Committee – Provides high-level oversight
Project Manager – Leads planning and day-to-day execution
Team Members – Conduct hands-on delivery tasks
Vendors/Contractors – Provide related services, products
Impacted Users – Use project solution/output
Analyze their influence levels and communication needs. Keeping key voices aligned prevents unnecessary roadblocks.
3. Break Down Deliverables into Work Packages
Deconstruct major project outputs into smaller, simpler components grouped into manageable work batch categories that each yield specific deliverables when completed per scope. Further decompose batches down to underlying task levels detailing out required steps.
4. Assess Risks and Define Mitigations
Identify foreseeable uncertainties that could negatively impact key variables like schedule, cost, quality, resources or capabilities if they occurred. Estimate likelihood and potential effect magnitude for each. Define risk owners plus planned responses if triggered.
5. Map Out Integrated Project Schedule
Plot all sequenced activities on timeline with task dependencies, assigned resources, budget allocations and milestones marked. Build in buffers given variability. Confirm critical path tasks driving total project duration.
6. Secure and Schedule Key Resources
Itemize labor, equipment, technologies and materials needed to perform scheduled work packages. Estimate costs and secure authorized funding commitment. Line up any contractors/vendors required to avoid delays.
7. Establish Performance Metrics and Dashboards
Determine key indicators for monitoring project health across core delivery dimensions — schedule, budget, resources, quality, benefits realized, satisfaction scores etc. Set up reporting tools to capture metrics versus plan.
With meticulous planning, projects start off knowing stakeholder expectations with processes supporting disciplined execution success. Revisit plans often as living playbooks requiring updates as changes occur.
Characteristics of Successful Project Managers
Technical project management ultimately comes down to the people doing the work. Beyond methodology mastery, excellent project leadership requires a diverse blend of “soft” talents and emotional intelligence to motivate teams to accomplish more together than individually possible.
Here are eight distinguishing strengths that set truly outstanding PMs apart:
1. Communication – Align people through regular, tailored messaging across optimal channels
2. Organization – Coordinate many moving parts efficiently with laser focus
3. Leadership – Inspire teams deeply through situational vision and support
4. Ownership – Foster accountability while also admitting mistakes
5. Time Management – Scope realistically and reassess frequently to hit critical paths
6. Negotiation – Bring opposing views together through flexibility and trust
7. Problem-Solving – Apply creative thinking with decisiveness to overcome obstacles
8. Collaboration – Build relationships, empathy and environment for constructive teaming
Project management alone doesn’t lead groups effectively. By blending tactical and interpersonal capabilities, exceptional managers unlock ways for people to accomplish amazing results together.
Balancing Tradeoffs Using the Project Management Triangle
Juggling tensions between competing demands represents another core PM competency. This is where the project management triangle offers valuable guidance.
Also called triple constraint model, it highlights interdependencies across three key delivery dimensions — Scope, Schedule and Resources. The trio forms a triangular equilibrium that keeps initiatives stable when balanced yet highly fragile should one angle shift.
This mental model helps managers weigh tradeoffs when facing inevtable bumps:
If scope increases mid-flight, so too must timeline and/or resourcing to finish successfully
Accelerated schedules require either trimmed scope or added budgets to meet tighter deadlines
Resource drops mandate descending scope and/or timeline promises to re-balance
By watching all three corners simultaneously, astute decisions get made to keep initiatives on track despite uncertainty. Master jugglers turn unforeseen changes into opportunities rather than crises.
Best Practices Managing Team Members
Project execution relies upon people fulfilling plans. Savvy managers tap their team’s fullest potential through clarity, communication, enablement and inspiration:
Set Clear Expectations Upfront – Leave no room for ambiguity about responsibilities, priorities, working processes and success measures expected.
Communicate Early, Often and Two-Way – Facilitate both bottom-up and top-down transparency between management and members.
Provide Ongoing Enablement – Supply resources, coaching and support to unblock productivity barriers.
Drive Accountability Through Goals-Focused Feedback – Recognize contributions while also addressing performance issues promptly and fairly.
Promote Inclusive Collaboration – Help members interact constructively to leverage complementary strengths.
Empower People with Autonomy – Allow self-direction within guiding vision to build capabilities managing uncertainty.
Inspire Excellence Through Purpose – Connect work directly to meaningful outcomes motivating discretionary efforts.
Celebrate Small Wins – Recognize progress frequently to maintain momentum amid long journeys.
Leading teams to accomplish incredible results is among the most rewarding project management experiences. People powered progress propels initiatives forwards.
Selecting Project Management Software Tools
Project managers tap technology to plan intelligently, execute systematically and monitor insights for continuous improvements. Hundreds of helpful tool exist across categories:
Workflow Scheduling – Asana, Trello, Smartsheet
Time Tracking – TimeCamp, Toggl, Harvest
Resource Management – 10,000 ft, Float, Planview
Meeting Tools – Zoom, Teams, Skype, GoToMeeting
Reporting/Dashboards – PowerBI, Cognos, Sisense
Documentation – Google Drive, Sharepoint, Box
Testing/Quality – TestRail, HP ALM, Selenium
Risk Analysis – Active Risk Manager, RiskyProject
Cost Management – HostBooks, NetSuite
Carefully assess wants before purchasing to align technology investments with specific business capability needs. Better understanding sharpens tool selection beyond generic name recognition. Proper adoption ultimately determines ROI more than features alone.
Getting Started with PM Fundamentals
Interested non-project managers wondering where to begin advancing their methodology capability can follow these six simple steps:
1. Learn Essential PM Terminology and Concepts
Start familiarizing commonly used project management language and core principles. Having conversations using the right words is invaluable.
2. Shadow Experienced Project Managers
Find seasoned PMs running initiatives inside your company to observe directly. Watching others in action provides helpful behaviors to model.
3. Take Introductory PM Courses
Many free or low-cost online learning options exist like Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning or edX to pick up fundamentals. Local colleges also offer night classes.
4. Kickstart Simple Hands-On Project
Apply learnings from readings, courses and observations into your own small 1-2 month project. Learn through doing with a safe proof-of-concept initiative.
5. Consider Getting Professional Certification
Certifications like PMP and PRINCE2 signal to employers your commitment to mastering methods even without years as dedicated project managers.
6. Never Stop Advancing PM Knowledge
Great project managers continually seek to improve their capabilities over years. Read books/articles, attend seminars, join associations and refresh skills regularly.
With some concerted effort, non-project managers can quickly pickup enough knowledge to strengthen operating rhythms and contribute more strategically planning worthwhile initiatives sure to deliver positive impacts widely felt.
Second Heading
Unordered lists, and:
One
Two
Three
More
Blockquote
And bold, italics, and even italics and later bold. Even strikethrough. A link to somewhere.
And code highlighting:
var foo = 'bar';function baz(s) { return foo + ':' + s;
}
Or inline code like var foo = 'bar';.
Or an image of bears
The end ...
Mastering Project Management for Non-Project Managers: Essential Guide
Structured project management brings unprecedented organization and efficiency to complete even highly complex initiatives. This 5000-word guide covers everything non-project managers need - from key terminology and popular frameworks to practical steps for building plans, managing teams, and using tools to drive repeatable success.
Equipping yourself with these essentials will bring tremendous benefits for your projects and career advancement.
Why Bother Learning Project Management as a Non-Project Manager?
Many ambitious professionals take the initiative to skill up despite not carrying formal project manager titles. They recognize PM competencies are invaluable for accomplishing business objectives smoothly amid shifting priorities. Even fundamentals around scheduling activities, allocating resources judiciously and communicating with stakeholders effectively can help managers execute better.
What’s at Stake By Not Learning PM Basics?
Without structured processes, projects often flounder haphazardly until eventually:
Scope Creep Destabilizes Resources: Uncontrolled changes derail budgets and timelines
Poor Communication Irritates Stakeholders: Misalignment risks support/funding
Loose Deadlines Result in Rework: Delayed feedback multiplies iterations
Unforeseen Issues Become Crises: Insufficient risk planning causes fire drills
Lack of Accountability Breeds Disengagement: Progress stalls without individual responsibility
No Lessons Learned Means Repeating Mistakes: Post-project reviews enable continuous improvements
Disorganization frequently breeds cost/time overruns, eroded quality, disengaged teams, frustrated stakeholders and repeat headaches. It also risks non-project managers’ reputations and career mobility.
Conversely, PM skills help managers thrive amid chaos using structured playbooks. Benefits include:
Break large goals into stepwise work batching for flexibility
Standardize and sequence processes for consistency
Forecast realistic budgets and timelines applying past learnings
Clarify metrics and expectations upfront to align stakeholders
Identify risks early to control impact degree
Adjust quickly by monitoring leading indicators
Enable accountability through better task segmentation
Build knowledge repositories and best practice templates
Thus project management is well worth learning for non-project managers despite some effort involved.
Project Management Methodologies: Key Frameworks and Approaches
Myriad approaches exist for managing initiatives effectively. Four dominant project management methodologies provide useful mental models.
Waterfall Project Management
This sequential process flows linearly through discrete requirement gathering, design, development, testing and deployment phases. Stages run one after another with minimal feedback loops. Waterfalls suit predefined solutions with fixed scopes. But they lack flexibility to change easily.
Agile Project Management
This nimble approach built for complexity embraces iterations, constant collaboration and continuous deliveries. Instead of sequential roadmaps, work gets divided into short sprints for regular stakeholder feedback to incorporate learnings. Teaming is central to agility values.
Scrum Project Management
Scrum is the leading agile framework structuring delivery into short, regular fixed-length sprint cycles that each produce working increments aligned with priority needs. Daily scrums enable teams to inspect progress and adapt quickly. Sprint reviews drive accountability and continuous improvement.
Kanban Project Management
This visual method displays tasks on boards with work-in-progress limits to expose capacity constraints early. New items pull into flow based on bandwidth. Key metrics help balance throughput. The goal stays centered on optimizing value delivery through incremental evolutionary change.
While more PM methodologies exist, these four provide an excellent starting point to understand popular proven practices.
Crafting an Effective Project Plan: Key Components
Every project requires a plan outlining activities, schedules and resources needed for completing scope on budget and on time. Robust planning greatly boosts likelihoods of success.
Following a structured seven-step approach ensures thoughtful coverage of all essential planning areas:
1. Clearly Define Scope and Objectives
Detail project goals, desired outcomes, key requirements, quality expectations, approval protocols, implementation success criteria and performance metrics aligned to business objectives.
2. Carefully Identify Stakeholders
Determine all parties with vested interests who could impact project direction either positively or negatively:
Project Sponsor – Approves/funds initiative
Steering Committee – Provides high-level oversight
Project Manager – Leads planning and day-to-day execution
Team Members – Conduct hands-on delivery tasks
Vendors/Contractors – Provide related services, products
Impacted Users – Use project solution/output
Analyze their influence levels and communication needs. Keeping key voices aligned prevents unnecessary roadblocks.
3. Break Down Deliverables into Work Packages
Deconstruct major project outputs into smaller, simpler components grouped into manageable work batch categories that each yield specific deliverables when completed per scope. Further decompose batches down to underlying task levels detailing out required steps.
4. Assess Risks and Define Mitigations
Identify foreseeable uncertainties that could negatively impact key variables like schedule, cost, quality, resources or capabilities if they occurred. Estimate likelihood and potential effect magnitude for each. Define risk owners plus planned responses if triggered.
5. Map Out Integrated Project Schedule
Plot all sequenced activities on timeline with task dependencies, assigned resources, budget allocations and milestones marked. Build in buffers given variability. Confirm critical path tasks driving total project duration.
6. Secure and Schedule Key Resources
Itemize labor, equipment, technologies and materials needed to perform scheduled work packages. Estimate costs and secure authorized funding commitment. Line up any contractors/vendors required to avoid delays.
7. Establish Performance Metrics and Dashboards
Determine key indicators for monitoring project health across core delivery dimensions — schedule, budget, resources, quality, benefits realized, satisfaction scores etc. Set up reporting tools to capture metrics versus plan.
With meticulous planning, projects start off knowing stakeholder expectations with processes supporting disciplined execution success. Revisit plans often as living playbooks requiring updates as changes occur.
Characteristics of Successful Project Managers
Technical project management ultimately comes down to the people doing the work. Beyond methodology mastery, excellent project leadership requires a diverse blend of “soft” talents and emotional intelligence to motivate teams to accomplish more together than individually possible.
Here are eight distinguishing strengths that set truly outstanding PMs apart:
1. Communication – Align people through regular, tailored messaging across optimal channels
2. Organization – Coordinate many moving parts efficiently with laser focus
3. Leadership – Inspire teams deeply through situational vision and support
4. Ownership – Foster accountability while also admitting mistakes
5. Time Management – Scope realistically and reassess frequently to hit critical paths
6. Negotiation – Bring opposing views together through flexibility and trust
7. Problem-Solving – Apply creative thinking with decisiveness to overcome obstacles
8. Collaboration – Build relationships, empathy and environment for constructive teaming
Project management alone doesn’t lead groups effectively. By blending tactical and interpersonal capabilities, exceptional managers unlock ways for people to accomplish amazing results together.
Balancing Tradeoffs Using the Project Management Triangle
Juggling tensions between competing demands represents another core PM competency. This is where the project management triangle offers valuable guidance.
Also called triple constraint model, it highlights interdependencies across three key delivery dimensions — Scope, Schedule and Resources. The trio forms a triangular equilibrium that keeps initiatives stable when balanced yet highly fragile should one angle shift.
This mental model helps managers weigh tradeoffs when facing inevtable bumps:
If scope increases mid-flight, so too must timeline and/or resourcing to finish successfully
Accelerated schedules require either trimmed scope or added budgets to meet tighter deadlines
Resource drops mandate descending scope and/or timeline promises to re-balance
By watching all three corners simultaneously, astute decisions get made to keep initiatives on track despite uncertainty. Master jugglers turn unforeseen changes into opportunities rather than crises.
Best Practices Managing Team Members
Project execution relies upon people fulfilling plans. Savvy managers tap their team’s fullest potential through clarity, communication, enablement and inspiration:
Set Clear Expectations Upfront – Leave no room for ambiguity about responsibilities, priorities, working processes and success measures expected.
Communicate Early, Often and Two-Way – Facilitate both bottom-up and top-down transparency between management and members.
Provide Ongoing Enablement – Supply resources, coaching and support to unblock productivity barriers.
Drive Accountability Through Goals-Focused Feedback – Recognize contributions while also addressing performance issues promptly and fairly.
Promote Inclusive Collaboration – Help members interact constructively to leverage complementary strengths.
Empower People with Autonomy – Allow self-direction within guiding vision to build capabilities managing uncertainty.
Inspire Excellence Through Purpose – Connect work directly to meaningful outcomes motivating discretionary efforts.
Celebrate Small Wins – Recognize progress frequently to maintain momentum amid long journeys.
Leading teams to accomplish incredible results is among the most rewarding project management experiences. People powered progress propels initiatives forwards.
Selecting Project Management Software Tools
Project managers tap technology to plan intelligently, execute systematically and monitor insights for continuous improvements. Hundreds of helpful tool exist across categories:
Workflow Scheduling – Asana, Trello, Smartsheet
Time Tracking – TimeCamp, Toggl, Harvest
Resource Management – 10,000 ft, Float, Planview
Meeting Tools – Zoom, Teams, Skype, GoToMeeting
Reporting/Dashboards – PowerBI, Cognos, Sisense
Documentation – Google Drive, Sharepoint, Box
Testing/Quality – TestRail, HP ALM, Selenium
Risk Analysis – Active Risk Manager, RiskyProject
Cost Management – HostBooks, NetSuite
Carefully assess wants before purchasing to align technology investments with specific business capability needs. Better understanding sharpens tool selection beyond generic name recognition. Proper adoption ultimately determines ROI more than features alone.
Getting Started with PM Fundamentals
Interested non-project managers wondering where to begin advancing their methodology capability can follow these six simple steps:
1. Learn Essential PM Terminology and Concepts
Start familiarizing commonly used project management language and core principles. Having conversations using the right words is invaluable.
2. Shadow Experienced Project Managers
Find seasoned PMs running initiatives inside your company to observe directly. Watching others in action provides helpful behaviors to model.
3. Take Introductory PM Courses
Many free or low-cost online learning options exist like Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning or edX to pick up fundamentals. Local colleges also offer night classes.
4. Kickstart Simple Hands-On Project
Apply learnings from readings, courses and observations into your own small 1-2 month project. Learn through doing with a safe proof-of-concept initiative.
5. Consider Getting Professional Certification
Certifications like PMP and PRINCE2 signal to employers your commitment to mastering methods even without years as dedicated project managers.
6. Never Stop Advancing PM Knowledge
Great project managers continually seek to improve their capabilities over years. Read books/articles, attend seminars, join associations and refresh skills regularly.
With some concerted effort, non-project managers can quickly pickup enough knowledge to strengthen operating rhythms and contribute more strategically planning worthwhile initiatives sure to deliver positive impacts widely felt.
Second Heading
Unordered lists, and:
One
Two
Three
More
Blockquote
And bold, italics, and even italics and later bold. Even strikethrough. A link to somewhere.
And code highlighting:
var foo = 'bar';function baz(s) { return foo + ':' + s;
}
Or inline code like var foo = 'bar';.
Or an image of bears
The end ...
Mastering Project Management for Non-Project Managers: Essential Guide
Structured project management brings unprecedented organization and efficiency to complete even highly complex initiatives. This 5000-word guide covers everything non-project managers need - from key terminology and popular frameworks to practical steps for building plans, managing teams, and using tools to drive repeatable success.
Equipping yourself with these essentials will bring tremendous benefits for your projects and career advancement.
Why Bother Learning Project Management as a Non-Project Manager?
Many ambitious professionals take the initiative to skill up despite not carrying formal project manager titles. They recognize PM competencies are invaluable for accomplishing business objectives smoothly amid shifting priorities. Even fundamentals around scheduling activities, allocating resources judiciously and communicating with stakeholders effectively can help managers execute better.
What’s at Stake By Not Learning PM Basics?
Without structured processes, projects often flounder haphazardly until eventually:
Scope Creep Destabilizes Resources: Uncontrolled changes derail budgets and timelines
Poor Communication Irritates Stakeholders: Misalignment risks support/funding
Loose Deadlines Result in Rework: Delayed feedback multiplies iterations
Unforeseen Issues Become Crises: Insufficient risk planning causes fire drills
Lack of Accountability Breeds Disengagement: Progress stalls without individual responsibility
No Lessons Learned Means Repeating Mistakes: Post-project reviews enable continuous improvements
Disorganization frequently breeds cost/time overruns, eroded quality, disengaged teams, frustrated stakeholders and repeat headaches. It also risks non-project managers’ reputations and career mobility.
Conversely, PM skills help managers thrive amid chaos using structured playbooks. Benefits include:
Break large goals into stepwise work batching for flexibility
Standardize and sequence processes for consistency
Forecast realistic budgets and timelines applying past learnings
Clarify metrics and expectations upfront to align stakeholders
Identify risks early to control impact degree
Adjust quickly by monitoring leading indicators
Enable accountability through better task segmentation
Build knowledge repositories and best practice templates
Thus project management is well worth learning for non-project managers despite some effort involved.
Project Management Methodologies: Key Frameworks and Approaches
Myriad approaches exist for managing initiatives effectively. Four dominant project management methodologies provide useful mental models.
Waterfall Project Management
This sequential process flows linearly through discrete requirement gathering, design, development, testing and deployment phases. Stages run one after another with minimal feedback loops. Waterfalls suit predefined solutions with fixed scopes. But they lack flexibility to change easily.
Agile Project Management
This nimble approach built for complexity embraces iterations, constant collaboration and continuous deliveries. Instead of sequential roadmaps, work gets divided into short sprints for regular stakeholder feedback to incorporate learnings. Teaming is central to agility values.
Scrum Project Management
Scrum is the leading agile framework structuring delivery into short, regular fixed-length sprint cycles that each produce working increments aligned with priority needs. Daily scrums enable teams to inspect progress and adapt quickly. Sprint reviews drive accountability and continuous improvement.
Kanban Project Management
This visual method displays tasks on boards with work-in-progress limits to expose capacity constraints early. New items pull into flow based on bandwidth. Key metrics help balance throughput. The goal stays centered on optimizing value delivery through incremental evolutionary change.
While more PM methodologies exist, these four provide an excellent starting point to understand popular proven practices.
Crafting an Effective Project Plan: Key Components
Every project requires a plan outlining activities, schedules and resources needed for completing scope on budget and on time. Robust planning greatly boosts likelihoods of success.
Following a structured seven-step approach ensures thoughtful coverage of all essential planning areas:
1. Clearly Define Scope and Objectives
Detail project goals, desired outcomes, key requirements, quality expectations, approval protocols, implementation success criteria and performance metrics aligned to business objectives.
2. Carefully Identify Stakeholders
Determine all parties with vested interests who could impact project direction either positively or negatively:
Project Sponsor – Approves/funds initiative
Steering Committee – Provides high-level oversight
Project Manager – Leads planning and day-to-day execution
Team Members – Conduct hands-on delivery tasks
Vendors/Contractors – Provide related services, products
Impacted Users – Use project solution/output
Analyze their influence levels and communication needs. Keeping key voices aligned prevents unnecessary roadblocks.
3. Break Down Deliverables into Work Packages
Deconstruct major project outputs into smaller, simpler components grouped into manageable work batch categories that each yield specific deliverables when completed per scope. Further decompose batches down to underlying task levels detailing out required steps.
4. Assess Risks and Define Mitigations
Identify foreseeable uncertainties that could negatively impact key variables like schedule, cost, quality, resources or capabilities if they occurred. Estimate likelihood and potential effect magnitude for each. Define risk owners plus planned responses if triggered.
5. Map Out Integrated Project Schedule
Plot all sequenced activities on timeline with task dependencies, assigned resources, budget allocations and milestones marked. Build in buffers given variability. Confirm critical path tasks driving total project duration.
6. Secure and Schedule Key Resources
Itemize labor, equipment, technologies and materials needed to perform scheduled work packages. Estimate costs and secure authorized funding commitment. Line up any contractors/vendors required to avoid delays.
7. Establish Performance Metrics and Dashboards
Determine key indicators for monitoring project health across core delivery dimensions — schedule, budget, resources, quality, benefits realized, satisfaction scores etc. Set up reporting tools to capture metrics versus plan.
With meticulous planning, projects start off knowing stakeholder expectations with processes supporting disciplined execution success. Revisit plans often as living playbooks requiring updates as changes occur.
Characteristics of Successful Project Managers
Technical project management ultimately comes down to the people doing the work. Beyond methodology mastery, excellent project leadership requires a diverse blend of “soft” talents and emotional intelligence to motivate teams to accomplish more together than individually possible.
Here are eight distinguishing strengths that set truly outstanding PMs apart:
1. Communication – Align people through regular, tailored messaging across optimal channels
2. Organization – Coordinate many moving parts efficiently with laser focus
3. Leadership – Inspire teams deeply through situational vision and support
4. Ownership – Foster accountability while also admitting mistakes
5. Time Management – Scope realistically and reassess frequently to hit critical paths
6. Negotiation – Bring opposing views together through flexibility and trust
7. Problem-Solving – Apply creative thinking with decisiveness to overcome obstacles
8. Collaboration – Build relationships, empathy and environment for constructive teaming
Project management alone doesn’t lead groups effectively. By blending tactical and interpersonal capabilities, exceptional managers unlock ways for people to accomplish amazing results together.
Balancing Tradeoffs Using the Project Management Triangle
Juggling tensions between competing demands represents another core PM competency. This is where the project management triangle offers valuable guidance.
Also called triple constraint model, it highlights interdependencies across three key delivery dimensions — Scope, Schedule and Resources. The trio forms a triangular equilibrium that keeps initiatives stable when balanced yet highly fragile should one angle shift.
This mental model helps managers weigh tradeoffs when facing inevtable bumps:
If scope increases mid-flight, so too must timeline and/or resourcing to finish successfully
Accelerated schedules require either trimmed scope or added budgets to meet tighter deadlines
Resource drops mandate descending scope and/or timeline promises to re-balance
By watching all three corners simultaneously, astute decisions get made to keep initiatives on track despite uncertainty. Master jugglers turn unforeseen changes into opportunities rather than crises.
Best Practices Managing Team Members
Project execution relies upon people fulfilling plans. Savvy managers tap their team’s fullest potential through clarity, communication, enablement and inspiration:
Set Clear Expectations Upfront – Leave no room for ambiguity about responsibilities, priorities, working processes and success measures expected.
Communicate Early, Often and Two-Way – Facilitate both bottom-up and top-down transparency between management and members.
Provide Ongoing Enablement – Supply resources, coaching and support to unblock productivity barriers.
Drive Accountability Through Goals-Focused Feedback – Recognize contributions while also addressing performance issues promptly and fairly.
Promote Inclusive Collaboration – Help members interact constructively to leverage complementary strengths.
Empower People with Autonomy – Allow self-direction within guiding vision to build capabilities managing uncertainty.
Inspire Excellence Through Purpose – Connect work directly to meaningful outcomes motivating discretionary efforts.
Celebrate Small Wins – Recognize progress frequently to maintain momentum amid long journeys.
Leading teams to accomplish incredible results is among the most rewarding project management experiences. People powered progress propels initiatives forwards.
Selecting Project Management Software Tools
Project managers tap technology to plan intelligently, execute systematically and monitor insights for continuous improvements. Hundreds of helpful tool exist across categories:
Workflow Scheduling – Asana, Trello, Smartsheet
Time Tracking – TimeCamp, Toggl, Harvest
Resource Management – 10,000 ft, Float, Planview
Meeting Tools – Zoom, Teams, Skype, GoToMeeting
Reporting/Dashboards – PowerBI, Cognos, Sisense
Documentation – Google Drive, Sharepoint, Box
Testing/Quality – TestRail, HP ALM, Selenium
Risk Analysis – Active Risk Manager, RiskyProject
Cost Management – HostBooks, NetSuite
Carefully assess wants before purchasing to align technology investments with specific business capability needs. Better understanding sharpens tool selection beyond generic name recognition. Proper adoption ultimately determines ROI more than features alone.
Getting Started with PM Fundamentals
Interested non-project managers wondering where to begin advancing their methodology capability can follow these six simple steps:
1. Learn Essential PM Terminology and Concepts
Start familiarizing commonly used project management language and core principles. Having conversations using the right words is invaluable.
2. Shadow Experienced Project Managers
Find seasoned PMs running initiatives inside your company to observe directly. Watching others in action provides helpful behaviors to model.
3. Take Introductory PM Courses
Many free or low-cost online learning options exist like Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning or edX to pick up fundamentals. Local colleges also offer night classes.
4. Kickstart Simple Hands-On Project
Apply learnings from readings, courses and observations into your own small 1-2 month project. Learn through doing with a safe proof-of-concept initiative.
5. Consider Getting Professional Certification
Certifications like PMP and PRINCE2 signal to employers your commitment to mastering methods even without years as dedicated project managers.
6. Never Stop Advancing PM Knowledge
Great project managers continually seek to improve their capabilities over years. Read books/articles, attend seminars, join associations and refresh skills regularly.
With some concerted effort, non-project managers can quickly pickup enough knowledge to strengthen operating rhythms and contribute more strategically planning worthwhile initiatives sure to deliver positive impacts widely felt.
Second Heading
Unordered lists, and:
One
Two
Three
More
Blockquote
And bold, italics, and even italics and later bold. Even strikethrough. A link to somewhere.
And code highlighting:
var foo = 'bar';function baz(s) { return foo + ':' + s;
}
Or inline code like var foo = 'bar';.
Or an image of bears
The end ...