As a Project Manager you have the major responsibility for the outcome of the project. You are the key person the organization or client turns to, not only to keep the planned work on schedule while accurately reporting on the project, but to constantly provide a future prediction of the project success. You have the most crucial role for delivering on the promises of the project as you juggle and try to balance status meetings, new project action items and sponsor expectations. Much of the success of the project is dependent on the project team and their ability to deliver on the way the approved plan was laid out. This is your work, every day, and sometimes every hour!
Whether you are a seasoned Project Manager or new to the position, the role of the Project Manager has a great deal of work to manage that goes beyond the schedule of the major planned tasks. Just ask any Project Manager. Here are the top 7 challenges Project Managers face every day and new ways to help effectively manage these challenges for greater success.
As a Project Manager, you tend to use multiple places to keep track of your meeting notes, updates, previous status reports, changes to plan and due dates for multiple unscheduled action items. You likely use a combination of tools to manage your project work items including notebooks, emails, spreadsheets, presentation slide-decks, documents and more. Sooner or later, all these work items will need to be followed-up on and reported.
There is always the need to keep up with and orchestrate the many pieces of work being carried out by the project team. At the start of the project, you likely used a project management scheduling tool that will have many lines of approved tasks, relationships and timing. Once the project is underway however, there is usually additional activities, required work and action items that arise that are not detailed or scheduled on the project plan. These need to be completed to ensure the plan stays on track.
As the Project Manager you need to track this work and you likely have agreement with individual team members to get these action items done and updated. Important information to be recorded includes due dates on various action items not on the schedule, a decision to move in a different direction, project risks that need to be assessed, changes that need to be managed, and information to report on from weeks ago, and more. All of these are various types of work items outside the planned schedule of major tasks. All this can be very hard to manage unless you have a way to automatically track the work items and information, the updates, due dates, timing and notifications all in one place.
You’ve been doing great work tracking all the details and keeping the project moving forward according to the plan. However, putting it all together for a weekly or monthly project status meeting with the sponsor or client can be time consuming and sometimes difficult.
The ability to present timely, clear and concise information as to the project status–without spending half a day or more putting it all together (again) –is critical. It could also be information that is needed for use in a review with peers or the Project Management Office (PMO). Most importantly, you may need to present and clarify a situation with a project management status report to help support a decision or gain some needed assistance. Creating real-time status updates and reports takes a lot of time and effort and is subject to inaccuracies and out-of-date information, unless you have all the information in one place with automated updates and quick access to more details if needed.
At times, you may be challenged to identify and focus on the highest priority work for a project – right here and right now. A lack of focus, leads to inefficiency and not making the best use of your valuable time. Project Managers know, that in the middle of all the excitement and activities of a project, the ability to easily determine the priority work for the next hour, day or week is critical. It is hard to clarify project work priorities and optimize your time without having all the information in one place, with automated tracking and notifications of the latest situations.
Typically, there are a number of people on the project team. Every person is critical to the project success and is responsible for their portion of the planned work. As the Project Manager, you need to ensure that team members take ownership for their actions to complete the work items that arise throughout the project. And, as the Project Manager, and because of your reporting responsibilities, you need to know about the progress of the work item as it proceeds according to the agreed scope, timing and budget. The best project team collaboration allows the team member or owner responsible for the work item or action, to update their project work item directly. This frees up your time, not having to connect and follow-up to get timely updates. And the updates by the Action Owner are done without interrupting their flow of work.
As the Project Manager, you know that key decisions made along the way are critical to the direction and eventual results of the project. You also understand that the Project Manager is not the one with the final say on most of those decisions. Keeping a record of what was decided, when and especially by whom, is definitely important. Sometimes you need to access the decision details and information at a later date, from the ever-expanding amount of project information.
The Project Manager leads most project meetings and juggles multiple aspects within each meeting. You facilitate discussions, try to listen and understand, try to record all the critical details and try to follow-up on what happened since the last time you met. You may even need to send out a record of the details of what was discussed in the meeting, through project Meeting Minutes.
Meeting Minutes, may or may not be a requirement in your organization. Regardless, Meeting Minutes are a great method of communication for clarifying discussions with meeting members and for sending to key stakeholders to keep them informed. Meeting Minutes are a great way to communicate but only if it is accurate, fast and easy to produce.
As a Project Manager, you know that each project brings its own experiences and things you will want to recall for the next time you do a project. Whether you do the next project within the same organization with the same people or somewhere new, remembering what was learned about a situation or business area, or knowledge of how team members like to work to get the best results, can mean you are one step ahead and potentially more successful next time. Record those learning for yourself and your organization, as the project moves ahead. Use these learnings to your advantage and for your next project.
We understand that making a change in how you manage your projects may not be easy. We also realize that having a specialized Project Manager App that supports you in the real day-to-day work contributes to success and over time, a capability that ensures you perform at the highest level as a Project Manager. This will mean more success for each of the projects you lead and even more importantly, more success for you.
Traxidy is the Project Manager App built by Project Managers for Project Managers. We’re making it easy for you to manage the day-to-day project work priorities like Project Action Item Tracking, Project Status Reports, Team Meeting Minutes, Risk Log, Change Management, High-Level Plans, and more. Track, collaborate, report, save time and increase project success.
Learn more about the Traxidy Project Manager App, workspace, features and capabilities here.
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