Delivering projects on time and within budget is crucial in today’s highly competitive business environment. To succeed, managers need substantial hands-on experience and a thorough understanding of the project management basics. Efficient project management requires organizational know-how, analytical thinking and interpersonal skills to achieve corporate goals.

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Whether you’re new to management or have several years of expertise, completing projects within budget while aligning with corporate goals is difficult. Every project is unique and has its own set of problems.

Avoiding costly mistakes and succeeding requires managers to abide strictly by these project management basics.

Article Roadmap:

• What Is Project Management?
• Stages
• Popular Approaches
• Why Do Projects Fail?
• Best Practices
• What Do Project Managers Do?
• Last Thoughts

What Is Project Management?

Project management entails identifying problems, devising solutions and executing them to resolve issues. PMI defines project management as “The use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to people.”

They add, “The development of software for an improved business process, the construction of a building, the relief effort after a natural disaster, the expansion of sales into a new geographic market—these are all examples of projects.”

Modern project management concepts gained popularity in 1909 when Frederic Taylor proposed the principles of scientific management. He developed strategies to decrease inefficiencies while propagating smart work. His associate, Henry Gantt, steered a new way to visualize project progress through bars and charts.

As industries started adopting project management practices, the International Project Management Association was founded in 1965, followed by The Project Management Institute in 1969. To codify Agile methodologies, the Agile Manifesto came into existence in 2001.

The project management life cycle begins with a project’s inception and concludes with its completion. After each phase, stakeholders have to decide whether to finish the project or terminate it to cut losses. Apart from improving project transparency, boosting productivity and providing a clear vision to teams, successful project management:

• Fosters effective communication.
• Boosts resource management.
• Improves customer satisfaction.
• Enhances risk tolerance.
• Boosts output quality.
• Furthers retrospective learning.

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Stages

Successful projects require different tasks, skill sets and behaviors. The following are the stages in project management process implementation.

Phase 1: Initiation

This phase defines an initiative’s importance, viability and requirements to achieve it. The project needs its business case or documentation, a preliminary timeline, execution or project charter resources, and an initial stakeholder list. You need permission from those stakeholders to move to the next stage.

Phase 2: Planning

Next, managers define the project scope and possible risks while coming up with a completion timeline. The planning phase usually comprises devising an elaborate plan, creating a communication strategy, scheduling, budgeting, defining individual goals, and preparing an updated scope document and stakeholder panel.

Phase 3: Execution

This phase involves coordinating and guiding team members to complete work as per the management plan. It also involves resource management and allocation to create deliverables.

Phase 4: Monitoring and Control

Comparing cost, time and performance while making necessary adjustments to project resources and activities helps keep progress on track. The focus is to prevent milestone and deadline disruptions by analyzing progress reports and other communications.

Phase 5: Closure or Completion

Completing tasks, assessing deliverables and transitioning them to management wraps up project closure. This phase provides opportunities for celebration and introspection by producing desired results while offering crucial lessons for future endeavors.

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Popular Management Approaches

Organizations use the following approaches to simplify complexities, standardize processes, ensure consistency and reduce risks while accomplishing project goals.

Phased

Also referred to as the waterfall or traditional model, this approach is ideal for well-defined, simple projects. Each phase in this framework goes sequentially through all five project management stages, from initiation to closure.

Lean

Lean Project Management is a data-driven approach for process improvement and waste elimination through resource (time, cost and people) efficiency. It involves visual-rich documentation, detailed planning, systematic process improvements and consistent analysis.

A project follows a lean approach if it adheres to basic principles like Lean Six Sigma (DMEDI), Deming Cycle (PDCA), Kanban methodology and value stream mapping (VSM). Most organizations follow value stream mapping to offer an accurate and complete visual representation of all project processes.

VSM is a two-dimensional tool for documenting and directing a lean transformation from a broader perspective. It displays total lead time with individual lead and cycle time while clearly showing wasteful resources obstructing project flow.

Iterative and Incremental

This methodology is adept at handling project changes while reducing inherent risks. It is ideal for managing large-scale projects with ambiguous requirements and high stakes. Companies frequently use it for software development processes. Many modern methodologies, like Agile and Extreme, evolved from this framework.

Critical Chain

The Critical Chain Project Management framework optimizes resources, including people, equipment, time and more. This approach prevents delays by adding buffers to task dependencies and resources. It follows the theory of constraints paradigm, according to which a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Product-Based Planning

Unlike traditional approaches that focus on tasks and activities, this framework focuses on project deliverables and outputs (including intermediate products). It is easier to arrange and define deliverable structures as they are fewer than tasks. PRINCE2 is a widespread implementation of this methodology.

Process-Based

The process-based approach allows managers to manage, create and improve projects while aligning with the organizational vision, mission and fundamental values. Here, project objectives and activities help organizations achieve their critical goals. Some of the most common process-based models include OPM3 (Organizational Project Management Maturity Model) and CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration).

Project Production Management

This approach applies operations science principles and theories to optimize project delivery and management. It predicts limitations using project activity data while determining viable outcomes. Organizations can also design control mechanisms to deal with variables.

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Why Do Projects Fail?

The project management basics are incomplete without knowing why projects fail. Projects fail when they cannot achieve required goals within a set budget and time. Stakeholders usually decide on project success or failure based on outcomes or whether they meet financial forecasts. Let’s look at six typical causes of project failure.

Poor Resource Planning

Organizations often forget to plan their resources efficiently amid complicated project planning. Resource management, including financial planning, is crucial to success.

Unclear Goals

Kicking off initiatives without defining clear goals and objectives is a recipe for disaster, especially while managing complex projects. Without defined goals, you’ll never know whether your initiative succeeded. You can use goal-setting frameworks like SMART and CLEAR to keep goals realistic and measurable.

Lack of Visibility

Lack of visibility can swiftly disrupt well-planned projects. It is crucial to design transparent systems that keep everyone in the loop. Visibility includes task status transparency, efficient document management and non-ambiguous communication.

Making everyone aware of project progress also promotes proactive team participation and problem-solving. Organizations can achieve document visibility through a centralized digital repository.

Communication Gaps

Regular and transparent communication is the key to project success. Managers should explain and implement relevant communication tools within teams at the onset of every project. You can also use project management software that offers robust capabilities like group meets and chats to overcome communication hurdles.

Apart from using applications, you should also set guidelines and expectations for your team to communicate relevant information.

Scope Creep

A simple customer request to add an item or a smart idea for service expansion may seem harmless initially but can quickly spiral out of an initiative’s scope. Scope creep stretches your team thin while putting a strain on other resources.

Scope creep occurs when project parameters aren’t well-defined or additional tasks become part of a project at later stages.

Unrealistic Expectations

Often disguised as optimism, unrealistic expectations derail many endeavors. Regular communication is the key to project success. Managers must confront their team’s capability of achieving tasks within a set timeframe when making decisions. When expectations are in sync with reality, goals are easier to achieve.

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Best Practices

Projects contain a lot of details. It’s challenging to keep track of everything manually while rushing to complete initiatives on time. Traditional methods use heaps of paperwork and spreadsheets, driving up uncertainty and failure risks.

Though it is impossible to optimize everything overnight, the following are some best practices to streamline project management.

Set Concise Goals

Not setting concise, clear and measurable goals turns your project into a pointless endeavor that will not yield beneficial results. You can use SMART and CLEAR frameworks to define your project goals while keeping them realistic.

Setting goals explicitly allows you to track progress while boosting team morale by recognizing individual employee accomplishments.

Manage Risks

All projects—simple or complex—are subject to risks. While anticipating risks and unexpected happenings, creating schedule buffers, fail safes, and team backups are crucial. You can develop these strategies through multiple risk assessments, team brainstorming sessions, response planning and creating checklists.

You can also integrate risk assessment software to improve project resilience while managing risks.

Establish Performance Baseline

Projects have three essential components—schedule, cost and scope. Setting baselines or key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial to measuring these components. Any changes in one of the components will affect the other two since they are interconnected.

Baselines keep everything in check during execution phases as plans undergo modifications. It is helpful to involve stakeholders while defining baselines to keep them aware of changes down the road.

Healthy Communication

Establishing and promoting consistent and open communication helps anticipate risks, avoid issues, resolve conflicts, and coordinate schedules and tasks on time. Managers can use weekly or bi-weekly meetings to encourage regular team communication.

Define Team Responsibilities

Outlining and defining individual responsibilities helps avoid confusion during the execution phase. Designing a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) chart sets clear task expectations while addressing questions like who needs to do what, when and where.

It is helpful to design RACI charts around primary tasks that affect deliverables rather than administrative elements like project reports and meetings.

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What Do Project Managers Do?

Project managers are responsible for planning, executing, controlling, monitoring and completing projects. They coordinate project plans while utilizing resources and key players to accomplish goals in optimal time. The following are some essential functions that they perform.

Build Plans

They chart out realistic project trajectories. Plans include timelines, scope and budget estimates. Project plans also identify the right tools to accomplish jobs.

Organize Teams

Identifying employees and building teams is crucial to project management basics. Project teams vary on initiative scope and functions to perform and complete jobs. Project managers work to find subject matter experts and specialists for essential tasks.

Assign Tasks

Project managers must define tasks and timelines for every phase. Apart from completing individual jobs, many tasks require employees to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders.

Lead Teams

After assembling teams and assigning tasks, project managers must lead teams for steady initiative progress. The process includes tracking task status, identifying and resolving bottlenecks, settling disputes, maintaining team spirit, and offering training and mentorship.

Handle Budget

Projects incur costs. Therefore, knowing how to create project budgets and manage expenses efficiently is crucial. This task entails comparing actual costs with the projections and, if necessary, altering the project design.

Manage Timelines

Project managers must manage timelines for employees to complete tasks on time. This job entails establishing detailed schedules, regular team communication and setting achievable deadlines throughout project lifecycles.

Engage Stakeholders

Initiatives impact stakeholders the most, so engaging them is essential. Managers need to establish healthy stakeholder relationships to remove obstacles and empower teams. If dissatisfied with progress, they can derail projects too.

Hand Over Projects

Apart from overseeing goal and task completion, managers are responsible for handing over projects to designated groups. These groups then handle ongoing management, upkeep and operation.

Document Processes

Identifying and recording “lessons learnt” is beneficial for managers’ personal development while sharing the knowledge with other teams for future use. Documentation prevents others from repeating the same errors.

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Last Thoughts

Now that you have an idea about the project management basics, you can assess your current projects across portfolios. Honing your project management skills will help keep initiatives on track while contributing to organizational growth.

You can also automate processes by learning project management software basics to manage your initiatives efficiently while adhering to set budgets and timeframes. Our project management requirements template can help you get started.

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