Project Management Tips and Tricks

Project managers are important team members who perform varied tasks and have a lot of different responsibilities when managing a project. If you are currently working as a project manager, are interested in becoming one, or want to boost your skills to help you on your journey to progress in your team, there are many different skills and tips that can help you manage your team and your projects to the best of your abilities. From personal skills to management software, here are just a couple of project management tips and tricks to get you started.

Gantt Charts

A Gantt chart is a project management system in the form of a bar chart that shows the progress of your project over a period of time. As technology has progressed, you can now use a Gantt Chart platform that gives you access to many different functions and make sharing your chart and schedule with your team incredibly simple. A Gantt chart can have multiple dependencies, include multiple team members, calendars, color coding, and can be customized to work for you and your team. Gantt charts are used in a huge variety of businesses and settings and can be really helpful to assist you in planning workflow, setting deadlines, and determining the critical path of your project. Utilizing the latest software to help you build your Gantt charts is a great way to make your project clear and easy to follow and contribute to for yourself and the rest of your team.

Lean Principles

Lean principles are designed to help you work more efficiently on an individual, team, or organizational level. Initially used in manufacturing processes, you can apply the five core principles of lean thinking to project management. They are concerned with reducing waste and improving value to customers and can be applied to a huge range of industries and companies, and even in your daily life or office. The five core lean principles are:

• Define value
• Map value stream
• Create flow
• Establish pull
• Continual improvement

By applying these to your project management, you can reduce the amount of waste you and your team produce, whether this is physical or something like wasted time, and boost your efficiency and value to customers, as well as plenty of other benefits.

Communication

Communication, teamwork, and collaboration are all essential skills that are required to work in a team at any level, whether you are a project manager or not. Using charts and lean principles can help improve the communication in your team, as they help create a visual representation of the project and keep everybody up to date and on the same page. Project managers are leaders, and leadership skills are essential in this role. As well as the ability to communicate and listen, project managers also need to be able to motivate their team and be skilled in areas such as conflict resolution, creativity, and critical thinking. For a project manager, personal and leadership skills can be just as important and technical skills and knowledge.