by Viktorija Krsteska
The stronger the team, the stronger the business, and it all starts with effective project management.
Programmers are notoriously difficult to seek out, screen, and onboard. They are artists; they are ambitious. Regardless of whether you have got a small team of programmers or a rapidly-expanding one, it is very likely that you will encounter situations that wreak havoc on employee happiness and morale. Many team managers within the tech industry still struggle to manage their teams of programmers. Truth be told, management does not come easily. Continue reading the article below for pointers, which will ensure that your team of programmers performs well and stays on track in the future.
Nowadays, project management is in high demand in various industries. Why? Organizations today face fierce competition, and they have to combat global challenges. Moreover, they must answer internal/external issues without any delay. In response to those challenges, organizations need a structured approach to plan, organize, control, and manage their resources (and internal capabilities) so that they can deliver timely results.
How to Implement an Effective Project Management
Project management can be better explained as “the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and shutting a team’s work to realize specific goals and meet specific success criteria.” Project managers need to be at a particular level of analytical and organizational skills so as to be effective in their roles. However, the project manager’s job does not end with completing project scope and budget documents. At the core of their work lies their ability to understand individuals and their management skills that direct the employees toward the simplest results. For this reason, possessing an efficient array of “soft skills” are often equally as important as possessing the hard skills that are typically related to the discipline.
Project management knowledge draws on ten areas:
- Communications
- Costs
- Human resources
- Procurement
- Quality of deliverables
- Business requirements
- Risks
- Schedules
- Project scope
- Stakeholders
The Importance of Time Management
In the extent of project management, time management is about using wisely the quantity of the time allocated to a project in order to satisfy expected deliverables and conclude all work before the project completion date. It requires project managers to ensure that their teams are organized, productive, and prompt at all times. This strategy is something that all project managers need to get comfortable with.
From a team’s perspective, having a transparent understanding of the varied individuals that structure the group – and their skill sets – can go an extended way in properly and efficiently assigning tasks. During this same regard, it is essential for a project manager to review which team member is liable for which task during a project and to avoid confusion and missed deadlines.
The best method for maintaining the stakeholders’ timeliness is to seek out ways to keep them engaged with the project. Sending weekly or monthly emails with a summary of the tasks accomplished during that period is one such approach that makes the tasks remain at the top of the mind. When project managers are ready to communicate this example clearly and concisely to the customer, while also finding out how to adapt their approach counting on the stakeholders’ previous reactions to high-stress situations, they are far more likely to realize effective results.
Critical Steps for Maintaining a Meeting Efficient
Another aspect of the project management strategy is to know how to keep a meeting efficient. Project managers should learn how to rely on work breakdown structures during the design phase of their projects so as to attenuate wasted time when it involves completing deliverables. Moreover, they will help team members to alleviate the strain that accompanies large-scale deliverables.
Suppose a project manager determines that an in-person meeting remains the simplest route for a particular team or group, on the opposite hand. In that case, it is important that managers follow a couple of critical steps for keeping the meetings efficient:
1. Take time to determine an agenda before the meeting of precisely what must be addressed.
Determining an agenda before the meeting may help in eliminating the time-wasters from the session. Usual time-wasters in a meeting are segue questions, updates that are not on topic, or one-on-one conversations between two team members that could be completed outside of the larger meeting. Moreover, having a plan for the meeting may also help get over everything that must be addressed in time.
2. Make sure that the rationale everyone within the meeting has been included is clear.
Project managers need to make meeting attendees understand that they are all included in the meeting. If that is not the case, project managers should consider removing some of the people from the list of attendees, thus saving the group, as well as the individual, from wasting their time.
3. Entitle someone to take notes and supply action items for the next team meeting.
At the end of a meeting, the attendees need to know what has been accomplished already, so having someone take notes from the meeting is very important. This may ensure that the employees are on an equivalent page about what has been accomplished already. Still, they will also know what they personally must achieve before the subsequent meeting. This action can ensure that future meetings will always be productive down the road.
The Benefits of Program Management in Organizations
So far, we have discussed the advantages at an organizational level and just a few of the ways how project management can help to enhance your entire business. But what about individual projects? What about the benefits that come from program management? What about situations when things get down sometimes, and with a simple addition of unnecessary bureaucracy in a company, employees may be left with an idea but with no room for innovation?
When organizations get to introduce project management, they can follow three important steps. They need to identify the program, develop different approaches, find the most convenient one, and finally identify an appropriate program manager.
Better project planning = better projects
Benefits of Implementing Program Management
Program management may be a crucial link between strategic services portfolios in a corporation and its component projects. By defining a program, there are significant advantages supporting an objective of subdividing component projects, then undertaking individual projects. Overall, program management strengthens the alignment towards organizational business strategy, ensures better control, and focuses on benefits realization. There are the four most important benefits of implementing program management in a company:
- Provides a Comprehensive View
- Works towards Organizational Benefits
- Formalizes Procedures
- Saves Costs
Is your project set for success?
The inspiration for a successful program is born long before the project even starts. Therefore, project managers must know how to predict risks, support planned governance, but most importantly, how to manage processes, controls, and suppliers. Avoiding or taking shortcuts within the crucial pre-planning and formation areas can significantly impact project success. This impact may take the shape of missed deadlines, budget overruns, reduced benefits, and burned-out teams. Therefore, managers are mandated to learn how to reduce project failure rates and how to shorten costs.
Reducing project failure rates
Without this vital step, a project team can miss crucial details, deadlines, and eventually deliverables. The two most important things that a company must know are deciding where to spend our energy and what to deliver first. What is most vital for the customer? Which features can have an immediate impact on the company’s revenues? These are only the first questions that managers need to answer in order to reduce the possibility of project failure.
Managers also have to frequently discuss with developers about what are the company’s priorities. However, technical priorities are essential too: they can not always be ignored to think only about business priorities, because doing so is going to affect the business and the delivery of the software. Therefore, managers must understand that both business priorities and technical priorities must be considered when deciding on the next step they will work on.
It is indisputable that developers must work in cohesion with the project managers all the time. If you want to get a project manager that will take into consideration all the qualities mentioned above, contact us today and let our experts lead your team of developers.
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