Success tips for project managers

Summary

We all know project management is important. But having a professional project manager can be very expensive. And the thought of spending lots of money to have someone help you plan a project makes you cringe. Many people think project management is all about money. It isn't. A good project manager is worth every penny. A good project manager knows what is important. They are skilled enough to understand the big picture, and confident enough to know what details matter. Often, a good project manager brings valuable skills that you can't get any other way.

What techniques do you need as a project manager?

Project management is a set of techniques for doing projects. It is a kind of engineering, with its own methods and terminology. A project manager has to understand project management. Project management is focused on one thing: creating a project. We all know what a project is: a thing that gets done. But often we don't understand what it takes to get it done. A project is a thing that requires some kind of organization. A project has human resources, material resources, and, most important of all, a schedule. A schedule defines how long a project will take. To achieve good results, you will need PMS tools for business and utilize all available resources.

A project requires a set of specific skills. A project manager needs to be able to estimate how long things will take, to estimate how much it will cost (to understand how much it will cost, the project manager needs to know the start date, the end date, and the team member costs), and to direct the work. But in order to understand a project, the project manager needs to understand a lot more. A project manager needs to know how to create an organization, how to hire people, how to train them, how to motivate them, how to get them to work together, how to keep a project on schedule, and how to keep people from getting in one another's way.

A project manager's job is to create a project. The project manager manages the project. The project manager's job is to make sure that the project gets done. But a project manager's job is a lot more than that. The project manager's job is to understand the project. And in order to really understand the project, the project manager needs to understand a lot more.

What skills do project managers need?

Project management consists of a set of skills and attitudes required by anyone who undertakes a project. The first skill for project managers is being able to recognize problems. If you don't know what problems you're dealing with, you won't be able to fix them. Project management isn't difficult, but it does require a lot of training. The importance of project management has been driven home at almost every company I've worked at, and at nearly every company I've worked at, the training was horrible.

Some organizations hire project managers, which seems like a good idea, but the problem is that those project managers spend most of their time being told what to do. The managers have to defend their projects, so they have to explain why they need the money and who will do it. And most managers are not project managers. So they hire people who have project management experience, but those people have not been trained as project managers.

At companies where there is good project management, the people who get trained are the people who most need it. They are the people who are best at understanding what the project needs. So they are the ones most suited to being project managers. The people who are trained as project managers are the people who have the most trouble doing it. They need to learn to deal with people, and with computers, and with the equipment used in the project. They have to learn the rules of the game of management. So they don't get trained as project managers right away. Instead, they get trained as something else: either engineers, or as technicians, or as administrators. And as they learn that other stuff, they learn project management. The people who are trained as project managers are the ones who most need the training.

What should project managers expect at work?

A project consists of a set of activities, some of which have specific costs. The project may get done on time, on budget, and with the best results possible. Or it may be late, over budget, with results no one cares about. Using online project management software simplifies your job and makes you good at making everyone happy.

In some projects, only some of the activities have specific costs. For example, some projects have a fixed cost, such as a building, or the cost of materials. Others may have a variable cost, such as the cost of labor or the time. And still others may have both. Most projects have some combination of fixed and variable costs, and an activity with a cost that is fixed in one part of the project may have different costs in other parts of the project. For example, a building's cost may be fixed during construction, but the cost may be variable once the project is complete, or the cost of materials may be fixed during construction, but the cost may be variable once the project is complete, or the cost of materials may be fixed during construction, but the cost may be variable once the project is complete.

What else does a project manager need to know?

Project management is knowing what to do, when to do it, and who will do it.

Most projects fail for one reason: nobody does the thing they were supposed to do.

"Who" is the most important question. If "who" is not specified, there is chaos. That's why projects often get derailed by the guy who was supposed to do something.

"When" is another. If "when" is not specified, there is delay. Sometimes delay is OK. Sometimes it is not.

"What" is the most important part. If "what" is not specified, there is confusion.

"How" is less important.

"Who" and "when" are the most critical.

In real life, "who" is seldom specified. Even organizations and governments often don't know who is going to do what.

They just know they have to do something.

"When" is harder to specify.