Eight Ways to Project Success
KNOW THE PROJECT'S OBJECTIVE Focus on your end goal and talk it up with other team members. Think smart: in specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-set terms. Be clear on what you must do. Ask your supervisor to clarify details if necessary.
CREATE THE TEAM YOU NEED Start small, say, with two or three team members and grow from there. Recruit diverse people with different abilities. Create an environment that encourages teamwork.
TAKE A REALITY CHECK Before you even begin, ask yourself if the project is realistic. Make sure you have the needed technology, resources, organizational support, and funding.
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN Good planning and knowing where you're going is 80 percent of your project's success, while the other 20 percent is the actual work, Eriksson says. The planning phase should include a project map with a list of all team members, individual responsibilities, their contact information, and whom they report to and when.
TAKE A MEETING, OFTEN Book recurring meetings?put them on your calendar way into the future. Such meetings should be scheduled on the same day of the week, in the same place with the same people, although it is occasionally useful to invite others to gain different perspectives. Keep meetings to one hour at most. If a problem can?t be solved in an hour, endthe meeting and schedule another. Keep the meetings simple. Use templates for agendas and reports, and distribute meeting minutes immediately. Appoint a project secretary to organize the process.
BE A ROLE MODEL Lead by example. Create an open atmosphere, be fair and straightforward, show respect, be enthusiastic, give a lot of praise, and trust your team members. Having a spirited team helps, Eriksson says, because happy people ultimately do more work. You should be goal-oriented, flexible yet firm, and realistic. You also should communicate
effectively and be a good planner.
KEEP THE TEAM TALKING Huang Qiang, IEEE student number and a graduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University,in China, says the importance of communicating clearly and maintaining good relationships with team members was the most valuable advice he learned from Eriksson's Webinar.
CLOSE OUT THE PROJECT Don't let it just wander off into the sunset. Celebrate the results if you're successful or discuss how to do better next time if you fail. Most important, always review lessons learned with your team members. You might ask these questions: How did we do? What worked well? Any advice for the next project? Why did we fail? Was it us or was
it something we could not foresee?
Being a successful project manager doesn't happen overnight,But almost every job-related experience can add to your mastery and excellence in project management
