Project management focuses on planning and organizing a project and its resources. This includes identifying and managing the lifecycle to be used, applying it to the user-centered design process, formulating the project team, and efficiently guiding the team through all phases until project completion.
Value of Project Management
Through proper project management, you can assure that the purpose/vision and goals of the project are maintained, all while supporting the audiences’ tasks and objectives. Additionally, you avoid risks and effectively and efficiently use your available resources. It also helps the team members to understand their responsibilities, the deliverables expected, and the schedule everyone needs to follow to complete the project on time and within budget.
Areas within Project Management
The Project Management Institute (PMI) has identified nine areas of knowledge within project management:
- integration management
- scope management
- time management
- cost management
- quality management
- human resource management
- communication management
- risk management and
- procurement management
Building a Team and Encouraging Communication
Depending on your project needs, the size of your team and the roles needed may vary. Keep in mind that members on your team may fulfill one role or may fulfill many.
Regardless of the size of the team, it’s important to identify how the team will communicate and collaborate with one another. This includes discussing upfront:
- Planned/ regular meetings
- How formal they will be
- Whether meetings will be held in-person, virtually, or both
- How the team will share and collaborate on documents
- Where documents will be stored and how they will be version controlled
- Workflow for decisions and approval
Project Phases, Life Cycles, and Incorporating User-Centered Design Principles
Projects are typically broken down into phases. Each phase outlines the work that needs to be done and who is involved. Generally, in order for a phase to be considered complete, specific deliverables need to have been completed and handed off. Some project teams, however, do choose to implement fast tracking, which is when phases are overlapped.
A lifecycle defines the beginning and end of the project; it represents all of the phases together. When defining the project’s life cycle, the first phase is noted as Step 0. It usually captures the visioning and conceptualizing of the project. According to the Project Management Institute, most life cycles have four or five phases but some may have more.
The most common lifecycle approaches are Waterfall and Agile., Regardless of the approach you choose, you will need to incorporate user-centered design (UCD) best practices and methods. At a high-level, the UCD process includes the following steps: planning, collecting and analyzing data, writing content, designing and developing prototypes of the system, and testing.
Project Plan and Charter Agreement
When defining your project, it is important to come up with a project plan that the team agrees to upfront so that it can serve as a reference point throughout the project. Make sure when outlining your plan, that throughout it you note how you plan to include user-centered design best practices and methodologies. Most project plans outline:
At the end of the project plan, depending on your team’s needs, you may choose to include a charter agreement. A charter agreement is typically a one page document that has the sponsor of the project sign off that they agree to the work to be done as outlined by the team in the project plan. Remember, however, that successful teams understand upfront that things happen and that they’ll need to adapt. The project plan establishes the baseline for how you assume the project will happen and then provides information about the process for taking changes into account, should they arise.
Creating a Schedule
Schedules are an important part of project management because they help you measure your progress as the project moves along. They also help to outline how each team member’s part fits into the overall picture and demonstrate the dependencies.
Schedules reflect the life cycle broken down into specific deliverables and touch points. It defines what needs to be done and who is the point of contact responsible for the work.
If you’ve never worked with a project manager before, it can be tempting to forego the expense in favor of managing a project yourself. After all, project management can be a hefty financial investment, so why not just do it yourself?
But that would be a mistake.
A good project manager is the glue that holds a project together and ensures quality and objectives are met on time and on budget. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), organizations that undervalue project management report an average of 50% more of their projects failing outright. Fifty percent.
Failed projects can quickly derail your initiatives and delay or even prevent business growth.
Project management is more than simply tracking deadlines and setting a budget. A good project manager takes control of a project from beginning to end, ensuring that the initiatives and goals are strategically aligned, the project has stakeholder support, and everyone is on the same page.
What is project management?
To understand why project management is important, we first need to define exactly what project management is.
PMI defines project management as “ the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.” A basic project management lifecycle covers four stages:
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Closure
In other words, the purpose of project management is to plan and manage a project to successfully complete its listed goals and deliverables. It involves identifying and managing risks, careful resource management, smart budgeting, and clear communication across multiple teams and stakeholders.
Why is project management important?
Because projects are often complex and involve numerous stakeholders, having a project manager to lead the initiative and keep everyone on the same page is critical to project success.
In fact, PMI found that organizations using any type of project management methodology are better at meeting budget, staying on schedule and meeting scope, quality standards and expected benefits.
Still not convinced?
Here are six reasons why you should use project management.
1. Realistic project planning
The importance of project planning cannot be overstated. Too often, organizations overestimate how quickly they can achieve deliverables, underestimate the costs, or both—a recipe for failure.
A good project manager considers the big picture and sets realistic and achievable goals, budgets, and timelines. Without careful management, a project can quickly get off track before it has even begun.
To set realistic goals, budgets, and timelines, the project manager communicates with different stakeholders to understand the strategic priorities and business objectives of the initiative. Based on their research, the project manager then outlines a project plan that balances those priorities within the constraints of time and budget. This process involves cost estimation, resource management, and risk assessment.
2. Clear focus and objectives
A lack of clear goals was the most common reason for project failure in 2017. Project managers help organizations hone in on their priorities and define their project objectives.
When project management is left to the team to handle, the scope and objectives can easily get muddled. Unclear focus can lead to scope creep, missed deadlines, and overspending.
Plus, without a project manager to oversee the project plans and task breakdowns, many teams may not notice potential risk factors as they arise. If they don’t address evolving project risks, the team could end up prioritizing the wrong tasks.
A good project manager keeps an eye on all these factors so that the team can focus on the right tasks at the right time and adapt as needed.
3. Strategic alignment
One of the most important reasons to use project management is to align projects with business strategy. Mark Langley, the president and CEO of PMI cautions, “If your organization is not good at project management, you’re putting too much at risk in terms of ultimately delivering on strategy.”
In other words, project management is a driver of organizational strategy. So if you aren’t applying it to your initiatives, you are missing a crucial opportunity to grow.
As project managers oversee the planning and execution of a project, they help ensure the project’s overall goals and its subsequent tasks and milestones all align with the organization’s strategy. Strategic alignment at every level of the project keeps each stakeholder on the same page and ensures your initiatives drive the organization forward.
4. Managed process
Project management is a proactive process that seeks to help the right people do the right tasks at the right time. Without a set project management method, many teams tend to work reactively—handling issues as they arise rather than proactively planning for known risks and setting project goals and parameters from the beginning.
Project managers help teams break down a project into more manageable pieces. By breaking the project into a clear process of assigned tasks, milestones, and deadlines, project managers can direct their teams more efficiently and react to issues with greater agility.
5. Quality control
Quality control is an essential component of project management. Your project could meet all parameters for time and budget, but if the quality standards aren’t met, the project will be deemed a failure.
Unfortunately, this is an all-too-easy trap to fall into. Teams are under a lot of pressure to finish a project on time and on budget. And this can lead to rushed work and shoddy execution.
That’s where project managers come in. They not only manage deadlines and objectives, but they also keep an eye on how well project tasks are executed. Project managers help outline deliverables and define their quality standards so that everyone knows exactly what they’re aiming for.
6. Reduced costs
In 2018, according to PMI, 9.9% of every dollar invested was wasted due to poor project performance—that’s $99 million for every $1 billion invested.
Project management reduces project costs by improving efficiency, mitigating risks, and optimizing resources. Even with the added cost of investing in a project manager, organizations stand to gain much more.
Stay on track with Lucidchart
The right tools can make a big difference to a project’s success. Lucidchart is a cloud-based diagramming solution that helps project managers and their teams plan, track, and execute on their project deliverables.
You can use Lucidchart to create a variety of project management templates for each phase of your project including:
- Project checklists
- Project timelines
- Gantt charts
- Process flowcharts
- Sprint timelines
- Project dashboards
Ready-made project management templates and an extensive shape library make it easy to quickly customize your own dashboards and diagrams. Apply conditional formatting and link data directly to your document so you can track project progress in real time.
With the right project management and the right resources, you can set your projects up for success every time.