Project management often looks like a circus act demanding you to juggle multiple tasks without a clear vision of how it may end. As a project manager, you’ll be in charge of planning, delegating tasks, managing resources and time, hoping that your client will be happy with the results.
This time-consuming process may easily become overwhelming, so remember that successful project management is more about the journey, not a destination. Namely, make sure to take all the essential steps to reach set goals, successfully avoiding all traps and obstacles along the way. Here‘s what steps you may take and how you can use the productivity tracker to boost your project management.
Take a Proactive Approach
The time of old-fashioned, time-consuming project management methodologies, requiring piles of paperwork is long gone. Nowadays, a fast-paced working environment requires leaders who use advanced technological solutions to make decisions on the spot, tackling current issues in real-time.
Bear in mind that taking a proactive role doesn’t mean micromanaging your employees every step of the way. Micromanaging may make employees feel pressured and demotivated, bringing their productivity down, making you look like a control freak. Therefore, you need to make a fine balance between being a proactive leader, thinking on their feet, and a manager who hovers over employees judging everything they do.
Productivity tracking software can help you with this, giving you a clear picture of everything done on your projects, indicating clearly what needs to be done next. This detailed insight into your current projects and tasks will help you plan future steps better, identifying potential pitfalls and taking actions to avoid them.
Furthermore, you can browse through your past projects to learn valuable lessons on tackling different challenges. These lessons may come in handy in the future.
Foster Open Communication
Nothing can harm a project management process like a lack of communication between managers and employees. That’s why you need to go above and beyond to make sure this communication is flawless every step of the way. Everything starts with clear directions and well-defined roles and responsibilities where everybody knows what goals and expectations are.
Furthermore, open and honest communication is a two-way street that helps you get a better grasp of the atmosphere within the team. Interpersonal relationships play a significant part in your projects’ success. So make sure that everyone in your team gets along and is on the same page when it comes to reaching set goals.
To ensure a motivating and productive atmosphere, encourage honest communication where workers can speak their minds freely and be sure that they are heard. By doing this, you may get a fresh perspective on the project, encouraging employees’ good sides and helping them overcome obstacles on the way to success.
Make a Detailed Plan and Delegate Tasks Wisely
Think of your project as a treasure hunt. To get from start to the wanted result, you’ll need a well-devised plan with set deadlines, milestones, and goals. Here is where the productivity tracking tool may be an indispensable ally. If you start using it for project tracking, you will be able to make a detailed plan for each project, separating specific tasks into different categories and labeling them by priority. Once they see a well-devised project plan with clearly defined tasks assigned to them, employees won’t waste time figuring out what they need to do.
At the same time, you can use employee productivity tracking to see how much time they spend on the assigned tasks, and what apps they are using while working on them. This overall in-depth insight into someone’s workflow will give you the chance to see what their best sides are and what tasks they may be struggling with. This way, you’ll delegate tasks more efficiently, making sure that employees do their best to finish projects within set deadlines.
Stay Focused on Budget, Time, and Quality
Whatever practices you may involve in the project management process, three main factors that decide whether a project is successful or not will always be budget, time, and quality. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t break a bank, stay within deadlines, and deliver the quality that will put a smile on a client’s face.
You can achieve all this by using quality productivity and a project tracker that will provide you with data about the time and money spent on different tasks so that you can make necessary changes to save time and spend resources efficiently.