Managing Projects
Printed Page 60-61
Managing Projects
At some point in your career, you will likely collaborate on a project that is just too big, too technical, too complex, and too difficult for your team to complete successfully without some advance planning and careful oversight. Often, collaborative projects last several weeks or months, and the efforts of several people are required at scheduled times for the project to proceed. For this reason, collaborators need to spend time managing the project to ensure that it not only meets the needs of the audience but also is completed on time and, if relevant, within budget.
Managing Your Project
These seven suggestions can help you keep your project on track.
- Break down a large project into several smaller tasks. Working backward from what you must deliver to your client or manager, partition your project into its component parts, making a list of what steps your team must take to complete the project. This task is not only the foundation of project management but also a good strategy for determining the resources you will need to complete the project successfully and on time. After you have a list of tasks to complete, you can begin to plan your project, assign responsibilities, and set deadlines.
- Plan your project. Planning allows collaborators to develop an effective approach and reach agreement before investing a lot of time and resources. Planning prevents small problems from becoming big problems with a deadline looming. Effective project managers use planning documents such as needs analyses, information plans, specifications, and project plans.
- Create and maintain an accurate schedule. An accurate schedule helps collaborators plan ahead, allocate their time, and meet deadlines. Update your schedule when changes are made, and either place the up-to-date schedule in an easily accessible location (for example, on a project website) or send the schedule to each team member. If the team misses a deadline, immediately create a new deadline. Team members should always know when tasks must be completed.
- Put your decisions in writing. Writing down your decisions, and communicating them to all collaborators, helps the team remember what happened. In addition, if questions arise, the team can refer easily to the document and, if necessary, update it.
- Monitor the project. By regularly tracking the progress of the project, the team can learn what it has accomplished, whether the project is on schedule, and if any unexpected challenges exist.
- Distribute and act on information quickly. Acting fast to get collaborators the information they need helps ensure that the team makes effective decisions and steady progress toward completing the project.
- Be flexible regarding schedule and responsibilities. Adjust your plan and methods when new information becomes available or problems arise. When tasks are held up because earlier tasks have been delayed or need reworking, the team should consider revising responsibilities to keep the project moving forward.