One of the most important factors contributing to the growth and success of a business is the effective planning of all its projects. For a project manager it is not only important to ensure it’s employees achieve their individual targets within a project, but also to encourage collaboration in order to get the best out of the team.
A well-planned project entails a thorough understanding of the priorities of tasks and which resources are best suited to produce the deliverables. Failing to manage these aspects can affect project time management and cause unnecessary delays, which can lead to the waste of precious company time and resources.
We have listed below the best practices that help you stay on schedule and prevent project failures:
Identify competencies of team members
A project manager must be able to identify a team member’s skills and abilities in order to allocate work efficiently. Evaluating their knowledge to judge whether they can perform certain tasks effectively is essential. When you do this, you can easily choose the ideal person for a role whose strengths benefit the team.
It is equally important to be aware of your team’s weaknesses, as this helps you strategize better. This can mean reassigning tasks to a different team member for better productivity or hiring extra resources to aid the project and ensure it stays on schedule.
Use a training software
A team can work to their fullest potential when the team members are trained for the relevant job skills. This makes it crucial for a project manager to create a training program for employees that amplifies their personal and career growth during a project. Investing in a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) is one of the best ways to train employees and keep them motivated, irrespective of their location.
An LMS facilitates the creation, management, and tracking of online training programs. You can easily select an LMS by going through the customer reviews on its website. For instance, 360Learning reviews reflect how easy the software is to use, which allows you to quickly build effective training courses for your team.
Slack Time Tracking
Slack time occurs when certain tasks within a project are more time-consuming than others. If a manager is not aware of the slack time, it can lead to a project being delayed or go beyond the budget. Also, if a particular task can’t be finished without some other task within the project being executed first, it can cause a major lag in the project timeline.
Tracking slack time helps all team members identify just how much time they will take to accomplish a certain project task. One of the best practices to ensure a project stays on schedule is to include slack time in the project timeline consciously. This leaves room for flexibility and allows managers to pre-plan activities for team members left waiting due to slack time.
Communicate goals and timelines clearly
This one is a no-brainer. As a project manager, you must make your team aware of their collective project goal and the project schedule. When you involve your team members in the project planning and chalk out a milestone plan with their input, it leaves no doubt about the targets they need to accomplish.
Also, when team members are made an integral part of the project planning from the very beginning, they are better accountable for their role within the project and work harder to keep it on track and avoid any delay.
Conclusion
For every industry, project planning can look very different from the other. Luckily, there are multiple project management tools available to help you plan tasks better and manage project teams easily. We hope the above-mentioned tips will help you stay on schedule with your project planning.
