Is project management as important as hyped? Well, yes!
When a person or organization wants to grow, they define strategies to help them achieve their goals, right? But how do you drive these strategies to realize?
It’s simple, define projects and manage them!
Projects are drivers of strategies. Like the toy board below, projects are the building blocks that make your strategies towards achieving your goals, a reality. When you manage your projects properly, you see results and celebrate progress.
But then, you shouldn’t just define projects, you should commit to their management. Here are five reasons why you should consider imbibing proper management of your projects:
1. You get to see your projects’ content via the lens of scope management
When we are naïve, we usually jump into projects without having a holistic view of what it takes to complete the project. Not only do we carry on that project with gaps, but we also risk wasting time and resources by doing things that are unnecessary.
Proper scope management ensures that you do “every and only” the work needed to complete your project. It fleshes out your project work into various work packages and saves you from stress.
2. You gain better time & resources efficiency
Delayed project delivery and cost overrun are some of the most common shortcomings in project management; and poor project management is the first ingredient to project failure.
When you properly define the project scope, you begin to flesh out the time, cost, and resources each work package will require. Project management gives you a wide range of tools to define and manage your project schedule and resources, be it finance, human or equipment.
3. Optimal risk management
There is NO project without risks, but you know what’s worse? Managing a project without risk management.
Project risk management involves taking time to identify possible risks, assessing their impacts, planning for their responses, implementing those responses when need be and monitoring the risks repeatedly
Proper project management is PROACTIVE, not reactive.
4. Stronger stakeholders and communications management
A university professor hired a project manager for his building construction project. The manager did well BUT … the client’s wife was greatly dissatisfied. What went wrong?
The manager was hired to manage the construction of the building and the construction alone. But he thought it great to add some extra toppings to his sponsor’s parfait, by gold-plating the job and adding beautiful flower beds to the scope.
Well, the man’s wife was a horticulturist and had the intention to import her flower selections from Israel.
The manager failed to identify his client’s wife as a major stakeholder with power and influence. He also failed to communicate his intention to his client, at least that would have saved him the embarrassment. Proper project management does wonders to avoid these mistakes and save time and resources too.
5. An opportunity to learn
Do you know why the successful ones get more successful? They learn from both their wins and their failures.
One of the best things in project management is taking a moment to register lessons learned from your projects. Not only do you gain records of experience, but you also have an arsenal to face future projects.
If you have a taste of proper project management, you wouldn’t want to turn around. Waste no further resources, hire a project manager. … like this article? Leave a comment and share it with friends.
Truly yours,
Dr. STM
