If there were one way to describe project management it would be “balance”.
Project management is about finding the right balance. You have to balanceleadership with management, analytical thinking with creative persuasion, andrelationship-building with effective delegation.
How can one achieve this balance? How can you manage both the right-brained as well as left-brained aspects of project management without losing your way?
What does it take to move from being ‘Aogood’ to being ‘Aogreat’ as project manager?
This article will provide some answers.
1.Focus on Risk Management
Why do projectsfail?
Conventional wisdom suggests that this is usually due to a lack in technical skills. Because you lack the technical skills, you couldn’t finish the project on time and within budget.
However, data shows that this is not always true. Gartner estimates that only 1% of projects end in failure due to technical reasons. The overwhelming majority of project failures can be attributed to organizational skills.
Image source: Gartner.com Experienced project managers will tell you why unexpected risks always arise. A resourceyou were depending on might drop out. A contractor might delay a keydeliverable. A stakeholder might go MIA.
To go from goodto great, you need to anticipate such risks and develop the organizationalrobustness to tackle them.
This is a two-step process.
Before you start the project, document all possible risks
To address these risks, create a risk management program
There are many potential risks to a project. However, you can generally divide them into two categories.
Implicit risks i.e. Implicit risks i.e., risks that are not related to the structure, nature or scope of the project
Explicit risks i.e. External risks i.e., specific deliverables (or groups of deliverables), or stakeholders
Some projects have high implicit risks. There is a high chance that your project will fail if you try to land a rocket onto Mars. This is simply because of how difficult the task is.
It is important to ensure that your project is both structurally and organizationally sound in order to manage implicit risks. A clear project management process, strong communication, and solid resource management are all essential.
Explicit risks are, however, easier to identify and avoid.
Ameta-analysis might reveal that clients are consistently late signing off on projects. This could indicate poor communication practices.
Therefore, your top priority should be to document all explicit risks and to create a plan to address each one. There are two ways to do this:
Historical project data: Search through your older projects to identify bottlenecks or issues. Look for patterns. Do you make the same mistakes across projects? If so, it is a risk that can be avoided in future.
Expert analysis: Before you develop your project plan, talk to domain experts in your team to identify potential risks.
To catalog all risks, it is a good idea to create a risk repository. This repository can be used to identify potential problems in a new project.
2. Develop solid Scope Management Practices
Scope creep is a major problem for project managers, particularly in complex projects. PMI’s 2018 survey revealed that 52% of projects experiencescope creep.
Image source: PMI.org Some project managers may be almost ready to accept the inevitable scope creep.
However, things don’t have to be this way. To be a great project manager, you must have the ability to manage scope creep effectively.
To improve scope management, you must first understand why scopecreep occurs. Usually, scopecreep is caused by a lack of understanding.
