PROJECT MANAGEMENT

News: July 2013

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

In today’s hyper-competitive business world, project management has become an essential skill for managers. As businesses grow and develop they need to adapt to change. A good project manager can ensure the successful delivery of projects that help to move the business forward.

Time management Projects are temporary in nature with a pretty defined beginning and end. Projects are normally created by businesses to develop a new product, service or to effect a business transformation. As such, project managers must be really good at managing deadlines, and can only do so with strong time management skills.

Interpersonal skills It is important for the project manager to possess excellent interpersonal skills. They could work with more than one project at any point in time. These projects might not have the same team members, sponsors or stakeholders. As such, a project manager needs to be able to communicate with different groups of people effectively. For example, a project manager who is in charge of building and launching a new office might be required to report to senior management about project progress and also work with the different internal departments such as IT and finance.

Budget management Targeting your potential new clients is the difficult part. You must work out how to identify the least satisfied clients of your competitors and then reach out to them with an appropriate campaign. By studying your competitors and networking at relevant industry events, you can begin to profile their client base. Next, develop a campaign which can be placed in a manner which will be seen by the target clients.

Scope creep Once the project begins, the project manager needs to watch out for scope creep. This is where the project begins to deviate from the agreed specification in terms of cost, timeline, etc. A good project manager will be able to create and agree a project specification which has tolerances built in and monitoring / reporting in place to help minimise scope creep – this is essential as significant deviations from the project specification can have an effect on budgets, deliverables, etc.