The following ten project management best practices will help you, as an ambitious and success-oriented project manager, to act confidently and effectively at every stage of a project.
Work SMART
To successfully complete a project, the so-called SMART rules can help. SMART is an acronym for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Accepted
- Realistic
- Time Bound
While every project is unique, there are universally applicable rules for project management. If you follow them, you lay a solid foundation for successful project execution.
1. Early Communication with All Stakeholders
Everyone who is directly or indirectly interested in or involved with the project is a so-called stakeholder with high information needs. It is one of the most important project management best practices that the project management team ensures comprehensive and up-to-date information for these project stakeholders from the very beginning.
The stakeholder circle is broadly defined, encompassing both internal and external parties. From its own communication, the project management team can simultaneously derive the expectation that all stakeholders engage with the project and identify with it. Everyone must receive the same information at the same time. Nobody should feel disadvantaged or played against others. With a web-based project management system, this is remarkably simple and practical.
2. Project Sponsors Help and Expect Something in Return
A typical characteristic of project sponsors is that they want to be as well-informed as possible, despite having limited manpower and presence. The project management team should not feel slighted by this expectation, but rather keep in mind the advantages it brings. In a critical phase, an honest answer to the question of how the project would stand without the sponsorship—or whether the project would even exist at all—puts things into perspective.
Sponsors, like patrons, want to be nurtured and cultivated. When this interplay between project management and sponsor works well, a potential friction point is eliminated from the start. On the contrary, the management team gains an advocate on the side of one of the most significant financiers: the sponsor.
3. Risk vs. Opportunity – Keeping the Worst Case in Mind
The project management team does well to periodically envision a scenario other than the currently successful project trajectory. A lot can literally happen during a longer project duration. The project team is expected to recognize and manage every conceivable situation. The only benchmark is project success. Risk assessment is a constant companion within project monitoring. For the project client, there are only very few acceptable excuses for failure. Comparable to the insurance sector, these include only war and elemental forces of nature such as earthquakes, heavy rainfall, flooding, and the like.
4. A Work/Business Plan Is More Than a List of Activities
A concretely developed work plan simultaneously serves as the guide for project management. The initially listed activities only come to life through planning. At the same time, the work plan forms a fixed framework for project management.
It must be neither undercut nor exceeded. With this awareness, the work plan takes on an eminently important role. Step-by-step goals are prioritized, intermediate results are defined and identified, and any scope creep—unplanned, creeping scope expansion—is nipped in the bud. What has not been planned need not and cannot be a project deliverable. Figuratively speaking, the work plan participates in project communication.
5. Kick Off the Project with a Kick-off Meeting
Kick-off is synonymous with start or restart. A kick-off meeting has a motivating effect on the project team in every respect. Everyone is together in the meeting, each person is addressed and informed equally. The participants’ expectations are high, even curious. What’s essential is clear project communication in every sense. Initial responsibilities and tasks are assigned, and the management team informs everyone about the project goal and the individual steps to get there. Each attendee must feel they belong to the project team and have a defined, responsible place within it.
6. Written Documentation as the Foundation for Successful Project Progress
Particularly in agile project management, project documentation is often assigned a secondary role. However, the written recording of plans, meeting results, interfaces, and similar items is one of the most important project management best practices. Project documentation is an essential foundation for ultimate project success. Nobody can remember everything, and the spoken word is expressed, interpreted, and understood differently by different people. What is documented in writing is irrevocably fixed and can be reviewed at any time. Written form is practically self-evident. What matters is its scope and thoroughness. On one hand, “project bureaucracy” should not be overdone; on the other hand, it is indispensable. Only through written records or their representation in a project management system can statements be verified, and work plans, budget plans, and other plans be modified and supplemented in a traceable manner. And to analyze errors that have occurred, the process must be able to be traced back and, in that sense, unraveled.
7. Step by Step with Interim Reviews and Controlling
Project communication includes regular reporting at one- or two-week intervals as well as ideally daily brief meetings within the project team. The saying applies here too: trust is good, verification is better. Regular interim reviews provide security on all sides, and a project management system offers transparency here. The project team receives confirmation of where it stands and whether the schedule still holds.
The project leadership needs both interim reviews and controlling as a working and decision-making basis for the next project step. Until the project goal is reached, the individual sections build on each other seamlessly and without gaps. A missing work step can throw the entire project off balance. Comparable to a staircase, no step may be skipped or omitted.
8. Feedback as a Vital Component of Communication
Lively and regular feedback is also among the project management best practices and is the guarantee that no gaps arise in the project workflow. Communication must never be one-sided; it must always be two-way—it must go in both directions. When an instruction is given, it must be ensured that it has been received and that it will be carried out. Nobody is perfect, neither the project leadership nor the project team. The tighter and better organized the feedback loop is, the more seamless the entire project workflow becomes.
Furthermore, feedback increases mutual acceptance. Every team member feels taken seriously when their suggestions and proposals are not only heard but also receive feedback. A web-based project management software facilitates communication.
9. Stick to the Work Plan and Avoid Scope Creep
The decisive project foundation is the existing work plan. Every project lives, and in that regard, dynamism from inside and outside must be expected during the project’s course. Both often have immediate impacts on the project. At this point, the project leadership must push back—not stubbornly, but rather firmly—and stick to the work plan. The plan itself can be substantially modified. However, any expansion at the request or directive of stakeholders is a no-go. Only those who created the work plan can and may change it. Interference from outside must be deflected. This is done politely toward sponsors, of course, but firmly.
10. Looking Back at the Project and Follow-Up
The last of the ten project management best practices presented here concerns the retrospective and follow-up of a project. Every project is structured into three sections: preparation, execution, and follow-up. All sections are indispensable both individually and for the overall project. The project is only truly complete after a thorough retrospective.
This retrospective can be designed in various ways. In individual cases, a comprehensive follow-up is helpful and even necessary, with the goal that future similarly structured projects can draw on the experience of the just-completed project. Comparable to the kick-off meeting, there should be a final, concluding meeting.
Unfortunately, this often falls by the wayside for several reasons. The project team members have since scattered in all directions, or the project budget has been exhausted. To prevent this, the closing meeting should take place as close to the project’s end as possible, following the principle: after the completed project is before the new project. In this setting, the usefulness of the applied project management methods can also be discussed, and process adjustments can be derived from that.
Related topics: Project Manual, Task Management, Task Management Software
Gabriella Martin
Editor and Writer
Gabriella Martin is a Yale University graduate and holds a Master's degree in German Literature from the University of Tübingen. She loves explaining complex things in simple terms.
