5 Project Management Skills that Could Transform Your Work

5 PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS THAT COULD TRANSFORM YOUR WORK

Project management skills are a truly valuable asset to have. Whether you’re running your own business, looking to change lanes in your career, or trying to develop the value you add to your job role. Project management is a huge part of being an effective force at work and the skills required are invaluable.

The same principles apply no matter what project you have at hand. It might be pulling together a marketing campaign or planning an office move. Launching a new service or making any kind of organisational change. Where there is a project, there should be good project management.

You can learn these tenets through a specialist training provider like STL. Good skills in this area can help you get the deals you want, effect the change you need to and get ahead of the competition. They are certainly skills worth learning.

You may think that you already know the basics of project management. Create a stakeholder map, set a budget, create a Gantt chart and you’re set, right? But there are some essential skills which are often overlooked which can make or break a project. Get these small touches right, and you’re likely to be a success.

1.Brush Up Your Communication Skills

Having brilliant communication skills is something that can be considered essential for the effective management of any project, big or small. You must be able to both understand what other people’s expectations are and know how to manage them. You must also be able to make your own aims clear.

This is harder than it may look. Project Managers who operate well have great talent in understanding others and making themselves understood in turn. They can adapt their communication style for a wide range of audiences. From fellow team members to demanding clients or hard-to-handle stakeholders. They have the ability to keep things running smoothly, even when faced with conflicting demands or unworkable deadlines.

The skill is hugely important because it helps to address any concerns early on in the project, before they spiral and cause further issues. There is also much better feeling from everyone when they feel kept in the loop about developments. They may be able to offer insight and contribute more when they understand the current status of the project and any challenges encountered along the way.

2. Streamline Processes With The Right Tools

A lot of your time as a Project Manager can be swallowed up by keeping people informed. Last minute changes occur on every project, however well planned. Even with the best time management techniques, you aren’t going to have the capability to address every question about progress.

Using a project management software system will allow you to keep multiple stakeholders up to date and generate automated reporting structures to keep people informed. There are specific add on tools that can track things such as Health and Safety which can prevent hazards, report any incidents, generate risk analysis reports and more.

The right tools will create transparency at every stage of the process. They need to be smart enough to integrate with other tools such as DocuSign which allows relevant figures to sign contracts digitally, thus speeding up administration processes and minimising avoidable delays.

Equally, tracking and monitoring budget spend is practically impossible without the right tools. From the tendering process through to project close out, you need a good grasp on costs. Even if invoices and accounting are handled by separate departments.

3. Make Sure You’re On The Same Page With Suppliers

You’re only as good as the other professionals you choose to work with. It is therefore important to take care in selecting suppliers and getting them on board with the aims and projected achievements of the project from the outset.

They don’t just need to understand the milestones and their own part in operations. They need to understand the context, how their work ties in with that of other suppliers and ultimately, the overarching vision for the project. Missing this vital step out can result in miscommunication, missed opportunities and a less than ideal end result.

Align yourself and your company with all the people that will be delivering on the project. It’s an obvious step, but in the rush to begin something it can often be overlooked.

You need to establish a mutual dialogue from the beginning, where suppliers feel free to raise potential issues with you and you can develop solutions to challenges together as you work.

Choosing partners carefully on more than just a cost basis, but on the vision and values they operate under, can help this process to run smoothly. Getting people on board who understand the needs of the project and have a strong dialogue with you is an important first step in a long process.

4. Understand What You Don’t Know

One of the single greatest assets a business can have is humility. Not presuming they know everything, but learning instead to ask the right questions. This can easily be the downfall of many an otherwise carefully managed projects. Every business has it’s blind spots. That’s ok, but you need to at least understand what you don’t know in order to get better.

Social listening can be a brilliant tool to make sure your direction is fully aligned with the wants and needs of your customer base. Also doing regular Web-based surveys or running focus groups. Just make sure that you have established that feedback loop in one way or another – preferably several channels. Build this into every project you do during the planning stages

5. Learn To Collaborate Better

With the channels of communication open and the right tools in place, this next step should be made much easier. Facilitating good collaboration is another underpinning skill that can really determine the success of what you’re doing. You must manage your team members to coordinate working and deadlines to achieve a common aim.

If people are unable to work effectively across teams, breaking out of silos, then you won’t make much progress. Especially if your project involves a complex stakeholder map or delivering something with a partner organisation.

Facilitating collaboration is about changing a way of thinking, and realigning teams from being focused on individual objectives to shared ones. Often a business can unwittingly set itself up so that the interests of one team run directly counter to another. Better collaboration in business is something which needs to be led from the top down and be at the heart of everything the company does. Getting this right means that project management is going to progress far easier.

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