Project management is always evolving and depending on the field you’re in, varies vastly from one company to the next. That said, just about every project manager across the board is always looking for new ways to increase their Project Management Team’s efficiency. If this sounds familiar, here are a few tips that will put your team a step ahead of the rest.
Use a project management system
Implementing a system will help everyone on your team better understand their responsibilities, the progress of their projects, and where improvements can be made to increase efficiency. Having a visual indicator is sometimes a better motivator than simply having a to-do list (or paper), since people can clearly see how the task is laid out, what resources are being used, and the timeline (as well as any adjustments to those things).
Gantt charts making them one of the most cost-efficient PM systems around. If you are on a tight budget, you can also look into Microsoft Excel that have everything you need to prioritize, streamline, and tracking. (With no history though)
Eliminate the unnecessary
How often to you come out of an hour-long meeting about a project status update and feel like that hour was really put to good use? Chances are, not very often. The project management system mentioned above can help eliminate these time-wasting meetings since the progress and everyone’s status is already laid out in front of you. More importantly, that frees up time for discussing useful things in the meetings, like the next phase of the project, important changes in the timeline or resources allocated, or discussing what has worked and has not work thus far.
For some people, they think these meetings translate to strong communication. They do not. They waste time. Encourage strong communication among team members in small group through Hangouts, Skype, or other chat platforms. You might even start a group for specific projects and tasks so everyone is on the same page. Also consider how your Project Management Team members like to communicate. Many people prefer just sending a quick chat message, but others might do better with face-to-face communication or prefer using the actual telephone. Do your best to communicate with preferred communication styles to prevent misunderstandings or a breakdown of communication.
Get the Project Management Team behind you
Regardless of the technology you have, the systems you have, the great projects you have, it is hard to be an effective project manager if your team does not support you. One of the easiest ways to get your team on your side is simply by actively and enthusiastically listening to them. Everyone wants to feel valued, and listening shows your team members that you value their opinion. Do more than just listen to what they are saying, though, take steps to make changes whether this is in policies and procedures or addressing problems, risks, or obstacles they are facing. Not only will you be able to make better decisions for your team as a whole, but you will earn their respect and their support, which will make working collaboratively together on projects easier.
Good training and good tools
As with most departments, one of the best things you can do to improve team efficiency is encourage ongoing training. Whether this is attending conferences once or twice a year, listening to podcasts together, or subscribing to a helpful newsletter, ongoing training not only shows you are truly invested in your employees, but it will help everyone on the project management team get better at their job.
It is also important to use the right tools. This means utilizing a good CRM that will help your team members manage clients and their respective projects and will help you as a project manager to stay organized.
What we can help?
Our Project Management Tool will help you to manage multiple projects with people working around the world. Using this you can efficiently manage tasks for customer projects as well as your ongoing support issues in a real-time, agile, social and flexible ways. Different views are designed to fit your own needs: work on tasks and issues using the kanban view; schedule tasks in the Gantt view ; control deadlines in the calendar view. Keep track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details, from the customer contract to the billing.
Task Management with alerts to stay up to date with all that interests you, with collaborative writing to work on the same task at the same time, with task delegation and chatter to work together. It automatically creates new tasks and issues from incoming emails, allowing you to collaborate easily with customers. We have a unique Dashboard view to let manager overview ALL projects in a glance with outstanding/ delay task. We also provide customisation services which tailor your industry need. Further, we can provide integration work with your timesheet and HR system thus you can manage your internal cost effectively.