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Resourcing is a key component of any projects success or failure, to underestimate the importance of a project team, is at the project managers peril. Frequently, projects are executed with teams of inadequate size and composition, due to budget or internal skill-set. Other factors include poor comprehension of the nature and amount of the work to be done, and a superficial or in-existent analysis of the required skills in the team members.

To engineer the project team is an important process to be done carefully. To do that, it’s fundamental first to have a clear understanding of the nature of the scope of the work. A good requirements elicitation, a correct project scope definition and a detailed work breakdown structure are key process to ensure the comprehension of work that the project involve.

Once the work breakdown structure is clear, is the moment to meditate on the preassigned human resources to the project team. Is it suitable in quantity and quality? The organization has a fixed staff, or the organization hire people to create a dedicated team for the project? Probably the answer will depend on the organization and in the particular project.

To define the team, the first step is to assign to each activity or work package, the required number of people with their associated qualifications or expertise. Once finished this exercise, it’s necessary to check the time frame of the execution of the tasks. For instance, if several activities that requires the same specialists can be done in sequence, the number of persons to consider in the team are few than in the case if the activities should be executed in parallel.

This optimization can only be possible when the problem is quantitative (number of people), but not in the case in which the resource gap is qualitative. For instance, if the project requires a doctor in robotics, the project cannot be delivered with who don’t have knowledge in robotics, even if sponsors provide double or triple the time. This is obvious, but frequently is forgotten. In this instance there is a degree of freedom: by trading off the number of people with the execution time. The same set of activities can be executed slower with less people or faster with more people. Therefore, there is an optimization analysis to be done. Off course, this analysis is constrained in certain limits. For example, a task originally planned to do with three people can be accelerated if there is an introduction of two additional persons, but if ten extra people are added, they will obstruct the fluid development of the task. In this case entropy is being produced, and the task will not be finished early.

An instrument or tool to identify the gap of skilled people in the project team is the resource gap table, as depicted below

Being conscious of the project team resource gap is important in the planning process. It is useful to ask for resources, time or, in the worst case, at least to be conscious of the risks and communicate them opportunely to stakeholders.

Large projects are the life blood for any organizations. Big budget projects can breathe a new life into a dilapidated company and can kick start its revenue generation cycle. Such projects are absolutely necessary to transform a company image and reputation. It can easily create business value and help it to survive in the toughest competitive environment. Companies also seek such people/managers who are PMP certified professional and can easily and effectively undertake mega projects and can manage them in the best possible manner. Here best possible manner means, with the limited resources and in the restricted time. It will not only increase the value of the company, but also improve its bottom line. PMP certified professionals have the ability to perform in the smartest possible manner with greater precision and efficiency.

Business leaders want to standardise their operational abilities

Today, business leaders want to improve their working conditions, standardise their operational abilities and optimize their project working processes in order to improve the delivery time. In this way, they will not only generate huge profits, but also gain the confidence of their clients. In pursuit of the same, they hire then most talent professional who are skilled and experienced while having the required certifications to handle the projects.

In has been observed that the professionals who have PMP Certification tend to work smarter and in a much scalable manner. They have the extra insight into the project management and the overall working methodology, which helps them to carry out their work in the optimized fashion.

PMP certified professionals understand the business criticalities

Such PMP certified professionals understand the business criticalities and take challenges effectively. They oversee the project, IT architecture, business context, time frames, technology-involved, project road map, and take decisions. They also evaluate the size of the project and nature of the task. They take initiatives in developing smooth working processes and implementing those changes to complete the project flawlessly. They also help in cultivating skills in other employees who have passion to succeed. Such professionals share their knowledge of the business and projects as well as combine their acumen to complete the project on time. In addition to that, they take calculated risks to align and streamline a project while mitigating the risks.

Companies also hire PMP certified professionals

Companies also hire such PMP certified professionals because they want to keep the projects on track. Today, it is quite difficult to monitor the project as it requires discipline and tight management that extends across the project team. It can help the members to stay alert, competitive, as well as proactive. It also regulates the task as well as methodologies.

Influence a business and improve its image

It can influence a business and improve its image. Companies not only improve its market image, but also gain scalable competitive advantage. They exhibit their ability to delivery projects on or before time, while winning the trust of their clients. By showing the measurable results to the clients, companies solidify their portfolio and amplify their overall ROI and stimulate their growth cycle.

Without good communication, very little of quality can get completed, as it is the foundation of a strong and healthy relationship, partnership or friendship. In particular, within the realm of Project Management it is the way projects work as well. For without good communication, things can become over complicated. Even with an airtight project plan, it will be difficult to achieve the first milestone without proper communication management.

Project communication is the process of identifying key information that will be shared with team members and stakeholders throughout a specific project. This includes listing out stakeholders and identifying team members that will be on project communications. It’s key to outline out how communication recipients will receive project updates, the frequency they’ll receive it, as well as the points during the project they’ll receive it.

As the project plan is developed, the communication plan should also be developed along with it so everyone has the necessary context and can do their job effectively at each step.  The points of communication, along with the contact list, will be in between each of those steps as they would need to get edits, comments and ultimately, approvals.

Communication management is everything, a project plan cannot be created and then hope everyone sticks to it. Once the plan is created and everyone is on board, a resource should be allocated as the key contact to manage the plan throughout the entirety of the project. This could either be the Project Manager or another resource, normally someone who has a good sense of communication. For example, a project manager can manage the deliverables on the agency side, and an account manager can manage all communications on the client-side, working as a tag-team to make the project successful.

To ensure solid communication management throughout a project, a communication management plan should be created. The benefits of a communication management plan are five-fold:

• A written framework that both client/stakeholders/team members can reference. This can help in case there is any need for mediation. There is a written paper trail which can be referred to, should it be needed. It can also be beneficial for accounts payable to reference in case there are gaps in time tracked for the project.
• The plan itself will manage expectations from stakeholders to not anticipate a finished project before the deliverables have been tested for quality assurance.
• The points at which communication is shared allow both stakeholders to provide valuable feedback to the project process as well as the final product, and give team members a chance to brainstorm ideas together, bridging the divide between the two groups.
• It allows all involved to better discover risks and issues early on.
• It helps to eliminate the need to hold unnecessary meetings on the books, saving both time and money.

Understanding why communication management matters might sound like a normal requirement for any organization, it’s not always accomplished well.

Communication can be bolstered by having an online project collaboration tool, like the ones found at Projectmanagementcompanion.com. Online Project Management tools allow managers to roll out project plans, and then disseminate information to team members at the right time for the right task. Tasks allow for comments, attachments, embedded links, descriptions, to-do lists and more, so everyone gets the directions right the first time.

How is communication achieved in such a way that it effectively cuts down on lost productivity time?

The following are some tips and techniques to ensure communication management plan is performing at optimal levels.

• Include a description of the project landscape in the original plan: Give the project a background including the organization’s short-term and long-term goals, who the stakeholders are, who the team members are, how much budget will be involved, what resources will be needed and how much time the project is expected to take. Include objectives as well as the project vision to ensure that the background isn’t just an outline, but a robust, fully-developed and communicated plan so that it can better generate project buy-in.
• Assign an owner of the communication process: Depending on the size of the organisation, this could be divided between the Project Manager who is focused on delivery and the Account Manager whose job it is to communicate.
• Include a review process: Setting up a formalized review process will ensure that no one will miss a beat when it comes time to assess the project.
• Set up a system for messages to be delivered: Determine if a project management software or Microsoft Excel is to be used. Is communication occurring via Slack, Skype, or just email? Include all of this in the plan so that everyone knows the best way to make contact.
• Meeting Management: This pairs along with creating a stakeholder management plan. Meetings can be a waste of time (and a lot of the time, they can be better said in an email). Make sure meetings only include the stakeholders who will be involved in the decision-making process and then create an agenda for each meeting for everyone to follow. This will help the group to stay on task and on topic.

There are many ways in which good communication management can save a project from disaster and keep everything working at optimal levels. But what happens when leadership (or the project communication owner) displays ineffective methods of communication? The project can quickly fall into peril.

Here are some communication management mistakes to avoid:

• Don’t be passive-aggressive: Refusing to speak directly to a co-worker, team member or stakeholder can limit the project’s progress entirely. Passive aggression can also look like one is avoiding a task or a project because of the people involved. Passive aggression in the workplace can be the cause of missed deadlines, wasted time, lost revenue and more.
• Don’t micromanage the project process: Micromanagement is damaging for any work environment in a myriad of ways; it increases health risks, affects employee turnover, decreases productivity and slows down project progress. Trust team members and stakeholders to deliver results on time and on budget, this should make for a happier, more effective product outcome.
• Don’t rely on electronic communications: A lot can be lost over text or email. As facial expressions, tone of voice can be missed, and can thus misunderstand what is being requested. Additionally, while meetings slow down workplace productivity, a deluge of emails can have the same effect. Remember that the best ways to communicate, especially during project milestones, are face-to-face.
• Don’t forget to document everything: The only way to properly review the success of a project is by looking back at the data via documentation. With documentation, it can be determined who did what, which tasks were delivered when, and how much the project cost overall.

Managing communications for the duration of a project is never an easy task. The assistance of a reputable project management software tool can assist in helping teams collaborate effectively across multiple platforms. Sign up for a free 30 day trial and see for yourself.

Managing conflict during the course of a project is natural, so many people involved all with differing opinions and attitudes. The difference for a project manager being burnt by those conflicts or resolving the dispute is what separates the real good project managers from the rest. Anger often surfaces when one strong opinion differs from another and hence an opinion fight occurs.

One of the most critical skills for managing conflict is the ability to go beyond anger and allow the right degree of reason to moderate emotions in order to steer the mind towards greater understanding.  Greater understanding leads to more effective conflict management resulting in better decisions, healthier relationships and optimal solutions that seek to satisfy the needs of all parties.   

Within a project context, a conflict is any issue that keeps people from coming to an agreement.  It might be called a dispute, disagreement, issue, problem, or any number of other things, depending on its complexity and the intensity of the differences among the people involved. Managing conflict is more of an art than a science.  It seeks to reach a resolution or the acknowledgement that no resolution is possible.  It requires balancing mindful awareness, emotions, intuition, rational thinking, empathy, and effective communications to creatively navigate the relationships among the parties to the issue.  An intention to act with compassion, to reach win-win resolutions, plus an attitude of mutual respect is important ingredients for effective conflict management.

Interpersonal relationships are at the heart of effective conflict management, which can be complex at best. The ability to trade anger for understanding is a great skill to have, but this doesn’t come by easily, as at times it implies that one is more likely to be successful in resolving conflicts if one avoids the knee jerk reaction to convince the other guy.  Instead, one turns attention to finding out what he or she is thinking and why he or she is thinking it. To understand requires stepping back, opening the mind and objectively “listening.” Not just listening with the ears but with all the senses.  

We as humans have a capacity to process cues, some obvious, like words and overt behaviours, and some more subtle, like body language, eye movements and tone.  To better understand where another person is coming from and why, cultivate that capacity and the mindfulness and concentration to enable objective observation.  Then, fold understanding into the decision making and conflict management process.  

Anger, ranging from mild frustration to rage, is a common emotion when dealing with conflict.  Anger arises out of the fear that we won’t get what we want.  Fixation on the desire to have things just as we want them closes the rational mind.  Anger is a powerful emotion; an energy being sensed in the body and mind.  Anger is both understandable and not to be suppressed.  However, left unchecked it blocks reason leads to division, poor decisions, and verbal abuse and at time possibly worse. It makes understanding more difficult, if not impossible. 

Anger breaks down the conflict management process.  It is more damaging to the one who is angry than to the subject of the anger, particularly when the cause of the anger is in the situation itself.  For example, anger at a system that throws up political and bureaucratic obstacles to getting projects done on time and within budget can damage individual and team morale.  Anger channeled skillfully can fuel sharp thinking.  Use it as an alarm to signal over attachment to ‘the only way’.  Transform anger into crystal clarity and wisdom.  Use the energy of anger to seek understanding.

Understand several things about the players in the conflict, including you. What is their motivation?  What are their needs and wants?  What do they believe winning means?  Who are they trying to please by winning?  What do those external players (sponsors, executives, managers, clients) really want?  What expectations, biases, cultural norms, external constraints, values and models do they bring to the table?  What is their conflict style – Forcing, Avoiding, Collaborating or Compromising?   Are they more likely to be driven by their emotions or are they more inclined to be caught up in their analysis to the exclusion of emotions and intuition?  

When we understand others and ourselves, we recognize that we are not so different from our adversaries.  Compassion emerges to fuel mutual respect and a desire to reach win-win outcomes. 

Conflict is a fact of life. Managed well it is a critical factor in successfully achieving objectives, including the objective to make relationships as healthy as possible, both in the short and long terms. To manage it well goes way beyond bias and insisting on “my way or the highway.” To do that, cultivate the ability to step back and understand the dynamics that are in play.  Avoid reactivity to maximize responsiveness.  Rely on intuition and analysis based on understanding.

Get more done with Time Management techniques, which will assist with rework, refine activities and get the project completed on time. Mastering the time management technique in these modern times can be a challenge. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the constant barrage of emails, memos, Slack and Skype messages, and other office distractions.

The most important thing to remember when looking for the best time management strategies is that being organized equates to being productive. If time is an issue, or understanding how to manage time so moving from project to project can be achieved without distraction and loss of productivity, then the strategies mentioned below should be of assistance.

An Organized Task List

The single most powerful thing you can do to better manage your time is to organize your task list. There are several different ways to organize your list.

Organize Tasks by Due Date

This is the most popular way that managers and employees choose to use task management software. Simply add start dates and due dates to each task in your to-do list and sort them by due date. This way, you can see which tasks need to get done today, and which tasks are coming up in the next few days or weeks. 

Organize Tasks by Priority

Some people prefer to work in a less structured way, and using priority levels instead of due dates. With this strategy all you need to do is assign each task on your to-do list a priority (very low, low, medium, high, very high, or critical). You should take care of critical tasks in the beginning of your day, then move on to less pressing tasks after lunch. This strategy is great because once you knock out the critical work in the morning, the rest of the day becomes easy!

Organize Tasks by Progress (with Kanban)

The third way that will help you better manage your time is to organize your work by progress. The simplest way to do this is to open your to-do list in a Kanban board. Now you can see the tasks that are backlogged, in progress, or finished, all on one screen. Organizing by progress is a favourite method for agile teams that want to quickly move on tasks and complete projects efficiently.

Keep Detailed Notes

Nothing slows down your work day like having to stop to figure out where you left off on something from yesterday or last week.

The easiest way to overcome this stop-and-start problem is to keep detailed notes about every task you may be working on. When you are working towards completing a task on your to-do list, leave a note to yourself so you can quickly pick up where you left off. Some examples include:

• “Emailed Steph, waiting to hear back.”
• “Ordered supplies, delivery scheduled for next Tuesday.”
• “Per Jason’s instruction, pausing this task until further notice”.

These little notes to yourself will let you quickly pick up where you left off, saving you precious time throughout the day.

Get Help from Your Team

Sometimes the biggest time waster is our inability to recognize when we should ask for help, instead of taking on every little thing that comes our way.

This can be a hard thing to learn, but saying “no” to a project can be the best thing you can do for your company. If a task comes your way that will require lots of research, Googling, and headaches, stop and think about who might be better suited for this project. It might be as simple as reassigning this task to your co-worker who is more equipped for this type of work.

Additionally, sometimes it’s better to outsource work to a professional outside of your team to get the task finished quickly and professionally. Professional contractors can be expensive, but if they save you your precious time, then the value is worth the cost.

Pivot Quickly / Avoid Commitment Fallacy

Another huge time waster pops up in projects when teams fail to recognize that it might be time to pivot.

There can be a fear in the modern workplace of walking away from failing projects, even when we know they are doomed. This fear is sometimes referred to as the commitment fallacy, where we refuse to walk away from a project because we’ve already put so much work into it. This becomes a problem when teams end up working on tasks in because they are committed, even though it might be better to walk away and work on something else.

To improve your time management skills, you should constantly be asking yourself, “what should I be working on that will have the most impact?” By constantly evaluating and re-evaluating your impact, you will learn to quickly pivot from project to project and avoid wasteful work.

Use the 80/20 Rule

This strategy of constantly evaluating where you can have the most impact is often referred to as the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 Rule simply states that approximately 80% of your results will come from 20% of the work that you do. Therefore, if you can recognize which 20% of your work has the most impact, you can optimize your work day to get more done and be more productive!

So, there it is, some strategies to assist you manage your time more appropriately to finish the project on time, it’s not easy getting into a mindset of structure if it is not part of your DNA, but it is the best way to organise time. For a more detailed description, there is a Time Management eBook, Time Management Strategies For the Knowledge Worker  which can be downloaded from the Project Management Companion site.