Project_Management

As a Project Manager numerous individual key elements encompasses a successful manager such as organization, time management and effective communication. These elements must flow seamlessly across and throughout the project for a successful project both for the client and the contractor. The following paragraphs provide insight into each of these elements. The key to any successful project is organizing your paperwork. Just as you do with your hotel reservations, plane tickets and tourist brochures, you need a system for storing all of your project files in one location so you never have to waste time searching. Like travel paperwork, project files are temporary. These files will only be used until the project is completed. Assign a separate drawer or hanging file box for your project paperwork. Of course, the best possible project organizing system is portable so that you can take them with you wherever you go on. Accurate time management is also a skill essential to good project management. It is important to get time management right for two main reasons: 1) Time estimates drive the setting of deadlines for delivery of projects, and hence peoples' assessments of your reliability and 2) They often determine the pricing of contracts and hence their profitability. Usually people vastly underestimate the amount of time needed to implement projects. This is true particularly when they are not familiar with the task to be carried out. Effective communication through a communication plan is a critical part of any project, program, or business activity and its effectiveness lies in sharing relevant information with the right persons at the appropriate time. Before learning to write an effective communication plan, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the purpose and scope of the project, program, or business activity. Communication plans may be defined as forming an integral part of action documents and the success of any project or program is dependent on the effectiveness of the communication plan. There are several things that need to be managed in a project, including the scope of the project, the timeline for when it will be completed, including deciding when work will start, who comes at what times and what job is done each day or hour, managing costs, how to manage human resources, implementing a plan for communication, including who needs to know what information, and how to keep track of it all. As a project manager I must also come up with contingency plans in case something comes up unexpectedly, as well as manage the procurement process, which entails figuring out what needs to be purchased, how to handle contracts and invoices. Project Management is like “herding cats” an expression on how difficult it is to handle a group of people who all want to do something different. Or, more generally, it means that something is difficult, and perhaps a bit chaotic. If you can remove some of the chaos utilizing organization, time management and effective communication as tools of the trade, some of the chaos is removed and rounding up the cats become possible.