3 Tips for Project Managers to Make Life Easier

Planning is nothing utilizing your resources effectively in a well-planned manner, and planning for a project is pretty much the same. And a project needs to be well-planned in order for it to be completed on time and to minimize the outgoing cost.

Project planning is among the most basic prerequisites for efficient execution of your project. If you happen to be reasonably new to project management, or perhaps just wish to improve on project planning skills before beginning your next project, this information will be very useful for you. 

So, what exactly do we mean by project planning anyhow? Why is it so important? What steps you must take in order to make an effective project plan? These are simply some of the questions you may have and a few of the questions we will attempt to answer in this post.

The top strategies for new project managers in the project planning stage are as follows:

1. Assemble Your Project Team

Understand the need and requirement of the project and start building your team accordingly. I firmly believe in finding right people for the right job, early as possible.

On difficult projects, you will find that your team is everything – be persistent in the quest to build a powerful team. Your team will be your best tool you have as a project manager. Having a motivated team of educated and experienced professionals will come in handy. Keep balance between experience and youth in the team, as much as experience is necessary, some young blood can make things run faster and smoother.

2. Team Participation for Producing the Estimate & Schedule

I really believe the planning cycle offers the project manager with the best chances to develop team buy-in. As stated before, this is often most effectively achieved by engaging the team members very early within the planning process by means of cooperative exercises.

Get the team included in estimating the budget and schedule. You would be surprised how powerful this is and I have observed its worth often. It's remarkable how hard your team will continue to work towards achieving their own commitment as opposed to a deadline which has been handed down. It's a powerful difference – use the potential of this to your benefit. In the event you involve the team in your creation of the project budget and schedule you will end up light years ahead.

3. Utilize Team Collaboration for Doing Your Project WBS

The work breakdown structure (WBS) is really a deliverable-centered classification of your complete project scope. The work breakdown structure in essence identifies the complete scope of the project within a hierarchical form. Generating the WBS is definitely a fundamental project management step that allows you to have a total awareness of everything that needs to be done. Even skilled project managers often don't take complete benefit of the value of a well-created work breakdown structure.

Customize the components of your project management plan for your particular project, however, the components listed above are often the most common.