Category: Project management

No project plan is complete without a project management timeline.

Essentially, when you approach a project, you should never approach it as a single process. It is more appropriate to consider it as many interconnected micro-projects.

Whatever the level of difficulty of the project you are dealing with, in fact, splitting a task into smaller parts makes it significantly more manageable.

Above all, approaching a complex project one step at a time is much less overwhelming than trying to do it all at once.

That is, essentially, why we speak of a project management timeline: it helps to break large tasks down into smaller chunks and then organize those chunks into a logical order.

Let’s get to know more about it in this article.

What is a project management timeline?

A project management timeline is an overview of a project’s deliverables organized in chronological order.

This gives the project manager a way to get a view of each activity in one place, making planning easier.

It is usually presented in a visual format, which allows for a quick overview of the status, including activities, their dependencies, and start and end dates.

The elements that make up a project’s timeline can vary depending on the size of the project and the amount of detail you want to show.

A project management timeline can have many forms, although Gantt charts have been the most popular type of timeline used for decades.

Project management timeline advantages

All good project managers know that a project timeline is their trusty partner when starting a new adventure.

Not only does this tool help everyone involved visualize the steps of a project, but it also helps in keeping track of activities.

Here are some of the key advantages of a project management timeline:

• It reveals a clear path: it’s easy to see which step to take first and what needs to happen next.
• See the big picture: it’s hard to see the end of a project when there are so many small steps required to get there. A project timeline helps you visualize the bigger picture.
• It ensures that everyone shares the same goal: the whole team must be on board for a project for it to be successful. Project timelines help everyone see what role they play in the overall success of a project.
• Keeps everyone abreast: A project management timeline helps everyone involved to track the status of a project, which builds trust with stakeholders and also makes communication significantly easier.
• Prevents bottlenecks: this tool allows you to see dependencies that could lead to bottlenecks that delay a project and ultimately frustrate stakeholders.
• Makes changes easy: Projects don’t always follow a linear path. A project management timeline makes it easy to actively edit elements.

How to create a project management timeline

Creating a project management timeline should be among the first steps you take on any project.

Setting it up beforehand will help you get started faster and stay on track.

First, there are five key elements involved in a project management timeline:

• Activities
• Their expiration dates
• Their duration
• Dependencies
• Team members or employees assigned to them

Having made these elements clear, move on to creating a project management timeline:

Understand your project scope

Before doing anything, it is crucial to know your project’s scope.

This will help in deciphering how much time each task requires, the overall timeline, and how many team members need to be involved to get the job done.

Split your project into milestones

After writing a purpose statement, you need to list everything involved in the project process.

After identifying these items, you can turn that list into work packages.

From there, you proceed to break down each milestone into smaller, more manageable tasks and track them in the timeline.

For example:

The first package might involve developing a bicycle frame set for your client. This might result in a developing frame, handle bar, fork and seat.

Estimate how long each activity will take

It is considerably easier to estimate how long a task will take if it is split into different parts.

Although it may be difficult to know how long it will take to create, for example, three mock-up logos, you can be reasonably confident about the time it will take to host a meeting, execute a customer survey and perform competitor research.

For each of the smaller tasks listed, identify an estimated time frame so you can begin to see the overall project take shape.

Assign tasks to your team

Now, you’ll proceed to distribute your tasks to the corresponding team members.

First of all, you should be explicit about all the resources you might need, stating what skills and expertise are required.

Needless to say, each task should be assigned to the team member who possesses the most suitable skills, as well as to the one able to complete the work in the necessary time because it is not already allocated to other activities.

In this case, having a tool that is able to evaluate resources workload is essential.

Choose project management software

You can track your project management timeline using a spreadsheet or some other manual method.

Nevertheless, it is considerably easier to use project management software that allows you to manage this feature in real time.

Also, this way the project management timeline will be in one place, accessible by everyone at any given time and place.

Track each activity on the timeline

Once you insert the tasks into your timeline, you will be able to see all the dependencies.

This will give you a better insight into what tasks will happen at any given time allowing team members to easily manage their schedules.

This is easily done with a tool like Twproject which includes a Gantt editor already integrated with the drafting of the wbs (division into activities) and the distribution of the workload!

On a final note, a project management timeline can make the difference between success and a chaotic pile of tasks that yield poor results.

Managing a project is tough, but with the right tools, many challenges can be overcome easily.

Many project managers will confirm that the most successful projects start with the planning phase which determines how to kick off a project successfully.

Having a solid base for launching the project allows you to manage everything much more easily.

In this article we will therefore explain how to kick off a project successfully, setting the right expectations.

What is the project launch phase?

Whatever methodology or process you choose, every project has to start somewhere. Any type of project is generally made up of five steps:

• start-up
• planning
• execution
• monitoring and control
• closure

The start-up phase is therefore the first phase, i.e. the one where the project is started both with the team and with the stakeholders.

Here all the information held is collected in order to set up and define the scope, time scales and costs of the project.

How to kick off a project

A good practice for kicking off a project successfully is to examine what needs to be outlined for the project in three areas: people, processes and product.

These three factors are key for any project. Let’s look at them in more detail.

How to kick off a project: The People

Setting up the team

In the start-up phase of the project, you need to define and set up the team. Starting from the final results you want to achieve, you can establish what kind of team will be needed. What skills will be really important for bringing the activities to a successful conclusion? How long will resources need to be involved to deliver the results on time?  Therefore check the availability of people and ensure that they will be available to work on the project.

Involving the team

It is worthwhile preceding any kick-off with the customer with an internal kick-off session.  This helps to get the project team involved right from the start.  The best way to successfully start a project is to clearly set and manage expectations in advance. Some areas to discuss during the kick-off meeting with the team include the following:

• How does the team want to work?
• How and when should the team receive feedback from stakeholders?
• How does the team wish to communicate with stakeholders?
• What regular meetings are needed internally?

Stakeholders

Also as part of the project kick-off, it is important to outline and define stakeholder involvement.  Whether they are customers or internal stakeholders, it is really necessary to clarify who is going to be carrying out what activities.

Kick-off with stakeholders

After holding the first internal kick-off, the time comes to meet with stakeholders. Here are some points to address during this meeting:

• Presentations
• Roles and responsibilities
• End products
• Risks
• Timeframes
• Costs

Project manager

Once the resources involved in the project have been defined, in the planning phase, it will be important to assign their role phase by phase so that they easily know where to work and when and with what responsibilities.

How to kick off a project: Processes

It is important to define the processes of the project at the beginning so that the project manager and the team have clear boundaries to follow. It is important to avoid getting lost in overly complicated processes because it is the quickest way to kill a team’s enthusiasm. There are some key areas to define when starting a project:

Methodology

There should not be a pre-established methodology in a company, but by examining the project, from time to time, it would be better to choose the one that best suits the achievement of the objectives. The result could also be a mix of different methodologies. The following questions can help you choose:

• How big is the project?
• How fixed is the scope, timing and budget?
• How is the team structured?
• How does the customer currently work?

Tools

The tool chosen by a company for project management can really make a difference. There are several points to take into consideration, also considering what we have just seen: the tool should be flexible and allow the management of multiple methodologies, it should be able to manage different roles, offering each one specific functionality. A project management software, in fact, works if all team members use it.

In addition to this, there are many fundamental features that cannot be missing:

• Resource planning and management (workload management and timesheet)
• Timeframe planning and management (interactive Gantt chart)
• Task management
• Project monitoring
• Project analysis

Twproject combines all these needs into one tool.

How to kick off a project: The Product

We come to the third key area to kick off a project properly: the product, i.e. what you want to create through the project. Here are the factors to consider in this case:

Requirements & Scope

What are the project requirements? What are the needs to which the product has to meet?

Once the requirements have been identified it is necessary to put some perimeters around them: the project scope.

Measuring success

How do you determine whether the project has been successful or not?   Don’t forget that you need measurement to understand whether the product meets the requirements or not and to review and understand where things worked or didn’t work. In this case, areas such as:

• Core KPIs, e.g. increasing visitors to a website
• Customer satisfaction, i.e. how happy was the customer with how the project went?
• Team satisfaction, i.e. how happy was the team with how the project went?
• Variance in timeframe
• Budget variance

If the processes for the project are established from the beginning and these are followed step by step, some common mistakes can be avoided.

From the estimation to the allocation of resources, from the scope to the definition of requirements, from the team briefing to the all-important first meeting with the customer – there are many activities that fall into the start-up phase of a project.

However it happens, a well-organised project kick-off is crucial for its future success.

However, this does not have to be as stressful and complicated as many may think. With the tips given in this article, a project can be started successfully and achieve optimum results.

The project management report is an essential document in project management.

This document allows the project manager to document the start, ongoing and final stages of a project.

A project manager’s credibility can be destroyed if project management is poorly monitored; the project management report is the ideal way to present accurate information, rather than guesswork or conjecture.

Our aim in this article is to gain a better understanding of what information should be included in this document and how to write it.

What information should be included in a project management report?

The purpose of the project management report is to keep all stakeholders updated on the progress of the project and to identify any problems and risks that may have arisen.

Details may vary from project to project, but all reports should include the following information:

• Milestones
• Lists of activities
• Tasks assigned
• Latest updates
• Project health status

The aim is to provide a high-level snapshot of where things are at in a given moment.

Stakeholders want to be able to see the status of the project at a glance and so the report should clearly identify the following:

– An assessment of progress against the project plan: is the project ahead of schedule or behind?

– A summary of tasks completed and the to-do list: overall, is task completion on track?

– A summary of actual costs compared to the project budget: is the budget being overspent, or is it in line or below expectations?

– An overview of the risks associated with the project and any problems identified: has the project’s risk profile changed and does it require action?

– Also, any action points or tasks that require attention.

How to write a project management report

In short, a project management report is a summary overview of the current status of the project; it is a formal record of the status of a project at a given time.

The project report is therefore useful for

• Identifying problems
• Mitigating risks
• Realising the overall project objectives

Depending on the size and complexity of the project, this document may be weekly or monthly and is provided to all project stakeholders to keep them up to date on the progress of the project and any urgent challenges that may need to be addressed.

Most project management reports are made up of a single page but may have appendices or links to further information for anyone wishing to go into more detail.

Tips on how to write a project management report

1. Data as focus: the purpose of project management reports is to provide processed data to those who need it so that they can be properly briefed and make appropriate and informed decisions. It is important that reports present solid data that stakeholders can examine and thus get an idea of the big picture.

2. Short and simple: project stakeholders do not want to get lost in too many superfluous details, so the document must provide an accessible overview of the project status. If you create a ten-page document every week, most probably no one will read it completely and the project manager will only waste time editing the document, to the detriment of the actual project.

3. Concise and avoiding technical jargon: not all stakeholders will be familiar with the acronyms or technical terms of the project, so the document must be written in a language that everyone can understand.

4. Graphical and visual: charts and diagrams will bring the data to life, making it much more accessible. The use of colours can also help to show the status of the project, like a kind of traffic light. A project management software offers several report templates to choose from.

5. Honest about progress: if the project is behind schedule or over budget, it is better to present this clearly. After all, the sooner a problem is identified, the sooner it can be solved and the project can get back on track.

6. Provide context: do not just say that a deliverable will be delayed by two weeks, but specify for example: how will this impact on the rest of the project and what actions have been taken to resolve it? Stakeholders need to know how significant the problem really is.
7. Highlight any action points and simplify activities for project stakeholders: if a client, team member or stakeholder needs to do something, the document should clearly identify what is required, by whom and when.

In conclusion, a well-prepared project management report is an excellent tool for assessing progress against the original plan and keeping everyone in the loop It will also assist in effectively managing the project and keeping it on track.

Project management software can not only help the project manager in this case to easily create outstanding reports, but it can take all the relevant data and encapsulate it in an easy-to-understand format with just one click.

It’s essential to streamline workflows on projects to be more productive and efficient.

In addition, by simplifying, chaotic situations are put in order while making the best use of time.

A project management workflow is a crucial component of any operation, and simplifying it as much as possible is key to ensuring efficiency.

So how do you simplify project workflows? Let’s see it in this article and start by understanding what workflows in projects are.

What are workflows in projects?

Workflows are essentially a series of steps that must be followed to complete a project.

Often, these workflows involve teams with many people and must ensure that all individuals access the information they need promptly.

How you move between tasks in a workflow can be a decisive factor that determines its efficiency.

If transitions between tasks are convoluted, this can lead to an inefficient workflow. Having clear and consistent workflows, on the other hand, is critical to the success of any organization.

Failure to implement an effective project management workflow can lead to a wide range of problems affecting any department in an organization.

Aside from capital, the most valuable asset an organization has is time.

If you can find ways to reduce the amount of time spent on projects, you can focus attention on other aspects of the business that may be more neglected.

How to Streamline Project Workflows

That’s why simplifying workflows in projects becomes very important. So let’s see how to do it in detail:

Streamlining workflows: Defining success factors

Before you start working on a workflow to simplify it, it’s essential to define the success factors.

The questions to ask are:

• What are you trying to achieve through this process?
• How is the success of the workflow determined?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can get started on actually working on simplifying your workflows.

Streamline workflows: Documenting workflow

Whatever workflow you’re analyzing, it’s important to list all the tasks necessary to bring the idea to completion, no matter how small they are.

Starting with the end goal and working backward, we will have the opportunity to consider each step to ensure success carefully.

This is a process audit in which you will become aware of any unnecessary or missing steps.

Many will likely be so busy with project work that they don’t have time to devote to workflow analysis.

However, it is important to take this step to examine and subsequently simplify

We at Twproject use the WBS to define all the phases of the project, working on it to include all the steps necessary for its completion and then we use the Gantt to define the duration of the various phases and the dependencies.

These two tools will allow you to plan the process clearly by identifying the critical path as well.

Streamlining workflows: Choosing a point person

Any attempt to improve or simplify workflows, especially if you’re adding a new tool, means asking people to do something they tend to hate: change their routines. You might find this article on change in business helpful.

Although the proposed workflow is more efficient and helps improve processes, many people may be hesitant to adopt it.

One of the first steps, then, is to find a reference person to be an agent of change; someone ideally who:

• Have a vested interest in the outcome;
• Be sincerely interested in making a difference;
• He is a natural communicator and effective collaborator;
• Knows how to solve problems;
• Has leadership skills.

Simplifying workflows: Start small

Workflows may be complex, and making a change may initially cause even more problems, even to simplify them.

Especially the transition from manual to automated workflows could be very complicated.

That’s why it’s essential to start with small changes and, if necessary, run a pilot project that will demonstrate the benefits of the new workflow.

A small project will also provide an opportunity to identify and resolve any initial and unforeseen problems quickly.

Starting with something small and definable, with an attainable goal, allows for consensus.

People are used to the tools and processes they’re using and don’t let go easily unless you can demonstrate the benefits of the new flow concretely.

Once the pilot project is successful, it will be easier to convince others to accept the change and provide valuable experience to make future projects smoother.

Streamline workflows: Choose a time interval

Especially when a pilot project or test goes outside of day-to-day business operations, it’s crucial to set a deadline.

Otherwise, it can be easy to lose track of time and devote too many resources to testing rather than the actual project.

By streamlining and, where possible, automating project workflows, you will be able to take advantage of the resulting organizational simplicity.

Projects will move more smoothly, teams will communicate, meet and disband seamlessly, and unnecessary tasks will fade away.

And reducing unnecessary tasks will help increase productivity overall.

One solution that many organizations are opting for is project management software that can make the execution of all the basic operations much smoother thanks, in fact, to the simplification of workflows that, where possible, are fully automated.

Project calendars are a great way to share project timeline information with all team members.

With that in mind, project planning calendars are a bit more complex than those you use in everyday life.

Although their format is familiar, they include a much more comprehensive range of information. Let’s take a look at this article to better understand what they are all about.

What is the project calendar?

The project calendar plays an essential role in planning activities for the future by specifying work days and times.

The project manager primarily uses this tool to organize better the time to complete tasks on the team.

The calendar allows you to view the tasks of each member to allocate workload specifically. In addition, it helps maintain transparency of the entire process and is convenient for analyzing individuals’ work responsibility and performance.

Therefore, these project calendars need to show more than just due dates; otherwise, team members will be forced to refer to other documents, which can lead to confusion and errors.

In Twproject, the user’s dashboard always shows the project phases in which a user is involved, in its validity dates. Sharing information is essential, making everyone aware of the status of the project calendar and who is responsible for.

How to create a project calendar

1. Define activities

Define each task and the milestones that need to be completed within the project, then add the people to whom these tasks have been assigned.

2. Activity planning

Once the activities have been determined, they must be planned over time in order to achieve the set goal.

3. Planning for future work

A task management project calendar will show the days and hours the team needs to be available to work on a project in the months ahead. Periods of the day are also critical, as during some hours only certain people – for example, those working on several projects at once – may be available.

Tools for creating a project calendar

Specifically, there are several types of calendars; here are three of them:

1. Excel

Excel is a valuable project planning tool; popularly known and used by many people. Thanks to its user-friendly facade, creating and formatting calendars with this tool is very easy. Excel, in particular, has a default project calendar design, so you don’t need to waste time creating one from scratch.

Benefits:

• Easy to use: Excel is a tool that most people are familiar with. As such, it has a short learning curve;
• Predefined templates: an extensive library of Excel templates and plug-ins is available online.

Disadvantages:

• No opportunity for collaboration: Excel is completely offline, there is no real-time way to connect within Excel;
• Notifications: Excel lacks tools for creating alerts and automatic updates, and there is also no option to assign tasks.

2. Google Sheets

Google Sheets is Google’s app that provides spreadsheet software. This tool has about the same functionality as Excel but offers much broader teamwork capabilities.

Benefits:

• Collaboration: you can edit documents, leave comments in real-time, and assign tasks, which is excellent for teamwork;
• Regulation permission control. The calendar can thus be edited and shared only with the chosen people, while it can be made read-only for some others.

Disadvantages:

• Not suitable for complicated projects: Google Sheets is too slow when it comes to complex projects. There is no way to monitor mission dependencies or resource management;
• Needs manual changes: as in Excel, you need to change things manually if you want to make improvements.

3. A project management software

Project management software allows you to create shared project calendars and provides other features that are useful to the project manager and team in managing a project.

With Twproject, for example, you can easily create a project calendar with a few clicks, you can assign resources to specific project phases, checking their availability in real time.

Compared to other tools, project management software is the most accessible, most efficient, and fastest way to create a project schedule.

Benefits:

• Ease of use: the project calendar is easy to create and customize to connect information, add tasks and keep track of your daily schedule;
• Collaboration: Project management software such as Twproject are designed not only to create and manage project calendars but to share this information with the work group who becomes aware of all the planned activities and times.
• Other features: a project management software not only allows you to create a calendar, but will keep you updated on its progress, the status of the resources involved and much more.

Cons:

There are no real drawbacks to using project management software like Twproject. If the software provides an adequate user guide, everyone will be able to use the tool at maximum efficiency in a short time..

In conclusion, a project calendar is a simple way to make your daily work more productive and more effortless.

It helps to organize the project into tasks and subtasks to have a smooth workflow.

In addition, a project calendar can significantly improve team productivity and organize tasks with well-defined timelines, priorities, and milestones.

Twproject offers you all this and much more, try it now

Quality communication is paramount to managing client requests in your projects. This means: understanding who the client is, what they need from the project, how to set reasonable expectations, and establishing criteria for successful delivery.

Here are some tips that will help you establish and maintain a good working relationship with clients from the very beginning through project wrap-up.

Identify your client

In some projects, differentiating clients from other stakeholders can be challenging. So here’s a rule of thumb for how not to get it wrong:

The end client is the customer of goods or services produced by the project.

In other words, the customer is the recipient of the project results, which are referred to as the final  deliverables.

A project customer can be either external or internal to the company and can be an organization, an individual, another department, etc.

Identify your client’s needs

The first step for any project should be a scope statement of some kind.

This statement is why the project began in the first place and is therefore the starting point for establishing all future requirements.

However, the scope statement by itself will not be enough to design the final output.

The scope statement must be expanded to a degree of detail sufficient to structure the project and guide work.

The path from the scope statement to the business requirements document, business specifications, or other documents that include more specific descriptions is where you need to apply project management skills to accurately capture the customer’s needs.

This is where you need to first identify the appropriate clients and stakeholders to provide the detailed requirements, and it is also where you need to also be able to establish your communication approach that will meet their need for project information.

The requirements collected during the project planning phase will set your budget and project plan.

The idea is very simple: customers fuel the engine of growth and are the primary reason any organization grows or survives.

If a customer is satisfied with the delivery of the product or service and how they are engaged, they will continue the partnership and/or advertise well.

If a customer is unhappy with the delivery of the product or service and the manner in which they were treated, they will directly or indirectly spread criticism and thus negatively impact current and future business.

Always engage your client

Your client doesn’t need to be shielded from bad news; so, it’s important to communicate any major project challenges as soon as you have all the information.

This doesn’t mean your client needs to be informed about every minor obstacle, but when it comes to major issues, it’s only fair that they get involved.

The project manager will need to use their common sense to know what issues clients should be aware of, but here’s a general rule of thumb: anything that could lead to a project delay, a budget overshoot, or a failure to meet requirements or initially specified quality should be communicated.

A good practice is to work with your team to identify potential corrective or preventive actions to present along with the problem.

The project manager should never report a deviation without taking corrective action, even if implementing it is beyond his or her capabilities.

Never ask the client for help unless you already know exactly what the client should do.

Also, inviting your client to group meetings, team-building exercises, award ceremonies, and so on is another way to keep them engaged.

The most useful thing would be to be able to use a project management tool that allows you, automatically, to share information with the customer in a transparent but controlled way. Twproject includes a public project page where the project manager can choose which information to share in an easy-to-read platform.

Getting client feedback

Client-focused project management requires the project manager to constantly engage and collaborate with all stakeholders involved in the project.

To benefit from this engagement, it is recommended to incorporate a feedback process throughout the project lifecycle.

In this way, concerns and issues can be identified and corrected early.

Also in this case Twproject public project page comes to your aid by providing a request form for the customer for receiving feedback. This feedback is collected within the project and then managed by the team.

Managing changes by your client

A project should have a change management plan that covers all aspects concerning any project changes.

This change management plan should inform the client how to go about requesting a change and how they will be informed of the next steps.

There are many valid reasons for a client to request a change in project requirements, such as a changing market, a change in the financial status of the organization, or a change requested by their own clients.

The client who sent the request should be able to provide as much information as possible about what they want to change and what their business case is.

Also, determining whether the request is within or beyond project scope is a key decision factor.

Defining what is reasonable and what is not should be included in the change management plan.

A project manager’s duty to the client is to turn their change request into practice, if possible, in a reasonable amount of time.

The analysis of the change request generates a cost estimate for implementing the change.

You should remember that you are working for your client; therefore, your goal should be to implement the change in the most cost-effective way possible.

Once a cost estimate has been calculated, the client can weigh the cost of the change against the expected benefits that will result from implementing the change.

Ultimately, stakeholders will need to make a logical, detailed, and informed decision.

It is important to remember that the answer could be no, especially if the requested change could result in major schedule delays, unacceptable cost overruns, or complete project failure.

Bottom line, it is important to keep in mind that clients of a project are people before they are clients.

Therefore, the project manager should deal with them in the same way they would want to be treated if they were in their shoes, and it is unlikely to prove to be the wrong approach.

Using a client-focused approach to project management requires maintaining a dialogue and understanding of what is important to project stakeholders.

With Twproject, this dialogue will be simpler and will require less work from the project manager. The information, collected and shared, will allow the customer to always be informed, when he decides, with the possibility of intervening when requested with targeted feedback.

There’s a reason why managing several projects at once is a highly sought-after skill in project management: the sheer thought of dealing with so many important tasks can be an anxiety-inducing experience for many project managers, and even the most skilled professionals can find themselves struggling.

However, it is becoming progressively less common for project managers to manage only one project at a time.

Successfully managing multiple projects at once requires extra skills and tools besides those commonly required to manage a single project.

Even if projects vary widely, the right tools can transform and simplify workflows and avoid unnecessary complexities.

Let’s discuss how to best manage multiple projects at once in this article.

5 strategies for managing and monitoring multiple projects

1. Plan before starting anything

When managing several projects, you should leave nothing to chance. It’s especially important to create a project plan ahead of time for every possible scenario and have contingency plans in place in case things go wrong.

The project manager must set realistic expectations for themselves and the team so that they are more likely to succeed on all fronts.

Also, the key to managing multiple projects is to plan in an integrated way while also preventing conflicts between projects.

Integrated planning allows you to catch potential problems early and try to reschedule.

Here are some suggestions:

• Spread out starting dates for similar projects: in particular if different projects involve the same workgroup, it can help to spread out the start and completion dates for each one so that people won’t need to finish everything at the same time.
• Pay attention to dependencies: plan the dependent project donly after the scheduled completion date of the first one.
• Tick off duplicate tasks: if you submit the same work in two different projects, it’s critical to make sure this gets done in time to keep both projects on track.

2. Prioritize activities

Knowing how and when to prioritize activities in a project is extremely important.

The project manager must know which activities will have the greatest impact on the organization and prioritize them effectively.

A helpful approach can be to evaluate priorities based on four levels: important, not important, urgent, and not urgent.

Here are a few examples:

• Important and urgent: arrange an early meeting to begin the new project;
• Important, but not urgent: write a project management report.;
• Urgent, but not important: reassure your client that the project is on schedule;
• Non-urgent and unimportant: sending the latest report to all stakeholders outside the project team.

If there is something important and urgent, it should be taken care of before anything else.

Important but not urgent tasks should be scheduled for a later date.

Urgent, but not important tasks can be delegated by the project manager to someone else on the project team who possesses the skill to take care of it.

Non-urgent, non-important tasks should be re-examined to understand why they are being done.

For instance: if no one reads the report, why is time spent creating and sending it? It may be important to someone you don’t know about, else the activity may be deleted altogether.

3. Adjust your plan through regular reviews

There is no point in holding to the original plan no matter what happens.

To be flexible is an immensely important attribute that an effective project manager must have.

Particularly when managing multiple projects, there are several unknown variables that sometimes can flip the entire perspective upside down.

Therefore, it is important to hold regular review sessions where you update the original plan.

Sticking to a rigid plan without seeing the bigger picture could mean more mistakes and bottlenecks in the future.

4. Communication with your team members

An effective communication is, arguably, one of the most important aspects of project management.

That’s why we wrote an entire article on how to communicate with your project team.

If you don’t want to read the whole article, just know that communication problems in teams arise from a lack of visibility to what they are doing, what their colleagues are doing, and what cross-functional stakeholder are doing.

When you don’t have insights into the work others are accomplishing, you miss the context to understand why deadlines are happening, why changes are being made, whether priorities remain the same, and how the project is progressing.

The best way to communicate openly and consistently is to find a space where each and every thing is shared with the entire team.

When managing multiple projects, this becomes even more relevant, as the team can learn about any potential problems and discuss their solutions before serious project delays occur.

5. Use all tools available

Even the best project manager needs help.

Project management tools can be very beneficial for everyone and come with many features that make it extremely easy to manage multiple projects at once.

Using good project management software, you can run day-to-day tasks, track team progress, monitor assigned projects and assignments, and much more at the click of a button.

Also, when project information is spread across multiple files and scattered across different platforms, managing several projects can be difficult.

A project management tool creates a hub for documentation, feedback and communication by providing stakeholders with clarity on end results, deadlines and expectations.

This help provides the project manager with more time to refine plans and ensure that each assigned project stays on track and is completed successfully.

Working on several projects at once requires utmost dedication and skills.

Without good strategies for managing several projects at once, it’s hard to know what work to prioritize, how to help the team manage the workload and get everything done on schedule.

However, probably the most important tip is to choose and use a good project management software.

Try TWProject for free by clicking the button below.

Throughout the decades we’ve had significant technological advances that allow us to approach methods and issues more efficiently, including lead and lag time management.

In the perfect world, all project activities are aligned sequentially one after the other.

Therefore, it is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that all of these activities begin and end according to the project schedule.

However, in some cases, the project manager needs to intentionally a speed up or delay dependent activities while still maintaining relationships.

This is where leads and lags come in as the most essential and fundamental building blocks of planning.

Let’s take a closer look at that in this article.

What are leads and lags in a project?

Let’s have a look at what we’re talking about and start by understanding what leads and lags are in a project.

What is lead time?

Lead time is defined in the PMBOK as “the length of time a following activity can be advanced over a previous activity.”

This means that when a task is still running and at the same time work begins on another task, lead time indicates the overlap between the first and second tasks.

Here’s a practical example: when introducing a new order management software, the organization may decide to start the training phase for project team employees at the same time that the development team is still performing testing activities on the software.

What is lead time in project management?

Lead time in project management refers to a finished, one-time project, or the completion of a significant portion of the project.

It is often used in Kanban workflows: if there are tabs labeled “To Do,” “Activities in Progress,” and “Activities Pending Next Steps,” the lead time – would span all three of these columns.

This is a great way to ensure that you are able to get the most out of your work, and that you are able to get the most out of it.

For example, if you have two activities, one that will take 5 days and the other 4, the result is 9 days of work.

If, for example, the second task has two days of lead time, i.e., you can start working on it two days earlier than the previous task ends, the total duration of this cycle can be reduced to 7 days instead of 9.

What is lag?

Lag time is, according to PMBOK, “the length of time during which a following activity must be delayed relative to a previous activity.”

This delay is rarely intentional or positive and often prevents the project from moving to the next phase.

If the first activity has been successfully completed but there has been a delay with the start of the second, this amount of time is lag time.

What is a lag in project management?

In project management, lag (or delay) can occur when two or more dependent tasks are slowed down by an error along the way.

When one is stalled, the others must wait for the problem to be fixed to move forward.

Project management lag can lead to missed deadlines and budget issues if a backup plan hasn’t been set up in place ahead of time.

Lead and lag indicators in project management and the importance of using a software

Lead and lag indicators in project management therefore help evaluate performance.

By using a project management software you can compare your lead indicator with your lag indicator more easily to see what went well and what failed.

In the case of a series of recurring tasks or projects, you can compare past lead and lag indicators to find patterns, implement changes, and continue to improve.

Using software allows this comparison to be done more quickly because of historical data that can be saved and found again.

The most used planning technique is the precedence diagramming method to implement the critical path method for planning.

This method calculates the minimum time required to complete a project along with possible start and end times for project tasks.

A project management software such as TWproject, thanks to its algorithms for planning critical paths, makes it possible to efficiently manage projects with thousands of activities.

The actual electronic representation of the project schedule generally comprises a list of activities with their durations, required resources, and previous activities.

Graphical representations of the network, rather than using a simple list, are handy for visualizing the plan and ensuring that the mathematical requirements are met.

It can, in fact, be challenging for the project manager alone to identify all leads and lags, so the help of software is essential.

A feature of many planning software is that they incorporate types of activity interactions beyond the simple predecessor end to successor start constraint.

This feature is particularly important to ensure realistic schedules and a view of real work.

However, it is critical to understand how the software handles calculations so that you can use it as efficiently as possible.

Ultimately, lead and lag time allows the project manager to have flexibility in developing a project schedule.

A project manager oversees that a project finishes on time and must keep activities on schedule.

A long delay is often considered a failure in project management and keeping a project on schedule is therefore important to the success of the project management team.

Using project management software, it is possible to effectively manage leads and lags in a project by helping to track the duration of all activities within the project lifecycle.

Leads and lags exploit the flexibility in dependencies between activities that go beyond end-to-start relationships.

Therefore, these techniques are vital for proper and efficient activity scheduling, optimization of a timeline, and as input to determine a critical path.

What is project crashing and how to get the best out of it? This is what we will cover in this article.

Actually, there is never enough time to manage a project and that’s why schedules are made. The goal is to try to manage tasks on time and budget.

Sometimes, however, things go wrong. Project changes are obviously a common thing, but it is the project manager’s responsibility to make sure that these changes do not have a negative impact on the project schedule.

Some steps or situations in project management may need to be reassessed and the plan revised as needs arise.

An example of such reassessment is known as project crashing, a technique used to accelerate the timeline of a project.

What is project crashing?

This technique shortens the duration of a project by reducing the time of one or more tasks through increasing resources or finding shortcuts by eliminating unnecessary tasks.

Needless to say, more resources means higher project cost in general and therefore a change in earned value.

According to the triple constraint of the project – scope, cost and time – in fact, if you shorten the project duration, the costs increase or the project scope is reduced.

In the case of project crashing, the scope must remain the same, i.e., the results expected at the beginning of the project are not expected to change, which necessarily means increased costs.

Thus, the main goal of a project crashing is to reduce the duration of activities while keeping costs to a minimum.

Reasons to choose a project crashing

Choosing this strategy is a fairly extreme action that can be taken for the following reasons:

• If you may face significant penalties or fines due to delays in the project timeline, it may be worthwhile to add more resources to advance your completion date.
• If your organization happens to have additional resources, using them can help speed up the project schedule.
• If you can be eligible for a bonus based on your project completion date, paying the cost of additional resources to complete the project sooner may make financial sense in the long run.
• When an organization trains new staff members, it can assign additional project activities to those employees while they complete their training.
• If your team is working on one project and is tasked to take on a new one, the original project may get a crashing so that you can finish it faster and focus on the new project sooner.

Project crashing best practices

Project crashing is generally the last strategy to be resorted to, because it is not risk-free.

There are a few factors you need to consider before taking this route:

• The activities you are trying to speed up are within the critical path
• ? If tasks are not within the critical path, you can probably ignore them rather than think about project crashing.
• What is the task duration? A short task will be difficult to speed up, especially if it is not repeated throughout the project. In the case of a longer task, crashing might make sense, but you need to make sure you have the appropriate additional resources.
• How long does project crashing take? For example, if the project requires very specific skills and hiring new resources would take a long time, the experts’ suggestion is to avoid this strategy. Also, crashing is most effective early in the timeline, usually when a project is less than halfway through completion.

Project crashing management steps

Once you have decided to make use of project crashing, here are the steps you should follow:

1. Critical path: The first thing to do is to determine and analyze the project’s critical path. This will help determine which activities can be shortened or accelerated to complete the project sooner.
2. Determine activities: Get a list of all the tasks, then meet with those to whom they have been assigned to and ask if they believe any or all of the critical path tasks could be reduced. If the answer is positive, start looking for ways to accelerate these tasks.
3. Calculate costs: After narrowing down the activities in the critical path that you believe can be shortened, you move on to calculate how much it will cost to add more resources.
4. Make a choice: When it is known how much you will have to spend, in relation to the time saved, on each activity in the critical path, you then move on to make a decision by choosing the least expensive route. Project crashing, in fact, is not just about adding resources to get it done faster, but getting the most for that extra expense. The project manager, in most cases, will need stakeholder approval to receive approval for changes to the project.
5. Execute changes: After receiving approval for the increased budget and revised project timeline, you can start adding resources and accelerating identified activities. This step may involve training new staff members, redirecting resources to the project, or allowing those involved in the project to learn new skills.
6. Implement the appropriate changes: Just as in any project, once a decision has been made regarding a change, the next step is to update all project documentation, il schedule, plan, and the Gantt.

 

It is important to stress that project crashing is not a risk-free strategy.

Failing to do it correctly means sending the entire project into a tailspin, driving costs through the roof and missing the original deadline, thus setting yourself up for assured failure.

Therefore, evaluating the execution of a project crash is much easier if you have the right tools for the job.

A project management software allows you to create graphic timelines, and budget and schedule simulations, allowing you to experiment with different crashing strategies and its use then allows you to make the best choice.

Project management uses specific knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to deliver something of value to people and/or organizations.

Developing software to improve business processes, constructing a building, relief efforts after a natural disaster, expanding sales into a new market… all of these are examples of projects.

Thus, a project is a temporary effort, lasting more or less over time, to create value through a product, service, or outcome.

All projects have a structure, a team with roles and responsibilities, goals to be met, and a project manager coordinates them.

Furthermore, each project is unique and differs from an organization’s routine operations.

Today, let’s take a closer look at how project management works.

What is project management, and where does it come from?

Project management can be defined as the discipline of applying specific processes and principles to initiate, plan, execute, and manage how new initiatives or changes are implemented within an organization.

Project management is different from regular task management because it involves creating new work packages and activities to achieve agreed-upon goals and objectives.

Throughout human history, project management has always been practiced informally. Still, it began to emerge as a distinct profession in the mid-20th century, thanks to a group of professionals from the aerospace, engineering, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries.

Motivated by the need to address the planning and resource issues associated with increasingly complex projects, they met to define and standardize tools for a new profession…

… Thus, in 1969, the Project Management Institute, or PMI, the world authority on project management, was born.

Since then, project management has become a specialized area of business, and projects, in general, have increasingly become the driving force behind the way work gets done.

It is now widely recognized that a basic understanding of project management can provide value to people in various roles across a wide range of activities.

Structure of project management

The key components of project management are:

• Time: the expected duration of the job.
• Cost: The budget allocated for the work.
• Scope: what innovations or changes will be provided by the project.
• Quality: the standard of the project outcome.

While there are a variety of methodologies and approaches to managing a project, most follow these steps:

• Project Initiation: the project manager defines what the project will achieve and accomplish, working with sponsors and stakeholders to agree on the results.
• Planning: the project manager records all activities, assigns deadlines for each, and establishes relationships and dependencies.
• Execution: the project manager assembles the project team, collects and allocates available resources and budgets for specific tasks.
• Monitoring: the project manager oversees the progress of project work and updates project plans to reflect actual performance.
• Closure: The project manager ensures that the outputs provided by the project are accepted by the company and releases the project team.

Roles and responsibilities in project management

Project management is recognized as a distinct business function within an organization, and project managers have a specific role and responsibilities in accomplishing the goals of their projects.

The project manager will define and execute the project, lead the team, and decide how to approach the work based on several factors, including the type of project, the needs of the company, and the experience of colleagues working on the project.

As project managers are responsible for delivering the projects they work on, they need a wide range of skills, including good verbal and written communication, leadership, planning skills, problem and conflict resolution, time management, and negotiation.

But project managers are not the only players in project management: the project team and other stakeholders also play an essential part.

The project manager indeed coordinates the project team. Still, a project would be impossible to complete without people who can work professionally on their tasks and who believe in the goals to be achieved.

Project management also involves other individuals and, in some cases, even other organizations whose interests are related to the project and its outcomes.

These are called project stakeholders, and for the outcome to be a success, each individual must know their specific role and responsibilities throughout the life cycle of a project.

 

So, why is project management so important? Because nothing is ever done by accident and without first creating a plan by following the proper processes.

Therefore, project management is the action that helps and enables you to create those expected goals.