As a famous quote says, “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” To succeed as a project manager, you need to juggle a lot of things. You need to plan your projects, meet deadlines, handle resource management, stick to the budgets, and ensure good quality work is delivered. You need to be conscious of project scope creep, incomplete documentation, miscommunication, and other issues. While there is no one solution to take care of all these challenges, staying organized can make a huge difference. Sounds impossible; isn’t it? Trying to achieve all this surely can be quite stressful, but everything can change if you get organized at work. A sure-shot way to ensure that your projects stay on the path to success is by implementing resource management software and tool. Such a tool helps you stay organized at work in some easy steps.
Tips to Stay Organized at Work and Streamline Your Projects
1. Define the Scope of Work
As a project manager, what’s the first step when you begin project planning? It is defining the scope of work or the project. So, how can you do that effectively? First, you should understand the following about the project:
- Costs:What is the permitted budget?
- Deliverables:What is the expected output or end-product?
- Timeframe:In how much time do you have to complete the work or project?
- Resources:What are the resources at hand – human, equipment, financial, and facility?
- Stakeholders:Who all are involved in this project? Are there any influencers? And who are the decision-makers?
2. Create a Detailed Project Plan
The first step to getting organized at work is planning. Procrastination and improper planning is not a good strategy. Making a detailed plan is very important as it lays the foundation for a successful project. Hence, investing some time in making a thorough project plan is essential. But what do we mean by a project plan here? It is a document that explains how your project will be implemented, tracked, controlled, and closed. A detailed project plan provides an insight into your entire project. It defines the objectives, scope, budget, timelines, every team member’s role and responsibility, deliverables, and the final schedule. The right resource management software can come in handy to create a thorough project plan in a few simple steps.
3. Know your Goals and Timelines
After creating a project plan, you should ensure that each of your resources is aware of their goals and timelines. While setting milestones, stress on both the short- and long-term goals of the team. Though being focused on the main goal is the key, it’s also important to divide the responsibilities of each resource into smaller and manageable chunks. This will also help you to track the progress of each team member in a better way. Knowing the specific goals also helps your team to operate in a united manner as all of them will know what they need to complete and by when.
4. Set Your Priorities
You could be managing multiple things but how will you know what to do first. If you do not prioritize your to-do list, you will land up in a chaotic situation. Having clear priorities in place will be beneficial for you and your team as everyone will know where to start first. Setting your priorities also helps in keeping a track of the status of tasks. You will have clarity of what you are expecting from each resource and what’s the expected deliverable from the team as a whole. Thus, a priority list enables you to handle each goal in smaller steps, which leads to your projects being completed more efficiently.
5. Keep your Data in a Digital and Central Location
If you feel that organizing everything is taking a lot of effort, then try using the latest technology and tools to do this for you. Times have changed and printing documents, filing them manually, and maintaining physical copies is passe. Though some industries may still require saving hard copies as backups, it’s very important to keep all your work and data stored digitally. Using resource management software can come in handy for a lot of things. It acts as a centralized repository of all data, files, projects, and even all the resources in your organization. It can also work as a digital calendar, a time-tracking tool, and an online central repository where anyone from across the globe can access data anytime.
6. Communicate Openly
Most of the time, departments work in silos and communication becomes a challenge. As a project manager, you need to constantly encourage open communication among your team members and various departments. Now, with global companies, where teams are spread in various locations and countries, it is important to address every question and issue that your team members might have. Your team should be comfortable talking to each other and you if they have any issues. If there is seamless communication between the team, it becomes better to work towards a common goal.
7. Be Agile
The importance of being agile cannot be highlighted enough. But what do we mean by that? Agile means being able to take action and move quickly and easily. In the terms of project management, being agile means breaking a big goal into smaller manageable tasks, reassessing them, and then altering the plan, if required. Agile is a project management methodology that entails an iterative approach to managing deliverables throughout the project lifecycle. Any project that is agile should exhibit flexibility, trust, empowerment, open communication, and collaboration. Getting organized also means that you should set your priorities in your work and your projects. Then, seek feedback from your team and stakeholders, and be ready to accommodate if there are any changes required.
8. Anticipate Challenges
At times even after proper planning, some unforeseen issues arise – especially related to resource management or strict timelines. This is a reality and cannot be avoided completely. Hence, creating a risk management plan and addressing issues at the earliest will help in preventing your projects from going off-track. If you foresee a major issue that could threaten to derail your project, then a predetermined process would help you find an appropriate solution. It is also very important to maintain regular open communication with your important stakeholders to ensure that there are no roadblocks along the way.
9. Keep Track Of The Progress
Keeping track of the status and progress your project is making is a key step in staying organized. A project manager should know how the team members are performing. It’s also important to have progress reports in place so that everyone knows how they are doing on a daily or monthly basis. Resource management software helps in tracking project status, resource utilization, performance, and overall productivity. This also helps in raising red flags much ahead of time so that you can find appropriate resolutions to the problems. This process will also enable you to know if you need to bring in more resources to speed up something or make some amendments to the original plan.
10. Use The Right Resource Management Software
Did you know that only about 15 to 20% of organizations use the right project or resource management software? Good resource management software is in fact the most beneficial tool for effective communication. Using spreadsheets and manual methods is crippling as it wastes time and effort, and errors can creep in. A resource management tool on the other hand allows tweaking your project management methodology. It also helps to manage resources, utilization, and other tasks in real-time. Your team members can log in on multiple devices, anytime, and from anywhere in the world.
eResource Scheduler – Top Resource Management Software for Getting Organized at Work
Enbraun’s flagship and award-winning tool, eResource Scheduler, is a leading resource management software that enables you to streamline your processes. You can use this tool for detailed project planning, planning and scheduling resources, resource management, measuring utilization, time-tracking, etc. This Cloud-based tool is specially created to help various organizations globally. Its client-server architecture helps multiple users to share data in real-time and collaborate seamlessly. Want to know more about how this tool can help your specific business? Sign up and try it for free today.
