Project management skill 1: Communication. 6 Essential Project Management Skills for Smoother Work 1.
They should know how to schedule tasks in order to meet deadlines without overwhelming their teams. Here’s our rundown of the 6 most important project management skills and how to develop them into your project management strengths. Additionally, to keep projects on track, project managers need good scheduling skills. Project planner skills Project planners use a wide range of skills in their work, including: Project management skills While project planners focus on the planning and monitoring phases of a project, they often benefit from general project management knowledge, which can help them understand how their work may affect the project's results. Without a contingency plan the project is running a real risk of failing to deliver because no allowance for additional costs or time mean that scope and/or quality will suffer, resulting in a deliverable that does not satisfy anyone’s needsĪ good project plan should provide a roadmap for every aspect of the project. It's important for project managers to possess skills in planning so they can design effective, realistic project management plans. Contingency PlanĪnother element of good planning is incorporating a contingency – both within the budget and the schedule – to account for unforeseen problems that might arise, because things can always go wrong. This helps ensure stakeholders are fully committed to the project and will work to drive progress forward – without this stakeholders can become disillusioned about the project and not be there when you need them.
Projects often have several stakeholders with different priorities but a good project plan ensures all of their priorities are considered and included in the overall vision of the project. This avoids the situation where a project is finished yet doesn’t “feel” like a success. A good plan helps compare the original aims with current progress – it is highly likely that your plans will change during the course of the project (rarely do original plans deliver as expected) but a sound initial plan ensures smooth transition to a new plan that will deliver successfully, and will add certainty that the project has delivered successfully. It helps avoid bottle necks when there are complex inter-dependent tasks so ensuring the project can advance to successive phases. Project MilestonesĪ good plan will include milestones to help monitor progress and provide the opportunity to re-evaluate deadlines, scope and deliverables, if necessary, or provide confidence that the project is on track. A poor plan will never deliver good results.
That sounds pretty simple yet so many project managers rush the planning phase – often due to external pressures – and the project is then set up for failure. By clearly defining the project aims in the planning phase, and by creating an achievable schedule you are more likely to succeed in delivering the project objectives. A lack of planning will always contribute towards an unsuccessful project whereas good planning leads to successful projects.