Project Management

Each project is kicked off with process mapping, involving the project task team. For example, projects using the process mapping method to begin with have always been great in building relationships, getting stakeholders involved and excited to participate, and helping everyone understand the complete picture and their own tasks much better. As a result, the entire team participated in projects that were completed before scheduled deadlines and project budgets.

Project Management is a task that only people should perform that have people and relationship building skills. Good relationships with the task team increases the communication quality between the team members and they will collaborate better together. Working better together, once again increases the project task completion quality and of course the bottom line. The achievements are great.

Customer satisfaction is part of the success that I always achieved when managing projects using process mapping before the project begin. In the case of a project manager,  the customers are the team members. I help them perform their tasks better, get them finish their work on time and below budget. When the project is completed to everyone's satisfaction, everyone is happy. Of course, ultimately, the consumer - customer will see the product quality increase and satisfaction and customer retention also will increase.

In today's time of technology and software support in project management there are several software programs available. One of them is MS Project. In one of my experiences, the company paid over 1/2$ million dollars for licenses. However professional training for all those that had the software installed on their work station was never provided. So nobody ever was able to use the software on the networking level effectively. Eventually the software was uninstalled from the system and project managers were left to use MS Excel.

Although I have many years of MS Project experience, I find it much easier and better to track and trace and record project task progress in Excel. Statistics and charts can easily be built with this Microsoft tool and most people know how to use it. In addition, I highly recommend to build a hard-copy portfolio of all materials that are edited, reviewed, and/or  newly designed. This will help tracking and visualizing.

Visualization of the project is very important. The team comes together ideally, if physically and geographically possible, and then makes design comments as a team. This activity will help cut project task time. And if someone is not available due to international travel or because his/her office is overseas, before moving ahead, this person then gets ample advance notice to make changes and/or design and content suggestions before the meeting.

The Planning part and tracking / following up with stakeholders is one of the most important activity of the project manager. That is another reason why a project manager needs to have the skill and fines to communicate well and strengthen relationships. It has been proven that people with greater relationships do each other favors and collaborate much better than those that have a bad relationship.