Anybody that has project management experience will tell you that there are 4 key stages to successful Project Management communication. Follow these and you will be well on your way to being a more effective project manager. As outlined in professional project management courses.
4 Key Stages to Successful Project Management
1. The first stage, of course, is to make sure you have a clear understanding of what is expected of you – a project. In this process, you will most likely agree on a project ‘ harming’ statement for the project – what are you going to deliver to the customer (the organization).
This statement is driven by what you are trying to deliver to the customer. If we look at a project as a cattle call, asking “do the customers really want a pig?” you are not in a useful position to communicate well. People are unlikely to want to work on ‘pigs’.
2. The second stage is to ensure that you understand what your customer (the organization) wants and expects. Again, this can be achieved by first managing your project.
What better way to understand ‘what the customers want’ than to understand your own project. If you are carrying the project and the organization’s business in the tight (but familiar) quarter you are likely to experience project issues much more than your customers. Even though you may go through stages in which you are rapidly trying to learn what your customer requires there is always an element of ‘profit factors’ (how much less it costs to deliver ‘pig’ like functionality) in the ‘what the customers want’ of the project.
3. Third, you will be aware of the resources you have on your projects. These resources are composed of people (costs) and the experiences (time and efforts) you have gained from other projects. These resources are your creation and/or project structures and/or efficiencies and expertise. By using your access to the experiences you have accumulated you are able to use them on your projects.
4. Fourth, you will be aware of the skills you have acquired. By discussing your skills (over the years) and your ability to apply them to the experiences associated with your project, you can use them to help you manage other projects. Those skills are then your value proposition – you will be more likely to be able to sell and gain new opportunities if you offer them to others if you are able to show that you have acquired skills that will enable you to deliver what they want.
In this context, we are simply trying to manage as many projects in the most efficient way possible. How do you do this? By thinking about this question, you can re-frame the question for yourself:
Whether you are managing a communications project or a time & cost continuity project, how is this affecting your project success, objectives, quality, efficiency?
Perhaps if there is a business problem, a technical challenge, or a regulatory change that you need to address or propose. Then regardless of what project management method is being used, you will need to think to yourself does this project need to move forward at all to achieve these objectives (access to your knowledge base and experience base)
Remember this is a quality approach to your project management rather than a quantity approach.
