Google Project Management Professional Certificate: Course 1: Notes

Project Management is hands-on and action oriented. As a project manager, my job is to identify, mobilize, and inspire team members. My job is to build a vision and bring groups together for a common goal. As a project manager, I need to be organized, diligent, and strategic. Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet project requirements and achieve the desired outcome. Project management includes creating goals, objectives, and deliverables. Other components of project management are risk management, team dynamics, data-driven decision making, and building project plans and budgets. Project management methodologies include waterfall and agile. Project managers identify key milestones and dependencies and work to remove barriers. Running a project requires effective communication, risk management, understanding team dynamics, tracking and monitoring progress. All projects have a project life cycle that should be followed. Organizational structure and culture impact project management. Project management is a position and a skill. Project management involves working with people and coordinating teams and work to see projects come to life. Project managers use tools and strategies to streamline projects for smoother workflows. The goal is to manage processes to ensure goals are met efficiently.

A project is a unique endeavor, including a unique set of deliverables. A temporary pursuit with a defined start and finish. A series of tasks that need to be completed to reach a desired outcome. Projects take careful planning and collaboration. It is important to keep projects on task and within budget. Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet project requirements and achieve the desired outcome. Project management is valuable to businesses because it helps ensure that a project delivers the expected outcomes on time and under budget. Project management is critical to the success of projects large and small. Project management involves planning out each task and tracking and managing each task. Project management saves money and time. 48% of projects miss the delivery deadline. 43% of projects miss the budget target. 31% of projects fail to meet the organization's goals. Program managers manage multiple projects for products, teams, or programs. The work involves planning and organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, and controlling costs and other factors. Ensuring project outcomes brings value to organizations. Successful projects always add value. The tasks for a project will change based on the company, industry, project type/size, etc. Planning and organizing involves gathering requirements from customers, stakeholders, or teammates. This can be accomplished with a project kick-off meeting, surveys, etc. Creating project plans sets the tone for the project. Project managers manage tasks for team members. Project managers communicate key milestones and project updates to the larger team. Plans can change due to unexpected delays or costs, but project managers can use different tools, techniques, and methodologies to overcome obstacles. Planning, organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, controlling costs, managing schedules.

I have a passion for bringing people together and getting them on the same page. I can juggle several tasks at once and I can influence customers and teammates without authority. I have good time management skills and leadership skills. I can select specialists who will like each other and work well together. I can proactively communicate project needs to stakeholders and I can collaborate and act like an owner with intention. I can handle coordination and serve as a guide for the team. I will apply correct tools and processes and facilitate communication. I will create and manage long term goals for the company. I will ensure projects stay on track and meet strategic initiatives. Operational management involves cross-functional collaboration. I am data-driven, a team player, and a self-starter. I need to learn how to create business procedures, investigate workflows, and understand how to execute an effort on schedule. I need to roll out plans of action based on budget, schedule, and resource availability. I need to develop strong planning and communication skills, the ability to prepare and monitor a budget. Project managers create monthly or quarterly status reports with work plans and performance metrics. I am responsive to requests. I develop processes to improve efficiency. I can assemble a team and communicate with different departments. I network to learn, gain knowledge, and create connections. I can manage a project timeline. I can have difficult conversations, manage resources, and apply project management frameworks. I can work with multiple stakeholders with multiple timelines with competing priorities. I have the ability to lead. I have strong skills in coordination, organization, and leadership. I am an effective planner, task coordinator. I can inspire a team and make decisions. I can plan and organize team objectives and priorities. I am analytical, assertive. I have keen attention to detail, and I am good at resolving conflict. I am collaborative, a good evaluator. I can execute plans and manage client expectations via meetings. I can manage vendors, stakeholders. I can monitor, multitask, and plan. I can prioritize and problem solve. I am skilled at process improvement, project coordination, risk assessment/management. I have strong interpersonal communication skills. I can develop and execute reporting and process design. I can monitor daily operations and enhance processes to maximize efficiency. Project managers coordinate and ensure we are connecting all the parts. I have a birds-eye view of everything that is happening. I work to maintain execution and rigor of projects. I think about problems in a methodical, task-oriented, action-oriented and goal-oriented way. I bring order to chaos. I need to find 1 or 2 mentors. I need to take a course on Google Calendar. Each day, I should focus on 3 things to accomplish. Organizational culture is the personality of a company aligned with corporate strategy and goals. When job searching, I should look for a positive organizational culture, a comfortable environment with respect and kindness, training, education, and growth opportunities within the company. My employer should empower me to be my best self. Find a company that values teamwork, mentorship, collaboration and communication over speed. Balance my workload, meet project deadlines, and achieve the desired outcome.

The core skill sets of a project manager are enabling decision making, communicating and escalating, flexibility, and strong organizational skills. Project managers gather information from team members and stakeholders and share to help make informed decisions. Project managers use insights to communicate to the right people. Project managers make day to day decisions and remain calm and empathetic during unpredictable moments. Different processes and elements of Project Management can be applied. Track daily tasks in a spreadsheet and meet with stakeholders to escalate risks. Meet with each other; make decisions. Project management industry knowledge includes tools, templates, and project management styles. Key competencies for project managers include flexibility and handling ambiguity. It is important to facilitate a collaborative decision-making process and to state goals and elicit feedback/input. Empower the team to express opinions and to make decisions. Focus on overarching task management and prioritization. Foster an environment of responsibility and accountability. Clearly communicate project goals, expectations, and team member roles and responsibilities. Escalate issues to management when necessary. Leadership and team dynamics are important aspects of successful project management. Project managers need to have strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence to build relationships with the team and stakeholders. It is up to the Project Manager to determine priorities and motivate the team. Project managers need to influence without authority. Core skills for project managers include communication, negotiation, conflict mediation, and understanding motivations. Strong interpersonal skills are needed to influence without authority. Communication skills are needed to check in with teammates to understand how they are progressing on a task. Negotiation skills are needed to compromise on a new deadline---to balance the needs of a project with individual needs of team members and stakeholders. Project managers guide project outcomes. Conflict mediation skills are needed to ensure the project does not suffer. The ability to understand motivations of team members and stakeholders is important---learn how they prefer feedback, recognition/praise. An example of influencing without authority is asking a team member to arrive early to a meeting if they are consistently late, or to set a reminder on their phone. Let them know how their behavior/work impacts the team. Project managers define the project and the different components. Project managers shepherd projects from start to finish, serving as a guide for the team using organizational and interpersonal skills. Project managers plan and organize, manage tasks, and budget and control costs. Prioritization, delegation, and communication skills must be effective. Project managers identify large tasks and break them down into smaller tasks. They prioritize tasks and match them with experts.

Project managers ask people to do tasks, delegate, organize, and apply knowledge to drive projects. Managing timelines, tasks, and understanding all the pieces is my job. Build relationships with people to understand their points of view. Add value by focusing on the customer, building a great team, fostering relationships and communication, managing the project, breaking down barriers, and defining requirements from internal and external stakeholders. A project manager's roles within a team---manager of tasks of a project. "Customer" refers to a person or organization that defines the requirements of the project and sets important guidelines such as budget and deadlines. In projects, internal customers are stakeholders within my organization, such as management, project team members, resource managers, and other organizational departments. External customers are clients, contractors, suppliers, and consumers. Projects must meet customer's standards, so it is important to clearly understand their expectations. The customer is at the center of a successful project. Sit with the customer and ask what problem they are trying to solve. Ask if they have a specific vision of the final outcome. Ask the stakeholder: 1. What is the problem you would like us to help solve? (Eg. deliver new process), 2. How is the problem impacting your organization? (E.g. losing clients), 3. What prompted you to ask for help now? (determine urgency), 4. What is your hope for the outcome of this project? (E.g. increase speed without losing quality). Digging a little deeper into the “why” behind the project can help a project manager better support and understand the customer. The team is a project’s biggest asset. Take time to understand each person’s motivations, strengths, weaknesses, communication preferences. Consider the skills needed for the project, as well as the resources available. Understanding the customer’s requirements helps shape the skills needed for your team. Bring on people with the right skills. Ensure the team knows that each individual is valued, trusted, and appreciated. Allow them to have input and to ask questions. Address their needs as soon as possible. Take the time to build relationships, communicate, and treat others with consideration and respect. Communicate daily. As the project manager, I need to see the impact of each process within the project and communicate those impacts to the team. This ensures that everyone working on the project understands their task goal as well as the big picture goal for the finished product. Helping team members understand the big picture allows them to tailor their tasks to meet the needs of the project end goal. Take time to build relationships and maintain open lines of communication. Allow the team to innovate new ways to do things. Empower them to share their ideas. Advocate for additional resources for your team if needed. By focusing on the customer, building a great project team, fostering relationships and communication, managing the project, and breaking down barriers, you can overcome obstacles and find solutions to succeed. A project manager is responsible for the application of knowledge, skills, tools, techniques to meet project needs and achieve desired outcomes. Project management involves planning, organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, and scheduling. For planning and organizing, make use of productivity tools and create processes to improve information sharing across the team. Create plans, timelines, and schedules and maintain these documents.

Project management involves budgeting and controlling costs, tracking issues and risks as they arise, mitigating those risks, removing barriers to progress, and escalating issues to stakeholders. Managing and keeping track of tasks. Create a Project Tracker to manage tasks between teams---include categories and subcategories for tasks. Keep tabs on work and inform stakeholders. Use timelines and schedules. Identify Project and related tasks to achieve goals., after hearing priorities from stakeholders. Pay close attention to a team’s discussions, be an asset by identifying projects and specific tasks needed to complete them. The project manager is responsible for planning, organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, controlling costs, and other factors to help keep the project within budget and on time. Track day to day details of the project. Interpersonal skills include verbal and written communication, active listening, and leadership. Serve as a mentor to your team. Take the time to fully explain expectations to eliminate rework, confusion, and frustration. Mentor and teach others. Mentoring involves supporting each individual on your team in meeting expectations and helping them to exceed their own sense of personal potential. Getting to know your team members lets them know that you care about them as people, not just as employees. Taking the time to build relationships with your customers, clients, vendors, and other stakeholders is equally important. Documenting the initial expectations of the project and clearly identifying the changes being requested is helpful. It is also helpful to understand the budget and schedule impact of the changes and to make sure that the stakeholders understand those impacts. As the project manager, you are responsible for protecting your team. Empowering your team is getting fresh ideas from passionate employees willing to help find solutions to problems. Another way you can empower your team is by delegating responsibilities to them, allowing them to make some decisions for the project, and using their input in the planning and execution of the project. Maintaining an open-door policy and building trust within your team and among stakeholders—all while staying positive—will help the success of the project. Project managers may be responsible for teaching and mentoring project team members, building relationships with the team and various stakeholders, controlling change and the impact to the project, empowering team members to make decisions, and communicating status and potential concerns. These interpersonal responsibilities can be just as important to the success of your projects as your more concrete responsibilities, like scheduling and budgeting. Hold team members accountable for their assigned tasks. Give them ownership. (You manage the tasks). Ensure that issues and risks are tracked and visible. Establish escalation paths. (communicate risks to the right people at the right time). Understand and help teammates adopt the right workflows and project management styles. Collaborate with other teams at the organization to deliver solutions that meet the requirements based on project scope, schedule, and budget. Build relationships, communicate, control change, empower the team. Mentor the team to help them make better decisions. Take time to fully explain expectations. Build relationships with your customers, clients, vendors, and other stakeholders. Learn how to most effectively work with them. Remain flexible, but do not sacrifice project needs. Document initial expectations and identify changes being requested. Communicate project /task status and potential concerns. To manage cross-functional teams effectively, clarify goals, get a team with the right skills, measure progress, recognize efforts, and build community. Measuring progress helps keep the team motivated. When communicating project progress across the cross-functional team, focus on key milestones, completion of project tasks, meeting project goals on time and within budget. Document when tasks are completed. Use interpersonal skills to get to know the team, influence without authority, communicate, negotiate and compromise, mediate conflicts, and understand motivations to help the team do their best work.

Project managers should be able to explain and follow the life cycle of a project, define and outline a project's phases and each phase's tasks. Project managers should be able to compare project management methodologies and program management methodologies. Each project has its own needs. The life cycle guides the project in 4 stages: 1. Initiate the project, 2. Make the plan, 3. Execute and complete tasks, 4. Close the project. Initiating the project involves defining goals and deliverables, identifying budget and resources needed (e.g. equipment, vendors, experts), and documenting details that could impact the successful completion of the project. Discuss project goals and identify and document value created by the project to be successful. Organize all the information available about the project to help with the planning phase. Once you have project approval, Make a plan: Create a budget, list out tasks to be completed, set the project schedule, establish the team, establish ways to communicate, document team member roles and responsibilities as well as resources and contingency plans. Start to finish, outline deadlines and tasks. Schedule for resources, materials, tasks needed to complete the project. Deliberate planning is crucial to the project. Plan for risks: scheduling delays, budget changes, legal issues, quality control. Communicate the plan to the entire team and stakeholders. Execute and complete the tasks: manage and monitor progress, oversee the team's effort and make sure they understand expectations. Oversee how and when tasks are completed. Remove any obstacles. Communicate via meetings, emails, chat, or a Task Report working document. Over Communicate. Make adjustments to schedule, budget, allocation of resources. Clearly communicate updates along the way. Keep the team motivated. Close the project. Ensure all tasks have been completed (including work added along the way). Outstanding invoices have been paid and resources returned. Project documentation submitted. Confirm acceptance of the project outcome. Customer(s) should be happy with the end result. Evaluate: Reflect on lessons learned, what went well and what didn't (retrospective). Note best practices to learn how to manage projects more effectively. The VIPs of a project are the stakeholders. Celebrate with the team via team-wide email and/or party. Share accomplishments. Over Communicate when sharing information. Initiate>Plan>Execute>Close. Make adjustments to the project as necessary. Manage progress and communicate with the team and stakeholders. Follow through with the project. Organize and communicate improvements added to various areas of the project to make the team more effective and efficient. Practice guidance, communication, and team building to ensure a happy, high-performing, successful team. Initiate the project> Make a plan > Execute and complete tasks > Close the project. It may be useful to apply different project management methodologies or approaches for different projects. A methodology is a set of guiding principles and processes for owning a project through its life cycle. A linear approach means that the previous phase or task has to be completed before the next can start (e.g. building a house). In software development, it is better to use an iterative, more flexible approach. Waterfall methodology is a traditional approach and is the sequential ordering of phases. This project management methodology is useful for app design or product feature design. The expectations/goals do not change, and phases are clearly defined. Project changes are expensive to implement once the project has started. Tasks must be completed in order before another can begin. Project managers prioritize and assign tasks to team members. Criteria used to measure quality are clearly defined at the beginning of the project. Iterative means that some of the phases and tasks will overlap or happen at the same time that other tasks are being worked on. A pilot is a test run to gather feedback and make adjustments. Plan remains flexible. Iterative projects anticipate changes. A hybrid approach can be useful. Adopt a style based on project and team. Develop a Project Management Toolbox. Agile methodologies are for change and flexibility. Many tasks are worked on at the same time. This iterative approach allows for faster delivery of products. Agile project phases overlap, and tasks are completed in iterations, which in Scrum are called Sprints. Agile Project managers must build effective, collaborative teams that seek regular feedback from the client(s) so they can deliver the most value as quickly as possible. Agile projects have less of a definitive end result and are more idea based with high uncertainty and risk. Scrum and Kanban are agile frameworks. Scrum is focused on developing, delivering, and sustaining projects. Scrum values collaboration, accountability, following an iterative process, small cross-functional teams, and short sprints with a set list of deliverables. As a project manager, I will serve as an active leader. I will be a primary facilitator. I will prioritize and assign tasks. I will remove barriers the team faces. I will establish and document project deliverables. I will establish a Change Request process and adjust to feedback and issues. I will solicit ongoing stakeholder feedback. I will ensure products are tested in the field. I will continually communicate progress toward milestones and KPIs to stakeholders. I will provide project deliverables to stakeholders. I will regularly implement improvements. LEAN + Six Sigma are project management methodologies/approaches. LEAN + Six Sigma saves money, improves quality, speeds up processes, and promotes a positive work environment. DMAIC is used to solve any business problem or improve a process of a system. DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control. For a project, define the project goal, talk to stakeholders about expectations for the project, measure how current process is performing (use data), locate where problems are and the effect they have on the process (e.g. figure out why X takes so long), set plan for how to get data and how often to measure it, have customers fill out surveys, look at shipping data, website data, etc. Data Analysis is an important skill for project managers. Project and process improvements should only be made after careful analysis. Present findings; start making improvements. Controlling is about learning from the work you did up front to put new processes and documentation in place. Continue to monitor. Defining tells you what to measure. Measuring tells you what to analyze. Analyzing tells you what to improve, Improving tells you what to control. DMAIC = Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control (Lean Six Sigma). Use DMAIC to improve current processes with complex and/or high-risk problems. Use data and focus on the end user or customer. Solve problems based on previous learning. Deliver the best value. Improve the user experience with agile iterations and sprints. Confidently apply what works best for me, the team, and the end goal. Use Lean and Six Sigma to organize and manage projects. Lean methodology centers around removal of waste within an operation. Optimize process steps, eliminate waste, streamline processes. Waste includes defects, excess processing, overproduction, waiting, inventory, non-utilized talent, transportation, and motion. Causes of waste include lack of proper documentation, lack of process standards, not understanding the customer's needs, lack of effective communication, lack of process control, inefficient process design, and failures of management. Waste is reduced by streamlining processes. Use a Kanban board to show "To do", "In progress", "Testing", and "Done". Kanban provides visual feedback about the status of work in progress via boards and charts. Note cards on physical or digital Kanban boards. Represents team tasks. Use Kanban scheduling system to manage production. Six Sigma reduces variation by ensuring processes are followed each time (builds quality in). Always focus on the customer, identify and understand how the work gets done, make your processes flow smoothly, reduce waste and concentrate on value, stop defects by removing variation, involve and collaborate with the team, approach improvement activity in a systematic way. Measurable aspects of a process are time, cost, and quality. Use good communication and collaboration across teams to deliver projects on time and within budget. Use varied approaches when implementing project management methodology.

Organizational structure impacts project management in several ways. Organizational structure provides the framework for accountability and communication, defines who the team is and who reports to who, and guides how to get resources needed to get projects done efficiently. Organizational structure impacts the amount of authority a project manager has. Authority is the ability to make decisions for the project that impact the organization (e.g. choosing vendors). Authority and responsibility will vary by project. Organizational structure will also impact resource availability. Project managers need to know how to navigate organizational structure to access the people, equipment and budget needed for a project. In a classic, top-down organizational hierarchy, functional leads/Sr. Directors/VPs may need to approve resources. Department managers may need to approve a budget increase. A matrix organizational structure emphasizes a strong project focus from team and Org. Employees may have two managers or several leaders they report to. Know who your stakeholders are and who controls what. Matrix organizations provide project managers with more autonomy to make decisions. A Project Management Office (PMO) defines, sets, and helps maintain project management standards and processes throughout an organization. The PMO is the coordinated center for all projects and for operational excellence, strategic planning and governance. PMOs help define project criteria and select projects per the organization's business goals. PMOs can provide business cases for projects to management. PMOs can store and share best practices and processes such as lessons learned from previous successful projects. PMOs ensure consistency by providing info on processes, tools, metrics. PMOs provide resource management/allocation across projects throughout an organization based on budget, priorities, schedules. PMOs help define roles and responsibilities and provide mentoring and coaching. PMOs provide documentation such as templates, tools, software to manage large numbers of complex projects. Organizational culture are the beliefs and customs, the personality of a company, and this impacts how projects are managed. Company culture provides context into how employees and departments relate to each other and how they can be expected to perform. The values employees share, and the company's values, mission, and history are part of the organizational culture. Project managers need to clearly demonstrate how the project supports the company mission. How are decisions made? How do people communicate (phone, email, chat, meetings?). Are there rituals for new employees? How are projects typically run? What kinds of practices, behaviors, and values are reflected by the people in the organization? What are expectations? How are conflicts resolved? Ask questions and make observations. Know your impact as a change agent to transform work. Seek feedback and approval. Sit down with management to better understand what is expected (e.g. format for email signature). The culture of a company influences success. Culture is identity --- the way they conduct business internally and externally, mission and values, what the company believes in. Culture is people --- valued, engaged, positive. Dress code / attire. Culture is processes ---opportunities for employees to provide feedback / to have their voice heard. What is the atmosphere like? Is risk taking and failure acceptable or encouraged? How do managers motivate their team? How do project managers interact with customers and users? How do team members give feedback? How is success celebrated? Any workplace traditions? What are sick day / PTO policies? IS working from home allowed? How does the organization support professional development and career growth? How has the experience been for people on teams / projects? Be a change agent --- focus on improving organizational effectiveness and development.

The goal of?change management?is to minimize the impact of a change on productivity by engaging employees early during the transition to mitigate resistance and drive effective adoption of new processes. During change management, stay user focused, exercise respect, minimize impact on productivity, and build credibility and trust. During the planning phase of the project, assess who and what will be affected by the change. Understand user personas and identify change impacts. Assess change complexity to create strategy definition. Execute strategy in 3 phases: Awareness, Readiness, Resilience --- to ensure proper reception. Awareness>>>make users aware of the coming change---provide updates on scope, timing, and benefits. Readiness>>>help users feel confident that they will be able to use the new tool/product/feature/process/system. Resilience>>>prepare for launch. Support users after go-live to help with transition. Measure adoption. Leverage surveys, usage metrics, feedback sessions to determine successful change adoption. Iterate methodology per lessons learned. Build user centricity into planning. The audience of change is the top priority. Complete deliverables to form a comprehensive view of the audience. Who does the change affect? Identify key users and groups. Conduct interviews to understand user roles, responsibilities, and needs. Create an accompanying document detailing which users are affected and how. How does the change affect them? Define how change will affect each user group. Describe specific changes and impacts to each user group (positive and negative). Make simple statements about benefits of change to user groups. Strategize how to help them transition. Find the best way to communicate with and train user groups about the change. Create and tailor a communication plan for each user group. Start change management earlier. Take time to invest in stakeholder management. Include a broad, user-centric perspective into overall project strategy and decisions. Account for and support all impacted groups, including tangential teams (Executives, sales, marketing, etc). Unify project communications. Provide project input based on understanding of all impacted groups. Ensure stakeholder participation with Q&A sessions, periodic email updates, timeline adjustments, and pulse surveys. Change management communication philosophy for project managers should include building trust and credibility (the change team is their partner), avoiding overcommunication (be concise and consolidated), and emphasizing the positives (show how change benefits them). During Execution of change strategy, figure out the mediums by which you will deliver the communications and training. How many people are impacted? If less than 50, do in-person meetings for complicated changes and emails for simple changes. If more than 50, create concise, clear documentation, use email and decks to disseminate information. What is the geography of the change? One location: use in-person meetings and live training if needed. Multiple locations: use e-learnings for complicated changes, email for simple changes. Is the change highly visible? Help centers, websites, training documentation so users feel confident with sufficient support and resources. If low visibility, stick to critical items needed for the change. What is the perception of the change? If neutral/positive, drive positive outcomes of the change for end-users to get their buy-in. If negative, acknowledge and address concerns in communications and training. Provide detailed explanations for the change. Offer office hours for users to ask questions. Is the change critical? Critical changes, especially if dependent on user actions: provide high effort, in-person training and e-learnings. For non-critical changes, use email and slides. Manage the chaos caused by change. Things usually get worse before they get better. Minimize a dip in performance with effective change management, communication, and leadership. Measure to assess adoption. Use both qualitative and quantitative data to understand the overall success of the change. Measure perception, readiness, adoption, and business outcomes. Look at utilization, time to first touch, and user satisfaction. Collect usage data and host feedback sessions. Conduct surveys. Create an adoption report with summarized findings, verifying that the change is stable. Be user focused but expand definition of user to tangential teams. Plan, execute, measure. Change management is an art. Change management's purpose is clear: to ensure that changes deliver intended results and outcomes by addressing the people side of change.

Change management is the process of delivering a completed project and adoption. The delivery of a new process or new tool for adoption. Understanding organizational structure and culture will help me manage projects---knowledge will help with rolling out projects to the organization---the organization accepts and adopts project deliverables. Employees or customers may need to adopt a new system for success. Smoother rollout of changes leads to easier adoption. Adoption is the first step to the project having an impact. Help the success of the project by understanding the change management process and how the organization will react. People are directly impacted by changes in the workplace. Changes to processes, budgets, schedules, and employee roles and responsibilities may be needed. Employees have to adjust to the "new/different". People will have to implement changes. Think through the changes to set yourself up for success.Create a sense of ownership and urgency. Make others feel empowered to successfully complete their tasks. This increases interest, motivation, and engagement with the project outcome. Figure out the right combination of skills and personalities for the team. People's knowledge and skills should complement each other. Choose who gets assigned what tasks or find ways to connect with the team. Get them excited about the project so they can be advocates for change when it's needed. Communicate clearly our VISION and APPROACH for the project. Share how you can see everyone working together as a team to make it happen. Others can share in your vision and take ownership to make it happen. Practice effective communication. Be transparent and upfront with plans and ideas. Make information available. Keep the team and the rest of the organization updated so everyone feels included like they are a part of the project/ Resistance or roadblocks may arise at project completion. Help folks adjust, reward their efforts, and remind them of the overall value the project is providing long-term. Understanding the Change Management process will help you clearly communicate project plans to the team and communicate the expected impact of the project with the entire organization. SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGEMENT aligns with SUCCESSFUL CHANGE MANAGEMENT. As the project manager, enact effective change management practices. Be receptive to change. Support the change management process for your project. Change management = delivering a completed project and getting others to adopt it. Acceptance + Adoption. The greatest impact of change will be on PEOPLE who use and interact with the product or process that is changing. Embrace changes as they come and convince the wider audience to embrace changes too. Use careful approach to change management to address issues that occur in later stages of the project. The project manager may not be responsible for leading and planning the end-to-end change management process. Support and participate in the successful adoption of the project. Separate tools and processes used for change management. The most effective way to achieve a project goal is to integrate project management and change management. This is the project manager's responsibility to help prepare for a variety of scenarios and allow myself to craft solutions to effectively support the adoption of the project, ask how will the organization react to change? Which influencers can affect change? What are the best means of communication? What change management practices will lead to the successful implementation of the project?

Best Practices of change management include proactive-ness, inclusive change management planning, scheduling meeting time or creating a Feedback document so the team can voice suggestions / concerns, planning steps toward the end of project to introduce the deliverable to stakeholders: DEMOS, Q&A session, Marketing videos. Factor decisions into the plan. Escalate and stress importance of change management plan to stakeholders. Communicate Upcoming Changes: Regular communication among impacted stakeholders and change management team, and project team. Check-in and communicate how changes provide a better UX. Provide everyone with the information they need to feel prepared to adjust to changes once the project is ready to launch. Follow A Consistent Process: a clear change management process established and documented early in the project to guide handling change. Know when promotion of change should occur + corresponding steps for each phase of the process. Practice Empathy. Be empathetic to challenges and anxiety change can bring. Use tools to assist with the adoption of change. Tools include Feedback mechanisms (Survey to capture input from stakeholders), Flowcharts (visualize project's development process), and Culture Mapping (how company values, norms, and employee behavior may be impacted by the change). Change Management ensures the project achieves intended results and outcomes by supporting the individual transitions required by the project. Employees/users must adopt and use it to deliver value. Project-level change management provides specific strategies, plans, actions and steps that focus on impacted employees. Aligns with project-deployment. Changes that impact how employees do their jobs need to be managed. Changes can be driven by external or internal factors and can impact processes, systems, tools, organization structure or job roles. If employees need to do their job differently, change management is needed. A project manager can affect others' mindset/attitude/beliefs, performance reviews, compensation, tools, systems, processes, and job roles. Build commitment and support for Change Management, to drive adoption and usage. Change management is a benefit-realization tool, a way to ensure achievement of results and outcomes, an approach for driving greater ROI, a vehicle for optimizing adoption and usage, a tool for avoiding excessive project cost, an approach for mitigating risk.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT is the structured approach for creating a strategy to drive employee adoption and usage, so projects achieve intended results and outcomes. Apply Change Management at the project-level using a structured methodology to be direct and targeted, adaptable and repeatable. Phase 1: Prepare approach. Define success, impact, approach. Phase 2: Manage the change: Plan and Act, Track performance, adapt actions. Phase 3) Sustain outcomes: Review Performance, Activate Sustainment, Transfer Ownership. Next, consider the Customer and Scale Approach- resulting outputs must be scaled and customized based on the change itself and those being impacted. A dedicated Resource for change management effectiveness is ideal. Collaborate with the Project Team: the team must engage. Clearly articulate relationship between project team and change management (e.g. roles, responsibilities, etc.). Create partnership to deliver the intended results and outcomes of a project. Change Management is a structured approach to creating customized and scaled strategies and plans to drive adoption and usage. It is a benefit-realization and value-creation measure applied to initiatives. Change management ensures projects achieve intended benefits and outcomes, realizes ROI, mitigates costs and risks, creates value, and ensures projects and initiatives are successful.