Improving Project Management Skills to Supercharge Your Small Business

Small business owners have a lot on their plate, making efficient project management crucial for balancing tasks such as renovations, process improvement, developing websites, and launching new programs or product features.

Effective project management helps mitigate risks, manage your resources, and keep stakeholders involved throughout the process.

Here’s how to nail it. ??

Basic Project Management Concepts

Projects measure performance against three baselines: scope, cost, and schedule.

Although tracked and managed independently, these baselines work together to control project planning. The team can revise them, but they establish goals and timelines that everyone understands before the project begins.

A small business should set clear project objectives to ensure efficient communication and teamwork.

?A contingency plan is your plan B. It’s a good idea for small businesses to practice risk management, so difficult stakeholder management and decision-making is prepared and ultimately, limited.

The deliverable is the output, result, or product your project will end up with. It can be tangible or intangible and external (to a customer) or internal (a client in the same company as the project team).

Creating a Project Management Plan

Project planning can be broken down into 5 simple steps:

Initiation: Establish clear objectives and milestones. Compile the right team for the end goal.

Planning: The roadmap stage, detailing project tasks, timeline, resources, and budget for your project.

Execution: The team works diligently and follows the project plan as closely as possible, while remaining flexible to address any problems that arise.

Monitoring: The team reports status updates against the project lifecycle and reviews them against the objectives for quality control. This phase operates in conjunction with Step 3.

Closure: The team finalises and shares deliverables with customers, and notes lessons learned as examples for future situations.

Identifying and Empowering Team Leaders

Appointing the right project managers for the task is vital to the project’s success. Task leaders must align themselves with the project goals, face challenges, and approach the experience with confidence.

To extract the best performance, try organising a team of people who have the following traits:

Decisiveness: Quick yet thorough decision-making and strategic thinking under pressure.

Enthusiasm: A positive and motivational attitude to prolong the team’s endurance.

Adaptability: Problem-solving when things go wrong.

Innovation: Creative solutions to budget and time constraints will give you a competitive advantage and aid your business growth.

Supercharge Your Business Success

If you’re a small business owner struggling to maximise the outcomes of your projects and the capabilities of your employees, check out our project management courses.

From Microsoft Project, project planning and scheduling training, to completing a Certificate IV or Diploma of Project Management; Priority Management is a trusted leader in your workspace solutions.

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