How to Become an Effective Project Manager

To become an effective project manager, you must have knowledge, experience, and skills in the project management field. So, in this article, we’ll explain how to become an effective project manager, including their roles and responsibilities, prime values, and core skills.

Who is the Project Manager

The project manager is a professional position in the project management field who plays a fantastic role throughout the project life cycle and usually follows a process that involves planning and organizing, managing tasks, budgeting, controlling cost, and other factors.

Project managers should spend 90% of their time communicating with internal and external stakeholders. Also, they should use varying tools, techniques, and methodologies throughout the project. That is a prime key to supporting and adapting to a project team. However, they should have the ability to face any of the challenges. That is a must.

Read More: Top 10 qualities of a good project manager

According to that, any project from start to finish performs duties as guides for their team, using their impeccable organizational and interpersonal skills every step of the way.

Read More: Top 9 Project management skills

Project Manager’s Prime Values

Project managers can enhance their teams and organizations by effectively adding values which include prioritization, delegation, effective communication, building a great team, focusing on the customers, managing the projects, and breaking down barriers.

Prioritization

Project managers should add value to their teams and organizations through effective prioritization. which helps identify tasks required to complete a project.

According to that, they should determine which are critical to achieving the one major milestone. after identifying tasks and breaking them down into smaller steps. In this case, project managers prioritize these tasks by communicating with their teams and stakeholders.

Delegation

Project managers should use delegation to add value to their teams and organizations by matching tasks to individuals who can best complete the work. Through that, they can decrease unnecessary expenditures and waste of time on the project.

Effective Communication

Project managers should deliver value through effective communication with their team and key stakeholders. Through that, they can acquire their outcome on time without any barriers. If you want to deliver a project successfully, it has to meet the customer’s standards. On the other hand, you have to make sure you clearly understand their expectations.

Building a Great Team

The team is a project’s biggest asset. Therefore, the success or failure of a project depends on the project team.

Successful project managers know how to spend time understanding each person’s motivation, strengths, and weaknesses. As a result, understanding the customers’ requirements help shape the skills needed for your project team. According to that, project managers can add value to the project by identifying the right team and the right time.

Focusing on the Customer

Customers are the key element to the success of any project and can be internal or external.

Internal customers are stakeholders within your organization, for instance, project managers, project team members, top management, etc.

External customers are stakeholders outside of your organization, for example, suppliers, contractors, creators, inventors, consumers, etc.

According to focusing on the customers, project managers can add a lot of value to the project by building relationships with customers and taking the time to make sure the customer is heard and satisfied with the results or outcome.

Managing the Projects

Managing the project can be difficult. But you should build a strong relationship and maintain open lines of communication because it will increase the chance of the project’s success. On the other hand, it will affect the customer’s and team members’ satisfaction.

When you build a team, each person is commonly assigned a specific project task. After that task is over, the person responsible for that task but your team members may not always see the whole picture, as well as how that impacts others of each process within the project. Therefore, communicate those impacts with the team.

It will help them understand the project’s big picture. And you should allow them to tailor their tasks to meet the needs of the project goal.

Read More: 10 tips for managing a project successfully

Breaking Down Barriers

As a project manager, you should help your team to break down barriers. That is a must. However, you can allow them to find new approaches to solving the problems. And you should empower them to share ideas.

If your team has difficulty getting an answer, you can check previous resources like the lesson-learned register. Important💡 That depends on the nature of the problem. However, you should keep your team on track and schedule.

Project Manager’s Role and Responsibilities

Project managers can enhance their teams and organizations through roles and responsibilities that include Creating timelines and schedules, Using productivity tools and creating processes, Controlling budgets and risks, Teaching and mentoring, Empowering the team members, Building relationships, and Communicating.

As a project manager, there are many responsibilities to fulfill in your challenging position that includes,

Creating Timelines and Schedules

As a project manager, you should ensure that your team members complete the project tasks on time. Therefore, you can use project management software like Asana, MS project to create project schedules. It will help you to manage your project tasks effectively and efficiently

Using Productivity and Collaboration Tools and Creating Processes

By using productivity tools, you will be able to acquire lots of benefits. The following are some examples of productivity and collaboration tools .

Online shared documents
Status updates
Project plans
Email and Chat
Presentations
RACI charts
Meeting agendas etc.

During the planning, execution, monitoring, and controlling phase of the project, you should use these tools for improving processes and sharing information across the team.

Controlling Budget and Risks

That will require you to monitor and manage the budget and identify issues and risks as they arise. Also, you should ensure the project’s quality by mitigating those issues and risks.

Teaching and Mentoring

As a project manager, you can guide as a mentor your team members. Those are supporting each other individuals on your team to achieve expectations and helping them to improve their sense of personal possibility.

Empowering the Team Members

As a project manager, you can empower your team by allowing them to make some decisions for the project and using their input in the planning, execution, and controlling phases of the project.

Building Relationships

Relationships are everything. As a project manager, you must keep the time to build strong relationships with your primary and secondary stakeholders. that will help your project’s success. The project manager will set the tone for the project team and help the members become fully functional through the various stages of group development.

Communication

Effective communication is the most crucial thing in any project. Through that, you can work with your team members to find the best solutions for unforeseen challenges. On the other hand, Writing and oral communications are the backbones of all successful projects. And many forms of communication will exist during the life of your project.

Usually, as a project manager, you will be responsible for tracking the day-to-day information of the project Remember! You’re not their daily boss.

Project Manager’s Core Skills

Project managers can enhance their teams and organizations through core skills. That includes Enabling decision-making, Communicating and escalating, Flexibility, Strong organizational skills, Conflict management, and Time management skills.

Enabling Decision-Making

The ability to enable decision-making on the primary and secondary stakeholders or gathering decisions from the relevant leader is crucial to keep projects on task and schedule and achieve their goals. When you get the decision, You should also ensure that decisions are communicated to the necessary employees or not.

Communicating and Escalating

According to this, you should use your communication skills throughout the project life cycle. That is a crucial role for every project manager. That involves,

Documenting plans
Sending emails regarding the current situation of the project
Conducting a meeting when arising risks or issues to the stakeholders, etc.

Flexibility

As a project manager, you will need the ability to adapt and overcome changes and challenges. In such cases, you should adjust while helping and supporting your team to stay calm and positive. However, you can help your team members prepare to mitigate risks and handle ambiguity. That involves,

Plan for risks and changes
Flexible planning
Calculate float in your schedule
Handling ambiguity, etc.

Strong Organizational Skills

As a leader, If you want to demonstrate your skills, this will be important to you.

According to that, you should stay organized through efficient tracking and communications. As a result, your team will follow suit. However, a successful project manager needs strong organizational skills. Organizational skills mean having the ability to organize these processes and the core elements of the project.

Organizational tools are available such as:

Planning and scheduling software: Ex. Templates, workflows, calendars
Collaboration tools: Ex. Emails, collaboration software, dashboards
Documentation: Ex. Files, plans, spreadsheets
Quality assurance tools: Ex. Evaluations, productivity trackers, reports

Conflict Management Skills

All projects have some problems, just like the problems we face in our daily life. Conflict management involves solving problems.

Problem-solving is a two-fold process. First, you must define the problem by separating the causes from the symptoms then you have certain decisions to make. It will take a short time to examine and analyze the problem, the situation causing it, and the alternative available. After this analysis, the project manager will determine the best option to implement the decision.

Time Management Skills

Time management skills are closely related to organizational skills. Because as a project manager, you will have project documentation requirements, personal records, vendor quotations, contracts, and much more to track and be able to locate at a moment’s notice. Therefore, it is difficult to stay organized without an understanding of how you’re managing your time.

Conclusion

Every project manager plays a crucial role throughout the project life cycle. And they have many responsibilities when fulfilling the objectives and goals of their projects. According to that, they should have many skills. It includes prime values and core skills. When project managers have these essential skills, they can become effective project managers.