Clients ask this question often and it’s a quite an interesting one. Is Project Management important?
Their point of view is: We can’t we have a team and just run them ourselves. It cost so much less.. right?
On Paper, Project Managers look unnecessary… the cost, the effort and they don’t deliver anything, do they? Well, we’re here to provide an additional insight on the matter.
Can you Afford not to have Project Management?
Project managers are the communication key between both clients and the team. Without them, no one left to handle the ups and downs of the project while the team leader is usually concerned with the quality of the product and making sure goes well from the technical perspective.
Project Managers are more than keeping track of the project. It’s often thought of it as delivering on time, managing the budget focusing on the project scope. It creates a vision of the project goals while keeping stakeholders and the team on the same page.
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Why Project Management is Important?
1. Strategic Alignment
Stakeholders have certain goals in mind. Part of the project managers task are to make sure the project is set to properly to meet those goals. They make sure that the goals of a project meet the strategic goals of the business.
2. Leadership
Without Project Manager, the whole team may look like a ship with no captain. carrying on with no direction and with no control. They Provide an insight, motivation and an inspiration to the team.
Project Managers ensure there is no confusion going on as well as enforcing process and keep everyone in the team on the same page with clear goals on mind.
3. Clear Focus & Objectives
Project managers position themselves to prevent situations of confusion between teams as well as splitting the project into smaller tasks that sum up the project the stakeholders have in mind.
The foresight of a project takes a specific approach that differentiate a good project from a bad one. Breaking down the Project keeps every team of specific goals which they can put their efforts into.
4. Realistic Project Planning
Without Project Manager, there are no solid plans for time and costs which means that a project may start with a budget and end with a complete different one due to insufficient planning. Same goes with the time spend to get a project done. While this also may happen within the presence of a project manager but he insures that the cost and time do not drift away from the budget and time set.
They also are well trained to handle situations where project start drifting from the time and budget set. That mean they can handle these drifts with their knowledge and experience that actually result with no drifting at all.
5. Quality Control
Projects can go under tremendous pressure to be completed. Without a dedicated project manager, that can result to bad quality outcomes.
Project Management ensure that the project is delivered within the time and cost given but also with a highest possible quality.
Gated phases are required for good project management so that teams can assess the output for quality, applicability, and ROI. Project managers is important to quality because it allows for a staggered and phased process, allowing teams to examine and test their outputs at each stage of the process.
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6. Risk in Project Management
Risk Management is one of the most critical procedures to the project success. Without a project management, the common methodology is to sweep them under the carpet and never talk about them and wish for the best. But the Project Management value comes into play especially in complex projects While Having a process that is robust around identification and management and mitigation of risk really helps to prevent risks from happening.
Project managers must carefully analyze all potential risks to the project, quantify them, and develop a mitigation plan and a contingency plan if any of them materialize. To identify risks early, it is necessary to know the right questions to ask.
7. Orderly Process
Because it guarantees that the appropriate people do the right things at the right times and that the proper project management procedures are followed throughout the project life cycle, project management is crucial.
Unexpectedly, many well-known, significant firms have reactive planning procedures that aren’t really based on any effective project management techniques.
Reactivity, as opposed to proactivity, can, nonetheless, frequently result in enterprises entering a state of survival. Teams split up, tasks overlap, and planning becomes ad hoc, which makes the team less effective and causes frustration.
8. Continuous Oversight
If everything goes according to plan, status reporting may seem pointless and uninteresting, and it may even seem like documentation for the sake of documentation. Continuous project oversight, however, is essential to guaranteeing that a project is proceeding according to the original plan and that it stays on course.
It is simple to identify when a project is starting to stray from its intended course when effective oversight and project reporting are in place. The easier it is to correct course when you can identify project deviation earlier.
As part of their stakeholder management, effective project managers often produce progress or status reports that are simple to understand. Clients or other project stakeholders can now independently track the project thanks to this. These status updates typically offer insights into the work that was accomplished and planned, the hours used and how they compare to those anticipated, the project’s progress in relation to milestones, risks, assumptions, problems, and dependencies, as well as any project outputs.
9. Subject Matter Expertise
Project managers that have a few years of experience under their belt will have some knowledge of many different areas of completing the projects they oversee. They will develop technical experience, project management abilities, and subject matter knowledge; they will be fully aware of the tasks carried out by their teams; the platforms and systems they use; the opportunities and constraints; and the typical challenges that arise.
They are able to have intelligent and well-informed dialogues with clients, teams, stakeholders, and suppliers because to their level of subject matter experience. They are well suited to serve as the project’s central centre of communication, making sure that nothing is lost or forgotten as the project moves between various teams and work phases.
Without subject matter expertise provided by project management, a project may fall out of balance as the creatives fail to consider technological constraints or the developers overlook the project’s creative vision. Project management pulls everyone together and forces the necessary concessions to keep the team concentrated on the overall goal of the project.
10. Managing and Learning from Success and Failure
Project management may help you overcome negative habits, and it’s crucial to avoid repeating errors when executing projects. Retrospectives, lessons learned, or post-project reviews are tools that project managers use to reflect on what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what has to be done better for the following project.
This results in a useful collection of documentation that serves as a list of future “dos and don’ts,” allowing the organization to learn from both successes and errors. Teams will frequently keep making the same mistakes over and over again without this learning.
Summary The Importance Of Project Management
Without project management, teams and clients face chaotic management, unclear objectives, a lack of resources, unrealistic planning, high risk, poor quality project deliverables, projects that go over budget, and projects that are delivered late.
Great project management is important because project managers with excellent training deliver results.
Project management creates and enables happy, motivated teams who understand the importance of their work. And that project management-enabled team ensures that the right stuff is delivered; stuff that provides a real return on investment.