A detailed guide to help ‘occasional project managers’ succeed when managing a project for their organization.
By 2027, the majority of us will be project managers. Even if that was never in our job description.
According to the Project Management Institute’s research, there will be a demand for 87.7 million people with the skills to manage projects by 2027.
Let’s face it: we live in an era where we’re made to manage projects on the daily. Regardless of your industry and the skills listed on your resume, you’ll find yourself managing projects sooner or later.
And to help you get ready, we’ve prepared the ultimate, step-by-step guide to project management for first-time, occasional, and accidental project managers.
“Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.”
According to the official definition, project management is “the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements.”
A project is an endeavour that satisfies the following criteria:
When we think of projects, we often think of huge construction work; building bridges and houses.
However, a project can be something as simple as creating a content strategy for your marketing agency’s clients or organizing a company event. It can also be planning an expedition to the North Pole or creating an app for your own company.
Does that sound familiar?
The main benefit of using project management to complete projects is having a road map to success.
When you have processes for creating, executing, and controlling projects, you’ll reach the finish line in time, and your end results will be successful.
Other benefits of project management include:
We want to create excellent goods or services with half the cost (both in terms of time and money).
If your clients (even if they’re your top management) get top-notch products without spending a lot of money or wasting time, you can bet they’ll be happy!
If you and your team members know what needs to be done, and you have the right tools to share knowledge, completing the projects in time will become a piece of cake.
Project management practices help you identify and evaluate risks early on.
Finally, using project management to deliver excellent products/services/results is the only sure-fire way of thriving in the market.
And we don’t just mean your company. If you show yourself to be a great project manager, you’ll be a professional every company wants to retain.
If you want to experience these benefits, you’ll need a structured process. It’s time to read on. We’ll show you exactly what you need to do, every step of the way.
Let’s talk about your role as a project manager. You will be expected to:
For that, you’ll need the following project management skills:
Ultimately, as a project manager, you will be the person responsible for the success of the project.
You might have heard about “the project life cycle.” It’s a simple way of managing projects in 4 phases:
Each phase has clearly defined activities you’ll need to complete. If you follow the steps we’ve outlined below, you’ll successfully wrap up your projects!
The project initiation phase of the project life cycle is dedicated to gathering all the documentation and requirements you’ll need to successfully plan out your projects.
The golden rules for successful project initiation are:
Make things as clear as possible.
After you’ve received a project proposal from your client (again, this can be an external client or simply your top management), review it to understand their requirements, goals, and expectations.
Your project scope statement should contain:
What is the client hoping to accomplish with this project? What are their short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals? (E.g. Attract more customers / Implement a legislative change).
What will be accomplished with the project and deliverables? You can use the SMART goal-setting method.
What should the final product look like? (E.g. An app for 10,000 users, a brand awareness marketing campaign, an improved recruiting process).
Criteria that will define whether the project was successful or not (E.g. You created an app that can successfully serve up to 10,000 users at a time – Successful. / You created an app that doesn’t have basic features the client requested – Unsuccessful.)
The things that the project will not produce. (E.g. The project will not produce a sales campaign.)
The resources you will need to complete the project. (E.g. Ten team members, independent contractors, funding, etc.)
Time, scope, and budget. (E.g. You have three months to complete an app for only 10,000 users, and you can spend $10,000.)
How will you discuss potential changes during the project? (E.g. Changes are acceptable, and subject to additional negotiation, or changes are unacceptable.)
Which metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) will you use to monitor project performance, progress, and success?
Once you have defined the scope of your project, it’s time to structure your work.
Focus on deliverables and outcomes, instead of actions. This will help you stay within the scope, while keeping your eyes on the prize.
For example, if you were to create an app, you would likely divide the work into front-end and back-end work. From there, you could divide it even further.
Your WBS is done when you can no longer break down tasks into smaller tasks.
When it comes to determining the feasibility of the project, and defining the necessary resources, it’s good to gather your team and discuss it with them.
If you’ve worked on similar projects in the past, you can create a baseline and estimates.
When you’ve prepared the project scope statement, have other stakeholders (for example, clients and/or top management) sign off on it. This will confirm that you are all on the same page regarding the project.
When you fully understand the shape and scope of the project, you can choose a project management methodology to follow.
It will give you and your team the structure you need to successfully complete the project.
Some of the most popular project management methodologies today are:
Your project is completed in distinct phases:
There are very few possibilities for additional iterations once you’ve completed a certain stage.
However, traditional project management is one of the most thorough approaches.
This approach is best suited to: simple projects where all the expectations and goals are clear from the very start., projects where goals and scope aren’t likely to change.
For example, if you were working on a internal project to adapt your company’s processes to new legislative change (e.g. GDPR implementation), you could select the Waterfall project management methodology.
Scrum is one of the most popular frameworks for the Agile, iterative, project management methodology.
Originally designed for software development, it’s still a great methodology if you’re building software, or if you often need to make changes to your project and products.
With Agile, you break down the entire project work into smaller work batches.
For example, if you’re building an app, you’d separate the work into features.
Then, you’d work on them during sprints.
Each sprint consists of the following phases:
List all the main product features/deliverables the client expects from the project.
Plan all the sprints necessary to complete the stipulated features. Establish the goals for each sprint.
Add all the tasks which will be covered in that particular sprint to your sprint backlog.
Ready, set, go! The sprint shouldn’t last longer than 4 weeks.
You’ll hold daily Scrum meetings (What was done since the last meeting?
What do the team members plan to do today? Are there any issues?).
Add any additional tasks irrelevant to the current sprint to the backlog for future reference.
After you’ve finished your sprint, test out the features / deliverables, and discuss your performance.
Review the backlog, as well as any additional tasks that might have appeared during the current sprint.
Demonstrate or implement the feature created during the sprint.
Compare with acceptance criteria, and get feedback from the client.
This methodology emphasizes communication.
You should get in touch with the client after completing every sprint, and modify the project scope statement / project requirements accordingly.
Kanban is one of the simplest methodologies for organizing your project work.
It’s a great fit for teams who have to juggle multiple tasks at once, and who can’t work in sprints.
It’s also great for long-term projects, and even separately, as a task management tool.
Every Kanban board has three columns:
You and your team will simply add tasks to the appropriate column and then shift them accordingly as you complete them.
Kanban is best suited to teams that need to limit their work in progress, and simply get things done.
However, if you’re working on more complex projects, you can implement Kanban as a task management method.
Learn more about task management in the “Planning the Project” section of our guide.
If you and your team frequently work on similar projects, Lean project management can help you standardize for consistent excellence.
It also works great for projects in industries and sectors that struggle with redundant activities (e.g. banking, legal, administration).
With Lean, you will complete project work in the following phases:
You can also combine Lean with Agile and Kanban to create a turbo-charged project management process.
The Critical Path method is one of the oldest and yet, most efficient project management methods:
Et voila! You’ve found your critical path!
The main benefit of this methodology is much more accurate scheduling.
If there’s a delay with one task, you’ll easily understand how that will reflect upon your entire project timeline.
The Critical Path method is a great fit for project teams that are struggling with resource constraints.
If you don’t have all the team members at your disposal, or if you don’t have a lot of time to complete the project, CPM will work great.
You can also use CPM as a tool, not as a standalone project management methodology.
Finally, you can simply use the life cycle method to structure your projects and processes:
While not generally considered a separate methodology, the PMBOK method consists of four stages natural in the project life cycle, and it’s frequently used by occasional project managers.
For more complicated methodologies such as Prince2 and Extreme Programming, please consult our full guide to project management methodologies.
One of your roles as a project manager is to communicate and engage with stakeholders, namely:
The best way of approaching this new duty is by creating a project communication plan:
You can also create a RACI matrix with more details about stakeholder responsibilities, consultations, and engagement.
Some of the benefits of project tracking include:
The best tools incorporate the following features:
Project management tools will help everyone stay in the loop regarding project progress, as well as increase transparency across your team.
If possible, find one tool that covers all of your needs.
This way, your entire project will have a central knowledge hub for collaboration and knowledge-sharing.
Avoid having to switch between different tabs.
Make sure that the tool offers analytics and reporting, as that will allow you to automatically send reports to stakeholders.
