If you aspire to pursue a successful project management career it is imperative that you are PMP certified. If you are not already, you need to undergo the right project management prep course so that you clear the qualifying exam without fail. Qualifications certainly will help build your career.But along with the same it is vitally important you take care of some of the project management principles that we are now going to discuss. Let us explore what are they:
- Define your project organization structure
You will know that any project is by no means an individual effort and requires a successful team to get everything done. In line with this you need to make sure that your project organization structure is well-defined. It is the basic framework that facilitates the planning, execution and tracking all the project activities. The project success depends almost completely on how effectively the project management resources are used. To track and improve upon the same, the project organization structure is vital.
- Set clear project goals and objectives
For any success setting clear goals and objectives is vital. At the outset itself you need to dedicate quality time, so that the project planning goes well. The goals need to be set along with all the precise project objectives. Defining them is vital and then you need to monitor them closely to ensure they get executed rightly as planned. Without this any project management success is uncertain.
- Create a clear communication plan
Setting goals is good. But much of the execution will be carried out by the team players. Their contribution is imperative for the overall project management success. To achieve the same, you need to keep them always motivated. What better way to get them motivated than clear communication? So, when you are assigned with any project, after setting up the project goals and the project organization structure the next big thing that you need to work upon is a detailed communication plan.
- Define the roles &responsibilities
The next vital step is identifying the roles and responsibilities of all the team members. They need to clearly understand what are they expected to do. It has to be communicated clearly. Once this is done the team members themselves need to track their progress as do the team leaders. It is a great way of understanding how the progress is being made.
Create a risk management plan
The last but not the least is creating an efficient risk management plan. Despite all our best efforts, it is possible that the project might not progress as per plan, owing to many factors that are not in our control. Therefore, it is very important that we have a management plan in place that can take care of all such risks. Our goal should be to proactively manage those risks by defining an upfront risk response strategy by setting appropriate triggers. However, some of the risks are of unknown category and cannot be proactively managed and therefore have to be reactively managed by creating contingency and management reserves.
Summing up
To sum up, we can say that to become a successful project manager one requires a thorough understanding of the principles of project management.