Ever wondered about the secret of delivering successful projects one after the other?

Sorry to prick the bubble but honestly, there is no such thing in the world that could ensure successful completion of every project you undertake. This being said, there might not be any fix mantra but there is definitely a series of project Management practices that could help you accomplish projects successfully (most of the times).

Being good at project planning and management is synonymous with following best project management practices. Different people have different names for them. Some call them project management methodologies, while some call them industry conventions. Whereas others might refer to them as international standards.

Often, these practices could vary from an organization to organization but you can always make your own guidelines or experiment with existing practices and add a bit of your expertise and experience to them.

We would like you to have a look at the following nine practices for better project management. Let’s check them out:

1. Ensure all stakeholders understand the requirements

One has to have a clear understanding and proper clarity before they start working on a project. It is essential that all goals and objectives are communicated to key people before a project is shown a green flag. These key people include team members, managers, sponsors, clients, and users.

If clients and the project team have a different estimation of the scope of a project, you are definitely going to get into trouble. Before you kick off a project, make sure project deliverables, goals, and quality standards are clear to everyone working on it.

2. Create a risk response team

It makes sense to have a risk response team in place already as things are bound to go wrong or unexpected. Though, their main job would be to take the worst case scenarios into account and have a plan ready for them in advance.

Make sure you include only those team members having enough skills, knowledge, and experience to save a project in case of a mishap. If you fall short of resources or your project management tool breaks off, this practice would come to your rescue and will get you out of it.

3. Create a detailed work plan

Having a work plan is crucial to the success of projects. A detailed work plan serves as a starting point for everyone as it tells who is supposed to do what and when that help project members to check off their project tasks and meet deadlines.

There is no hard and fast way to create a work plan. Just make sure that it includes the essential information, job-responsibilities, budget, deadlines at a centralized place easily accessible to people involved in a project.

4. Communicate effectively

Oftentimes, team members are just given a vague idea about the project requirements and ironically, they are the ones who would be working on it primarily. Communicate requirements to everyone, not just clients, and managers and keep them in the loop about the changes (scope), updates, and developments happening out there in a project.

Effective communication is one of the best project management practices because a little miscommunication could lead to delay in deadlines and further escalate to failed results. The takeaway is to keep team members involved and informed at every stage to avoid misunderstandings.

5. Develop both leadership and technical competencies

At times, a little too much emphasis is put on the development of technical skills than leadership skills. When companies start relying on technical competencies too heavily, the ‘softer’ side of project management starts getting affected as project management is as much about empathy, people skills, leadership as it is much deadlines and budgets.

Leadership qualities help you tackle difficult employees as well as situations at work. It is important that project managers and team members start grooming their leadership skills and focus on becoming a wholesome individual possessing both leadership and technical competencies.

6. Monitor and track progress regularly

With so many tasks and other parameters to take care of, it is possible to lose track of one thing or the another. However, if you inculcate the habit of monitoring and tracking progress at regular intervals, you can stay on top of issues that could creep up at the last moment.

Effective project managers realize the importance of constant monitoring and tracking the overall project progress. Perhaps, that is why most of them have a dedicated project management software that offers them valuable insights of how a project is progressing and resources are being used. It helps them to take the required action before things get out of hands.

7. Look out for potential risks

Though risk identification is pretty much a part of project tracking and monitoring but it should have a place of its own while talking about the best practices of project management. The risk response team needs to have a clear methodology for managing risks — from identification through analysis to monitoring and control.

Address even the smallest of problems before it snowballs into something big and affects the schedule, budget, team morale, and the quality of deliverables. Realizing the importance of risk management and analysis, more and more companies are including it in their workflow.

8. Consolidate all project-related information

Many effective project managers document all the project information so they can be benefited from the knowledge and experience gathered from past projects. It is quite an effective way to leverage this past knowledge to deal with future issues.

This knowledge base should be made as such that it is easily accessible by people working in different project management roles. Consolidating all the project information acts as a powerful resource not just to current managers but also those who will be joining the organization in the future.

9. Hold a wrap-up meeting

Once your project has been completed, it’s time to hold a wrap-up meeting and reflect on the successes and failures. It acts as a great opportunity to discuss what went wrong and how things can be bettered for future projects. Such meetings help you improve your work management that will be beneficial for future projects.

Plan, track, and deliver projects with a work management software. Try ProofHub.

Over to you

There are many other project management best practices and chances are that you might already be using some of them.

To become a better project management professional, it is essential that you are aware of these best practices, use some of them, and adopt the ones that could help you manage projects easier, better, and faster.

We would love to know your favorite practices for project management. You can leave a comment below to share your best practices for successful project management.

9 Best Practices for Successful Project Management was originally published in ProofHub Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.