Practical Tips To Avoid Project Blockers and Run Your Project Smoothly

Imagine you have been working day and night to complete the project, and mere days before launch, something happens that halts the project's progress. Well, there are a lot of situations like these in project management. It could be a change in deliverables, new stakeholders, machines malfunctioning, etc. And these project blockers can have a huge effect on your project: a delay or full stop to delivery. But the good news about project blockers is that; they can be predictable.

No blockers are too great to be overcome, but tackling them can be tough if you don't have the right plan. To help you out, we have listed the top 10 tips on how you can avoid common project blockers and run your project smoothly.

1) Know the project inside out

To make a project successful, you must lay a strong foundation. And to do that, you must clearly understand the client's and shareholder's requirements and expectations.

After understanding that, do thorough research and find out if it is possible to meet their expectations or not. Then develop a solid project plan where the roles and responsibilities of each member are clearly defined.

Define long-term and short-term goals and objectives for better clarity and understanding. Establish measurable and trackable success metrics to track if the project is going in the right way or not.

2) Gather Up Resources Even Before The Commencement of a Project.

Once you have identified the project requirements, it's time to gather key resources that contribute to project success. Make sure everything is at the right place and start defining roles and allocating the right set of tasks to the team while considering their strengths, weaknesses, and expertise. Clear up everything from the finance department and set a clear hierarchy to make the flow of resources smooth. If you need a specific technology, do convey it to your client and shareholders to arrange it at the earliest. Ultimately, you have to gather or organize each and everything that you'll need to complete the project.

3) Get a qualified project manager

To make a project successful, it's important to appoint a qualified project manager who is capable enough to turn the tables when in peril and will leave no stone unturned. A good project manager understands the psychology of people and allocates tasks on the basis of his team's personality and strengths, and makes sure the process is both fun and productive.

He/she shall keep an eagle eye on everything and delegate the work accordingly. A good project manager understands when to jump in and save the project and gains the trust of clients/shareholders and the team. Also, here are some handy tips on how to crack PMP certification if you still haven't got your PMP certification.

4) Define critical milestones

If you haven't defined clear milestones and success metrics, you are bound to fail no matter how hard you try. The whole success of a project depends on defining milestones and KPIs.

This can be done by making a project life cycle. A project lifecycle is a blueprint that includes the main phases of a project i.e

• Initiation
• Planning
• Execution
• Measuring & Controlling
• Closure

Each phase having a dedicated list of tasks and KPIs. You should evaluate the progress after every phase. You will have to set separate milestones for each phase. These milestones indicate that your team is working with sincere dedication to complete the project successfully.

5) Communication is the key.

There should be a clear hierarchy and communication channel so that everybody stays on the same page and information can be transferred smoothly without any delays and hindrances.

New changes in deliverables, deadlines or anything else should be communicated to the team members to avoid 'surprise attacks.'

As a project manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that the communication lines are always open so that anyone can walk up to you without any second thoughts but with a clearly defined hierarchy.

Lack of communication can turn your project into nightmares. So, make sure there is a proper flow of information, and everyone has the required information to make decisions and proceed with the project. Using project management tools and project status reports is an excellent way to keep everyone on the same page by keeping them updated about new developments in a project.

6) Tap into team members strengths and weaknesses

The success of any project lies in the hands of people working on it. The project is bound to fail if the team is not skilled enough or doesn't complete their tasks (regardless of how capable they are).

One person's strength could be another person's weakness. So, it is crucial to understand your people's strengths and weaknesses and allot the work accordingly.

Drilling into the strengths and weaknesses of your team members ensures faster task completion and better time management. With everyone putting their best and making the most of their skills and strength, the project will be a success for sure.

7) Use Project management tools

Technology has changed the way we used to work in project management. It has given many gifts to the project managers in the form of tools and software that makes the work more efficient than ever before.

From storing data & documents, giving feedback, having effective communication and seamless collaboration — project management tools helps at each phase to make everything centralized.

Today's there are tonnes of project management tools that you can choose from. Asana is one such project management tool that empowers project managers to deliver outstanding projects with powerful features.

8) Pre-plan for potential risks

Risks are the potential threats that can hinder the whole progress of a project. All these risks need to be identified beforehand so that you can take effective measures in need of the hour.

Though it's not 100% possible to tackle all the risks, as a project manager, you should do everything in your capacity to foresee the risks and come up with strategies and solutions to tackle them.

You also need to test the deliverables as it is crucial to determine whether the project is heading in the right direction or not.

Conclusion

To make sure your project runs smoothly and meets the expectation of clients and stakeholders, you should always review the project as a whole and analyze various project components. Also, make sure to follow all the tips that I've mentioned above to make the project as successful as you want it to be.

How a Project Management Professional Certification can Boost Your career

Project Managers struggle on multiple fronts in leading projects forward from initiation to closure. They must employ both soft skills and hard skills to unify disparate teams and systems to work together towards achieving one goal against a clock that moves stubbornly forward regardless of the issues and challenges that crop up in the course of a project’s lifetime.

Whilst this can prove to be the most rewarding aspect of a project manager’s career, without a sound strategy and a solid framework on which to tackle these challenges, this can prove to be a defeating endeavor rather than the fulfilling experience that it can be. To this end, Project Managers would do well to undergo Project Management Professional training and certification to not only manage projects more effectively but to also boost their careers forward to success.

Whilst there are many ways to manage a project, the underlying structure on how to effectively manage it is universal. This is due to the fact that projects flow through the same phases regardless of industry, location, and size. Moreover, the same areas of interest are common throughout all projects to be the scope, costs, communications, etc.

To this end, the Project Management Institute (PMI) has identified a framework that has since become an international standard employed the world over in projects of all sizes. Its foundational yet comprehensive nature has become the gold standard of project management, giving certified project managers an executable framework that greatly aids the chances of success. The framework is identified in PMI’s PMBoK, the Project Management Body of Knowledge, on which the PMP training and certification is based.

To this end, the PMP coursework focuses on 4 main areas as follows

• Project Framework


• Project Lifecycle


• Project Knowledge Areas


• Ethics and Conduct

Each of these areas provides an indispensable structure on which to build a career in project management whilst offering a strong yet flexible framework on which projects can be built and managed successfully. Each area tackles a different aspect of project management whilst together they provide a tried and tested methodology that can increase projects’ success rates exponentially.

Project Framework

The Project Framework section outlines the best practices in the general administration of projects. Highlighting the differences between programs, portfolios, and projects, it goes on to provide a strong foundational understanding of the operations aspect of project management. This includes alignment of mission, vision, goals, and strategy, objectives and tactics, and organizational strategy and how it links with the projects being undertaken.

Furthermore, it explains how project managers can enumerate the business benefits any given project will realize and how these can be of value to the business. Working with constraints and organizational systems is another important aspect of project management which is covered in the course along with the role PMs play within the entire ecosystem.

Project Lifecycle

The project lifecycle is a consistent structure that is true for any project. A project is defined as a that has a beginning and an end, thus providing us with the first and last steps of the project lifecycle – initiation and closure. Within that time span, each project goes through the same stages. Once the project is initiated, that is to say, the requirements have been gathered, goals set and objects agreed upon, projects move on to the next logical phase, that of planning. In the planning phase, project managers, plan every aspect of the project from scope and timelines, to communication plans, the project charter, and costs involved. Once the planning phase has been fully completed, the project will move to execution where the carefully laid-out-plans are executed. Once the project execution gets underway, control and monitoring kick in which includes reporting to all stakeholders, and management of the actual project as it is being executed according to the plan. Once these phases are fully completed, the project will move to its closure phase where the objectives are met and signed-off and the project is declared a success.

Project Knowledge Areas

The project knowledge areas identify those areas that project managers need to concern themselves with. Traditionally, 3 areas are identified; cost, resources, and time, however, PMP digs deeper to provide a more holistic and realistic view of the several requirements projects have across the globe. By successfully managing the ten knowledge areas laid out in the PMP training, project managers increase their chances of success many folds over, thus ensuring the entire lifecycle moves forward with fewer disruptions and an equally less chance of failure.

The knowledge areas are identified as follows;

• Integration


• Scope


• Schedule


• Cost


• Quality


• Resources


• Communication


• Risk


• Procurement


• Stakeholder

These 10 areas, when considered together, provide a far stronger picture of project management and project managers would do well to spend extra time and attention in making sure that they familiarise themselves fully with all ten areas.

Ethics and Conduct

Project Managers need to conduct themselves responsibly and professionally at all times. As the ones bearing responsibility for the project, bringing together teams and people who might not always have the same goals can prove to be a challenge. With this responsibility in mind, bringing everyone together towards one vision and one goal might not always be the easiest of endeavors and as such ethical conduct if of the utmost importance. This not only helps people work together but ensures that the project manager responsible for the project is held in high esteem and regard, thus being able to provide better leadership to those on whom she or he depends.

Managing projects can be a highly rewarding career. From meeting different people to working with different business functions, being a project manager is an experience that helps the individual grow exponentially whilst teaching valuable leadership and life skills which can cross over to many other functions thus increasing the amount and breadth of future opportunities.

This can only happen if project management is done right and through acquiring a PMP certification, practitioners can ensure that they are putting both of their feet onto the path of success.