Your Guide to Project Management Best Practices

September 13, 2021 - 5 min read

Emily Bonnie

Planning and overseeing a project so that it’s completed on time, within budget, and meets expectations is not an easy feat. The best project managers know how to balance stakeholder communications with preventing scope creep, watch out for risk, and clarify roles, responsibilities, and priorities within their team, all while upholding the principles of project management. Steal some of the secrets to their success by using these 10 best practices in project management.

1. Communicate with stakeholders early and often

This includes everyone who has an interest in the project’s outcome: team members, sponsors, and end users. Meet in person, if possible, to demonstrate your enthusiasm for the project’s success, set clear expectations, including each stakeholder’s role. Also, provide consistent updates, with real numbers and results, to keep stakeholders engaged.

2. Engage project sponsors

Having good project sponsors is the #1 predictor of project success, and yet fewer than 2 out of 3 projects have actively engaged sponsors. A project sponsor’s job is to monitor progress, help resolve issues, and champion the project to other executives — as well as understand the big picture of how the project fits into larger business goals. Essentially, they’re the link between the project manager and higher-ups. Hold regular check-ins with your sponsor to discuss project goals and required resources, and use this Project Sponsorship Checklist to guide discussions and clarify expectations.

3. Manage both risk and opportunity

Spend some time imagining worst-case scenarios and their solutions, as well as how you might prevent them from happening. Then talk with your team to get their input, and become aware of any known issues that will definitely affect your project. Just remember that not all uncertainties are bad: don't forget to keep an eye out for opportunities as well, so you can deliver value beyond what's expected.

(Learn how to conduct a thorough risk assessment here, and create your own risk management response plan here)

4. Create a detailed work plan, including scope, schedule, and budget

Write your project plan in terms of goals and problems being addressed (and what isn’t being addressed), instead of just listing tasks to be completed. This will help focus your work and protect against scope creep. Then prioritize project goals, identify deliverables, and estimate task duration to define your schedule and dependencies.

5. Host a project kickoff meeting

Your project kickoff meeting sets the tone for your entire project. Do it right, and your team hits the ground motivated, energized, and focused. So take the opportunity to establish a common goal, clarify roles and responsibilities, define how you’ll measure success, review risks, decide how you’ll communicate, and choose your project management methodology and tools. Be thorough, but try to keep the kickoff meeting as short and straightforward as possible.

6. Document everything

Documenting every step of your project is the key to ensuring you not only stay on top of what’s happening, but that you have all the data you need to analyze performance, make better decisions, and learn from your experiences. If a deadline slips, you’ll be able to determine why it happened, and how to improve your work process to prevent it from happening again.

7. Schedule regular check ins with your team

When you're managing a project, staying in sync with your team is a must. A short weekly or even daily standup with your project team is a sure-fire way to align on top priorities, get fast feedback, and help clear any roadblocks or bottlenecks holding your team back. The key is to keep things short and focused: what got done yesterday? What’s everyone working on today? Who’s stuck and what can we do about it?

8. Ask for feedback

As Cornelius Fichtner says, the P in PM stands just as much for People as for Projects. Good leaders understand that nobody’s perfect, and that we all have areas where we can improve. Asking for feedback from your team is one of the most powerful ways you can grow as a project manager and increase your chance for success.

9. Manage scope creep

When new requests start coming in, communicate the impact of those requests on the project’s schedule and budget and know how to calculate earned value. If different stakeholders have competing or conflicting requests, bring everyone together to discuss and clarify goals so you can move forward with everyone on board.

This concept can be confused with gold plating. However, gold plating and scope creep in project management can both have a detrimental impact on performance.

10. Hold a project retrospective

Even once the final deliverable is submitted, your project isn’t complete until you’ve held a retrospective and recorded lessons learned. Take the time to review what went well and identify best practices for future use, as well as discuss what could have gone better to determine how to help work get done more smoothly the next time around.

With these project management principles in hand, you’ll be able to deliver successful projects in any industry — from marketing to IT to construction and beyond.

Additional Best Practices for Project Managers:

Get More Project Management Best Practices, Tools, & Advice

Check out our Ultimate Guide to Project Management for a crash course on all things PM. You'll find everything from glossaries of terms and implementation tips for popular methodologies, to useful templates and step-by-step tutorials to develop your project management approach.

Emily Bonnie

Emily is a former Content Marketer of Wrike. She specializes in leadership, collaboration, and productivity. Her brain is stuffed with obscure grammar rules, an embarrassing amount of Star Wars trivia, and her grandmother’s pie recipes.

#PMO #Project Management Advice

Project Management 3 min read

7 Stakeholders To Consult Before Starting A New Project

When starting a project, there are plenty of things to do: planning your schedule, plotting dependencies and milestones, finding the right tools, setting up your budget and allocating recourses. But one of the most difficult (and important) tasks is finding the right people to work with. After all, the success of your project doesn't only depend on your funds, goals, and ideas. Consulting the right stakeholders from the very beginning can make your project run more smoothly and result in better outcomes. Here are 7 people you should work with to make your project a success. 1. Users Who could be more important to consult than the very people who will use the product of your project? Find out their expectations and requirements — the more details, the better. If you are aiming your project at a particular group of users, your top priority should be making sure your project delivers something of great value to them. 2. Subject Matter Experts In most cases, SMEs are either IT or engineering staff, but it can be anyone who possesses the skills or expertise you need: technicians, architects, data analysts, developers, business analysts, testers, IT team and more. 3. Finance Team Having a clear picture of your finances is a very important part of project management. A good finance team can review your budget plan, check your models, and help you with any issues that may arise, like staff rates, formulas, etc. Additionally, they can help you put together a business case for the project you are working on by reviewing your benefit assumptions. 4. Senior Management When you decide on your objectives and project strategy, always consult with senior management to make sure your project is in alignment with overall business goals and objectives. It's also a big step in securing project sponsors who will be engaged in your project's success. 5. Legal Team If you're working on a new feature or security upgrade, you need to be proactive in discussing potential legal issues. Even if you are informed on all the legalities for your project, there is always a chance that you are not aware of upcoming changes to codes of practice. Luckily, a legal team can not only inform you on what you should expect, but will also deal with compliance and issues of any legal kind. 6. PMO Resource allocation, estimates, templates, models — seasoned project managers can help you identify best practices and find similar projects whose success you can learn from. Project management offices typically have searchable databases that you can look into to find all the information you need. 7. Yourself Listen to your gut! Your experience is a valuable resource — along with that of your project team. Draw on all of it to create the best possible strategy to execute the project and achieve your goal. Author Bio: Kate Simpson is a professional writer and editor. She works for assignment help team where she is a senior content creator for various projects and also manages an editing team.

Project Management 10 min read

How 5 PM Experts Create a Fail-Safe Project Management Plan

Poor planning can doom your project before work even begins. Changing expectations, shrinking budgets, and frustrating miscommunications can derail even the simplest project—and make life stressful for everyone involved. A thorough project plan can prevent scope creep, overblown budgets, and missed goals. But actually sitting down and planning a project can be an overwhelming task. How do you accurately predict how long tasks will take? How do you translate stakeholder expectations into concrete deliverables? What if something goes wrong? We’ve collected advice from 5 seasoned project management experts who understand exactly what's needed to create a successful project management plan. Essential Components of a Project Management Plan What should be included in your project management plan? For award-winning project management blogger Elizabeth Harrin, a thorough project plan includes these elements: Project Definition Statement: This is the ‘what’ and 'why' of your project: a short statement summarizing the purpose, goals, and final deliverable(s). Execution Strategy: Explain the 'how' of your project. What methodology will you use? Will delivery happen in a single launch, or released in stages? Scope: What is (and isn't) included in your project? Include your work breakdown structure and key deliverables. Schedule: Depending on how well defined your project is, this can be either a high-level overview of when specific items will be completed, or it can include your detailed Gantt chart complete with milestones and delivery dates. Organization Chart: An overview of the hierarchy of your project team, roles, and responsibilities. If your project involves multiple teams or departments, this should cover how those teams will work together, who the stakeholders are, and who’s leading each deliverable. RACI Chart: This chart helps you determine specifically who will do what for your project. It's a matrix of all a project’s activities, paired with all the roles involved, including who's Responsible (assigned to complete the work), Accountable (has yes/no/veto power), Consulted (needs to approve or contribute), and Informed (needs to know about the action or decision). At each intersection of activity and role, a specific person is assigned for each role. Find out everything you need to know about RACI charts here. Image Credit: racichart.org Risk Management Plan & Risk Log: Even if you budget every penny while learning how to calculate earned value and map out each milestone, no project, no matter how small, is free from risk. Create a plan for identifying and mitigating risk from the very beginning. Find a step-by-step guide to assessing and managing risk here. Budget Details: Include projected overtime hours, training courses, consulting fees, equipment and supplies, software purchases, travel expenses, etc. Some of these figures can be tricky to nail down ahead of time but try to be as precise as possible, remind everyone that your budget is an estimate, and know how to calculate earned value to tell if you’re behind schedule or over budget on your project. Communications Plan & Reporting Schedule: Include details on who you’ll be communicating with, what you’ll share, how often, and in what form. Procurement Plan: If you need to buy something as part of the project (software, materials, etc.) this is where you explain how you’ll research and choose a vendor and manage the contract. It's important to learn and implement good project procurement management strategies for this. Information Management Plan: Detail how you’ll store and share project information, control documentation, and keep your project data safe. Quality Management Plan: Explain how you’ll manage quality on the project, what your quality standards are, and how you plan to maintain these standards, as well as your proposed schedule for quality audits or checkpoints. This can seem like a lot of information to cover, but remember that this is just a project management plan example. A good project plan doesn’t necessarily include everything on this list. As Harrin notes, “A longer document does not make you look more clever or organised. It just raises the likelihood that no one will read it except you.” A simple project plan that's easy to follow is best. Start with a SOW According to Brad Egeland, experienced IT project manager, author, and consultant, the foundation of a successful project plan is a Statement of Work. Why? Because it gets everyone on the same page at the start. Later on, when new requirements pop up and scope creep sets in, you can go back to the SOW document to see what exactly the project was supposed to do at its inception. It is also important to be aware of scope creep and gold plating. Your SOW should include a general statement of purpose/business value, description of project deliverables, definition of milestones, estimation of effort, timeline, and cost, and a high-level description of team roles and responsibilities. Set a Timer Max Wideman, famed project manager and co-author of the original PMBOK, advocates a streamlined method for project planning. His SCOPE-PAK Approach will help you knock out a project plan in 60 minutes or less (Wideman encourages you to actually set a timer). Assemble key stakeholders and team members to determine what you want to accomplish and how you’ll go about it. Step 1: Stakeholders. Write down who should be contacted for help, information, or approvals, and define the project sponsor. If the list gets long, sort it into major and minor players. Step 2: Components. This is your WBS. List all significant work items and suggestions (save evaluating them for later— just record them for now). Limit to 30 items, and if your team is starting to sound like they’re searching for items to add, stop this step and move on. Step 3: Objectives & Outputs. Write down the project’s objective, then define what the output or results should be. Check your work by asking, “If we did all of the work items listed in Step 2, would we accomplish our objectives?" Step 4: Possible Alternatives. What alternatives would also satisfy the project’s objective? Is there a more effective way to accomplish your goals? Step 5: Economics & Issues. What’s the project’s funding strategy? How is it prioritized among other projects? What resources will you need? What issues will you encounter? Step 6: Plan of Attack. Look at your list of work items and decide which should be done first. Label that A. Then continue with B, C, D, etc. Then ask what can be done concurrently with A, or B, and so on. This is how you’ll establish the task schedule. Step 7: Assumptions & Risks. What problems could occur with each task? How can you mitigate risks, or create workarounds? Step 8: Key Success Indicators. Identify the 3-4 most important stakeholders, and ask, “What is most likely to make them happy?” These are the indicators for project success. Decide how each can be measured when the project is finished. You can (and should) do further work to clarify the project work plan, but in just an hour you’ve established a solid plan of attack: identified stakeholders, clarified objectives, and defined outputs. Don't Overplan For Ricardo Vargas, an internationally renown project management specialist, a sense of urgency is the most important ingredient of a successful project. Project managers need to be able to respond to customer and stakeholder requests quickly, and that means executing, not sitting around a conference table hashing out timelines and budgets. Your project isn't doing anyone any good on paper, so streamline the planning process as much as possible. Only include what's essential in your project plan, and then just get going! Vargas uses a consolidated version of the planning guide outlined in the PMBoK, and you can learn more about the specifics of each aspect of his planning process on his blog. Keep It Simple Project plans can get unwieldy fast, especially once stakeholders and project sponsors start weighing in. To ensure you're not over-complicating things, project management blogger Kiron Bondale suggests starting with the 5 Ws to provide context and perspective for the details of your project plan. Why: What are the fundamental business benefits of undertaking this project? What: What is included in the project scope? Who: What are the critical roles required to deliver the What? When: When must the What be delivered, in order to achieve the Why? Where: Where is the best place for the work to be performed? Where will the What be used by customers and end users? Only after you’ve stopped to answer these questions should you move on to the "How" of the project. Project Management Planning Best Practices As you can see, even among project management experts there are a few different approaches to creating a project plan. There's no one right way, but one best practice experienced PMs agree on: take the time to define and agree on the main objectives with the project's stakeholders before you start executing. Another best practice to follow: hold a project kickoff meeting. Take the opportunity to align your team around project goals, clarify roles and responsibilities, establish standards for success, and choose your project management methodology and tools. Get our tips for hosting the perfect project kickoff that will set the right tone for your team. Finally: document as much as possible. Recording your project’s progress will help you analyze your performance and make more informed decisions. More Project Planning Resources Project Management Basics: 6 Steps to a Foolproof Project Plan Essential Elements of the Perfect Project Plan (Infographic) 10 Steps to a Kickass Project Kickoff: A Checklist for Project Managers Project Management Basics: Beginner’s Guide to Gantt Charts Project Management Plan Template

Project Management 10 min read

4 Types of Clients You'll Work With and How to Delight Them

Professional services teams need tools to help them adjust to client communication styles while maintaining their workflow and project management best practices. Here are 4 types of client personalities and some actionable strategies to delight them without sacrificing productivity.

For Teams

Use cases

Apps & Integrations

Explore Wrike

Learn and connect

Become Wrike Pro

Your Guide to Project Management Best Practices