Jory MacKay on May 21, 2024 How to get the biggest benefits from project management
Whether you’re a smaller team, early-stage startup, or even an established enterprise, the success of your business depends on making constant changes to adapt to your customer’s needs. But making these changes without a proper project management approach inevitably wastes time, effort, and money.
Project managers bring order to chaos, help align cross-team projects, wrangle budgets and schedules, and so much more.
If you’re seeing inefficiencies in your business or are continually failing to hit your goals, there’s a good chance you need a project manager (or, at the least, to start following proper PM tactics).
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In this guide, we explore how to know if you need a project manager, what a trained project manager really does and the benefits you should expect to see, and how to get the most out of hiring a PM for your team.
How to know if you need a project manager
Project management is the process of planning, organizing, coordinating, and managing changes within an organization.
In reality, great ideas become reality by combining many project management skills, such as scheduling, budgeting, and communication, to ensure changes are made in a controlled and effective manner.
Behind the scenes, most companies have some level of project management structure in place, be it budget approval meetings, design workshops, software development cycles, and customer communication plans.
But, side-of-desk project management delivers patchy results.
If you don’t follow a consistent project management structure, you’re likely to overspend on budgets, take longer to implement changes, and deliver sub-par outputs to your customers.
Don’t believe us? Here are some common signs your company could benefit from a dedicated project manager or project management framework:
- Your team constantly misses deadlines. Project managers are responsible for creating and ensuring everyone sticks to the project’s schedule. This doesn’t just come from good organization but from knowing how to estimate work before timelines are committed.
- You’re always dealing with “scope creep”. Poorly run projects take on tasks they shouldn’t — commonly known as scope creep. If your projects regularly balloon out of proportion, you could benefit from the governance and control of a good project management framework.
- You have no visibility of budgets. Because they don’t have the complete focus of a project manager, side-of-desk projects end up costing more than planned. To avoid poor estimating, admin mistakes, and inflated supplier quotes, we’d recommend hiring a project manager who knows their stuff.
- Team members and stakeholders are misaligned. Even in busy times, stakeholders in a project should know what’s going on. If your teams are confused about what’s happening when in your projects, you need more structure, more alignment, and better communication.
- Changes make you feel uncomfortable. All projects have a level of risk. But, when the changes you’re making feel a little out of control, you’ve exceeded your risk appetite and need better controls within a project management framework.
- Everyone feels like they have too much to do — and not enough time to do it. Resource and capacity management is a big part of project management, so if team members constantly feel stretched, you need someone to come in and improve the level of human resource coordination.
- The quality of the outcomes are poor. Like many things in the business world, the more time, effort, and money you put into something, the better the result. A dedicated project manager will raise the level of your project outputs, helping you drive key metrics such as increased revenue, profit, and customer satisfaction.
The bottom line: If you’re failing to hit goals, your team is confused, frustrated, and overworked, or you’re constantly going over budget and missing deadlines, you need a project manager.
What project managers do: The basic project management practices
For many organizations, project managers are the glue that sticks everything together. Their job is to be at the center of a change, ensuring all moving parts come together to drive the company forward.
It’s a big job that changes and evolves as a project progresses. If you’re looking to bring your first dedicated project manager on board, here’s what you can expect from them through each phase of a traditional project lifecycle.
Initiation: Setting you up for success
The Initiation phase is all about getting a project properly set up, ensuring it has solid foundations to move forward and become a reality.
During the project initiation phase, a project manager will:
- Establish the goal, objectives, benefits, and strategic alignment of the project
- Identify the high-level scope of work, including what will and won’t be completed
- Estimate the time, costs, and resources required
- Gather stakeholders and align everyone with an initial communication
- Validate the project by creating a business case for approval
Planning: Laying out the path ahead
With the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the project established, the planning phase determines ‘how’ to turn the objectives into reality.
During the planning phase, a project manager will:
- Gather the detailed project requirements, including customer and user feedback
- Onboard resources to the project team, such as designers, developers, and testers
- Break down the tasks and activities of the project, estimating their time and cost
- Validate the expected project benefits, including financial and non-financial benefits
- Create a full project plan, including the underpinning stakeholder, risk, and communication management plans
Execution and monitoring: Ticking off the to-do list
The execution and monitoring phase is where the real action happens as the solution comes to life.
A project management tool like Planio is essential during the execution and monitoring phase to ensure all tasks are tracked and being completed on time.
This is the busiest phase of the project, where the project manager will:
- Keep the project team on track by assigning, tracking, and overseeing tasks
- Control the project’s budget, including resource allocation and invoice processing
- Monitor any risks and issues to ensure the project steers clear of danger
- Regularly check the project’s progress by creating status reports
- Maintain strong governance by sharing project reports with senior management
- Continuously communicate with stakeholders to keep everyone aligned
Testing and handoff: Making it a reality
Once the project deliverables have been created, they must be tested and validated before launching them.
During the testing and handoff phase, project managers will:
- Validate the quality of the deliverables against the project’s requirements
- Launch the deliverables, including managing communications and training
- Monitor the success of the launch, including gathering customer feedback
- Begin to track the project benefits to ensure they deliver the expected value
- Gain sign-off for deliverables from senior project stakeholders
Closure: Dotting the ‘I’s’ and crossing the ‘Ts’
With the objectives achieved, the project needs to be formally closed.
The project manager will complete their job by:
- Disbanding the team, releasing them to their day job or onto another project
- Capturing any lessons learned to help the business improve for the future
- Completing the final administrative work by following a closure checklist
- Creating a closure report detailing the performance of the project
- Gaining approval to close the project from the project sponsor
A project manager’s exact roles and responsibilities vary from company to company. While some companies choose to adopt an agile project management framework, where project managers take a more hands-off approach, largely, the roles and responsibilities are the same.
The 9 greatest benefits of project management (and how to get them)
Project management provides organization, communication, and structure, but how will that improve your organization?
Let’s look at nine of the biggest benefits of adopting a project management framework in your company:
1. Greater clarity of roles and responsibilities
By working at the helm of your initiatives, project managers gain a helicopter view of what needs to be done and who’s going to do it. That makes assigning clear roles and responsibilities easier, making the project a more efficient machine that people enjoy working in.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Empower your project manager to clarify roles and responsibilities. This is especially important in matrix teams, where individuals may not officially report to the project manager.
- Ensure your organization has a good grasp of resource management. This includes who are the experts in particular areas, as knowing this will support effective resource allocation and help provide clarity.
- Take time to learn how your team works. As a project manager, decision-making frameworks such as a RACI help document and visualize how people and teams work together. Assigning responsibility and accountability early in the project helps everyone achieve a high level of clarity.
2. Improved team effectiveness through clear goal setting
The most effective teams know their goal and how to get there. The best project managers are great leaders, too, helping set the vision, objective, and roadmap for a project. When they do this, the team knows exactly what they’re aiming for and can focus on driving success.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Help your project managers develop their leadership skills. When times are tough, teams look to the PM for direction and guidance. Ensure that you equip them with the right tools to become a project leader.
- Make sure you have a clear strategy in place. Project teams can only succeed if they have a broader strategy to tie into. To boost team effectiveness, ensure your company and product strategy are clearly defined to help project teams link their work to the strategic goals.
3. Less wasted budget through strict cost management
A core pillar of project management is to ensure finances are closely managed. All good project management frameworks include regular review of budgets, including tracking and escalating any variances from the forecasts.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Partner your project manager with a company finance department member. This will ensure SME knowledge is on hand to support them. Additionally, include regular budget reviews as part of your control framework to ensure finances are monitored closely.
- Understand the triple constraint of project management. This will help everyone know the financial consequences of their decisions. Not many things in life come for free, and that’s true for project management, too, with increases in scope, timelines, and resources all driving a cost impact.
4. Reduced risk and less chance of issues and conflicts
Risk management is another core part of a project management framework, with regular controls and processes in place to identify, mitigate, and monitor uncertainty. The better you are at risk management, the less chance you have of costly mistakes and conflicts within the team.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Know the common risks associated with your industry or project type. Despite thinking we’re special, most organizations face the same challenges. To help your project manager stay on the front foot, list the common risks areas in your business based on lessons learned from previous projects.
- Ensure you have a clear risk management approach. This includes providing a template and guidance for a project risk management plan and clearly defining your company’s risk appetite.
5. Better communication and alignment across the organization
The best projects are the ones that put great communication at the heart of everything they do. Project management is a people-focused endeavor, so to get the best results, you must ensure all of your stakeholders are happy and aligned as your project progresses.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Include clear guidance on how projects are expected to engage and communicate with stakeholders. Communication doesn’t just happen by itself. The best way to drive consistency is to mandate each initiative has a project communication plan.
- Experiment with different communication techniques. In the hybrid and flexible working world, asynchronous communication should be prioritized to ensure everyone stays aligned regardless of their working pattern.
6. Creates a stronger team culture through servant leadership
Chaos and uncertainty breed negativity and stress. Through structured project management under the leadership of a great project manager, teams have the platform to build effective ways of working and a stronger culture.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Allow time for project managers to focus on culture building. Building a strong culture is all about creating opportunities for teams to collaborate and bond through shared experiences. Activities such as team rituals provide opportunities to connect and grow daily.
- Provide guidance on the leadership and management styles project managers can try to adopt. Providing guidance rather than being strict is essential here, as different projects lend themselves to different styles, such as a servant leadership approach.
7. More reliable source of truth from PM tools
To get the best out of your project team, you need the help of project management tools. Not only do they help the team stay aligned, plan their work, and improve communication, but they also provide a valuable source of truth for all project management documents and data.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
Project management tools, like Planio, are easy to get on board with, with customization options to ensure they fit into how your business works.
With Planio, you get a single source of truth for all of your projects — including tasks, Agile boards, team chat, file storage, code repositories, and more.
If you’re ready to start, you can try Planio free for 30 days (absolutely risk free — no credit card required).
8. Higher quality outputs by following a consistent process
One of the best benefits of following a project management framework is that it’s designed to ensure consistency and quality. Requirements gathering, testing phases, and regular project reviews help ensure everyone clearly understands what’s needed and ensure it’s been delivered to a high standard.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
- Make sure deliverables are carefully scoped, built, and tested. Ensure your project managers have a laser-sharp focus on delivering high-quality projects by having them read our 101 Guide to Project Deliverables.
- Ensure your PMs are completing a test plan to validate high-quality for your customers. Test management is another fundamental part of all good project management lifecycles, underpinned by a comprehensive project test plan.
9. Drive greater customer and user satisfaction
Talking of customers, the final and most important benefit of adopting project management is that project frameworks make customers and users the key focus. Whether it’s gathering feedback, prioritizing customer-focused requirements, or providing guidance on launch, customer satisfaction is always improved by project management.
How to ensure you realize this benefit:
When building out your project management framework, build in regular customer touchpoints to ensure their needs remain the focus. This could include completing user interviews in the planning phase, fostering strong client relationships, or bolstering the customer onboarding and offboarding journey.
How to get the most out of hiring a project manager for your team
The first step for many companies looking to take on project management is to hire their first project manager. If that’s you, here are three things to consider before making your first hire:
- Leader vs. manager. As the first project manager through the door, you want to ensure they have the right level of seniority to make a difference. To check this, consider testing leadership and management skills separately to ensure they have the right mix.
- Specialist vs. generalist. By their nature project managers are usually quite adaptable people, able to take on a challenge and deliver the right results. But sometimes, you want a specialized project manager, such as a Technical Project Manager, to help you solve a specific problem. When hiring, make sure you know what you’re looking for.
- Tenacity vs. flexibility. When entering a business to implement project management controls, a project manager will inevitably face resistance. Good governance takes time, effort, and behavior change to get right. To move everyone through the initial change curve, back your new project manager and provide them with all the support they need.
Side-of-desk project management delivers patchy results.
Planio gives your project managers everything they need to succeed
Most businesses run projects without even knowing it, but fail to get the full benefit without a dedicated project management framework.
The benefits of implementing one, alongside hiring a dedicated project manager, go far beyond just completing the project. With a proper project management framework in place, stakeholders feel more connected, aligned, and motivated to deliver outstanding results for the customer.
Project management tools, such as Planio, are great at helping you reap the benefits of project management. With all of your tasks, risks, issues, communications, and documents in one place, they help the entire team stay aligned, leading to fantastic project deliverables that your customers will love.
Try Planio for yourself — free for 30 days (no credit card required!)
