Project management is a process of applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to execute a project successfully by meeting the desired goals and objectives. Organizations hire project managers to ensure project success. A project manager aligns the project goals with the organizational resources and makes decisions accordingly.
Achieving Efficiency and Productivity with Project Management
Managing a team with diverse members sometimes becomes a challenge for project managers, which leads to adverse results. Below mentioned are some pointers to improve the efficiency and productivity of team members.
Become a Leader
Instead of giving commands to your team like a boss, become a leader. Engage your team in discussions and be open to new ideas, suggestions, and criticism. The leadership style will improve productivity and increase excitement
Focus on a Single Task
Don’t overload your team with multi-tasking; instead, assign one task at a time with a deadline to meet. The approach of a single task will improve productivity and bring phenomenal results.
Strong Communication
Make sure to develop strong communication with your team members on a day to day basis and encourage the members to communicate with one another. Communication clears the confusion and misconceptions regarding the project. Through this, efficiency is increased.
Morning Meetings
Instead of arranging long meetings and sessions over a discussed topic, try to pursue morning meetings. The long meetings slow employees’ performance and creates a blur vision of the project. However, the morning meeting helps you to stay updated regarding the project, discuss current issues, future steps to overcome obstacles while maintaining productivity among employees.
Training
Staff productivity increases with proper training. Use QuickStart and register your employees for PMP courses online so they can be prepared for future projects and its obstacles in advance.
Reward System
One of the most used techniques to increase employees' morale is through the reward strategy. Give your employees something to struggle for, like monetary benefits. Organizations usually keep a bonus, promotion, or recognition at the end of a project to motivate employees.
Introduction to Agile Project Management
The growing competition in the market has created agility among organizations. The advanced and flexible project management approach allows breaking a large project into small chunks, making it easy to manage. Agile project management enables the task force to produce high results in less time.
Basic Guide to Scrum and Agile Project Management
Before you try to learn scrum and agile project management and the way they support each other, it is important to understand them separately first. Agile is a set of regulations that allows organizations to execute the project efficiently by dividing the project into manageable tasks. Agile is based on a few principles like cooperation, self-management, and diversification. Scrum is the system over which organizations execute agile development.
Use of Scrum
The use of scrum is not limited to any particular field. The framework allows multiple organizations to take benefit. Whether you are developing software or infrastructure, scrum can assist you by planning and organizing your team efficiently, leading towards positive outcomes.
People and Parts required for Scrum
Product Owner
A product owner is responsible for preparing a Backlog. A backlog is a list of tasks and requirements that need to be fulfilled for the final product. These tasks should be prioritized according to their significance.
Sprint
Sprint is the time allocated for the completion of tasks from the backlog. The time frame depends on the length of the task.
Daily Updates
Team members daily give an update to each other on their tasks and share the progress of the project with the stakeholder.
Review of Sprint
A review at the end of each sprint is discussed among team members to identify and overcome the obstacles that may arise in the next sprint. The review helps to enhance the next sprint.
Steps to get started with Scrum
- Official Scrum Guide: Download the official scrum guide from the internet. Read and understand the roles that you don’t know.
- Team roles: Read about each team role such as product owner and scrum master. Assign the roles according to the skills and knowledge of your team members.
- Backlog: A product owner is responsible for preparing backlog. Create a backlog and queue them according to their significance in the project. The backlog keeps on updating as the project keeps evolving and progressing towards completion.
- Projecting Sprint: Pick the tasks from the backlog list and assign it to the first sprint. The next step is to assign those tasks to the team members and set the time frame. You can either go with the time duration estimated by Scrum or decide a time length that works best.
- Completing Tasks: The team members meet daily and discuss the progress of the project. These meetings are of 15 minutes maximum, consisting of three major questions regarding the project. The three questions include highlights of the previous day, overview of today’s task, and problems that are compromising the performance and need to be sorted out.
- Assessing Work: After the end of every sprint, team members will evaluate their work and assess the problems that were faced. Brainstorm for ways to improve the work process and be prepared for the next sprint.
- Repeat: Assign new tasks to the next sprint and repeat the process.
Task Visibility
Team members must be aware of the tasks assigned to each member and its progress. A scrum board helps to organize the tasks, with the time duration, and its progress. This board helps members to have a clear concept regarding their job roles and responsibilities associated with the project.
Significance of Iteration and Enhancement
One of the benefits of Agile and Scrum is the involvement of stakeholders. With the end of every sprint, the product is delivered to the client for feedback. The feedback of the client helps to bring development and improvement to the product making it user-friendly. Contact our experts at QuickStart to learn more about Scrum and Agile Project Management.