There are numerous ways to fail as a project manager. Many Project Managers just live with their job as project manager and don’t actually manage the projects. Many Project Managers simply don’t get time to get updated with latest technology tools and best practices. Let’s take a look at some of the ways in particular that project managers can succeed.

Use project management tools effectively
There are hundreds of project managing tools available today. Project management tools today can be of such enormous aid that they can mean the difference between a project succeeding or failing. Just to name a few for enterprise project management to personal project management- Microsoft Project, QualBridge Enterprise Project Manager, eProject, Wrike, Primavera, ProExecute, BaseCamp, OpenProj (Free and Open Source) and dotproject (.NET based free and 0pen source) are some of the very successful project management software tools.

Manage your time well
Speaking of time, first of all you personally should be organized and achieve the desired outcome on time and on budget, then your project team will follow you. Be an example.

Conduct meetings effectively
Meetings are necessary in completing projects - project planning meeting, stakeholder meetings, project team meeting, weekly briefing, daily scrum and so on. Focus on the agenda, prioritize the discussions and focus on output. You should become an effective meeting manager also to become a successful project manager.

Maintain a sense of humor
Activities in a project may go wrong. But you have to maintain a sense of humor so that you don’t do damage to your health, to your team, to your organization, and to the project itself. Sometimes, not always, the best response to a breakdown is to simply let out a good laugh. Take a walk, stretch, revitalize yourself, and then come back and figure out what you are going to do next. Identify your best time to solve critical problems. My brains work well in the early morning, what about you?

Give and receive criticism
Team is very delicate to deal. Giving effective criticism to team is not so easy. There is a greater chance to break a thin line of patience and your team members may get upset. So learning the emotions of each of the team members is very important. Similarly, the ability to receive criticism is crucial for project managers.

Improve decision-making skills
Decision-making is a skill that can be learned and improved. Since you can make decisions on time, you are chosen as project manager. You should be quick to give decisions and the decisions should be right, because your team members look to you
for some approvals, choices from many options and prioritize activities.

Be adaptive
You may not know everything. Team members, other project managers, and those who authorize the project to begin with can provide valuable input, including new directions and new procedures. Accept any good suggestions if adaptable with project time, budget and resources.

Trust yourself
There may arise the moments during project execution, when Project Managers lose their hope and confidence. It it continues longer, that surely make project fail. Trusting yourself and also team members is a vital component to effective project management.

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What do you do when you get a complaint from your client? No one is perfect and so no business is perfect. As a human beings, we make mistakes. What is important is - how you handle the situations when complaints are made?

Complaining clients tell you where you are going wrong. They’re the ones at the front line, testing out your service. If you handle those clients the right way, they will become your most loyal clients.

If you identify client complaints, analyze the causes and address those on time, you will win a lot of loyal customer. When clients complain they are actually giving you an opportunity to keep their business, business you would otherwise have lost.

Each complaining client gives you a chance to win a “new” client. Studies have shown that 95% of dissatisfied clients will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor on the spot. That’s the beauty of complaints: if you deal with them properly, and actively seek and welcome complaints, then word soon gets around.

Follow my suggestions below to handle the complaints:

1. Politely note the complaint if you are talking to client over the phone. Prepare a standard complaint form and send to client when you start project or sign an agreement for the project. This will make clients feel, lodging a complain is part
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When I started my first software development company (It was SoftroniX in 1995), I had to start everything from scratch. I did not know much about the Project Management. I did not have skills and managing a firm. I knew almost nothing about keeping accounts and running a company. I was thriving to be an entrepreneur and thats all. During last 13 years, I have worked in many in-house, offshore and international projects and handled varieties of situations in project management.

When you start a new project, most of the firms don’t clearly designate roles and responsibilities among project members. Most of the projects fail when team members don’t understand their role in the project. Project activities should be assigned to each of project members and let them know that they are accountable for those activities. Clear accountability is important, specially when firm is undertaking large, complex and multi-stakeholder projects. Each and every member of the project should be accountable to the activities they are assigned and they should be project manager for their own. One of the reasons of project success is the feeling of responsibility and accountability of project members to their tasks assigned.

What do you do to make project members realize accountable to their job?

I suggest to assign the tasks in writings. First divide the project into logical parts and describe each part in detail. I know, this is the most challenging job and we end up with abstract division of project. Don’t be lazy at all, learn to be precise to details. Project members always try to stick with the points listed in the documents given to them. So be specific and describe in much details where ever needed. Clearly assign name of the team member who is accountable for that part of the project and mark the project milestones. Never assign a task open ended. In many firms, I have seen that Project managers get documents signed by the members. You will see team members perform in more responsible and accountable manner if you assign their name against each task. If their roles and accountability is clearly defined, they will be able to focus more on their assigned tasks. They will not have to do research on the problems by themselves and project goes smoothly.

I am sure, most of the team members may feel this approach more strict, but believe me, with this you will improve the project output comparatively much better. To make team members more comfortable with the project and tasks assigned to them, involve them in project design, time estimations, dividing the project into modules, feedback on project problems, critical problem areas etc. If they are asked for their suggestions, they feel more relaxed and feel more accountable to what they are assigned.

Make each of team members feel themselves the Project Manager for their job regardless of the project size and duration.

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I got a overwhelming response to my post on Enterprise Knowledge Vacuum. People sent me ‘thank you notes’ for alerting them about enterprise knowledge. Most of those readers wrote email asking to suggest the products for document and communications management in their office. I have reviewed few of the emerging products in this area. I hope thise web based products will be of some help to you. Whether you’re putting together an important document or emails or client contacts or manage projects, these services will help get everybody involved. I know many other proprietary, opensource, freeware, collaboration, workflow and knowledge management enterprise products - like Microsoft Groove, Tikiwiki, Oracle Collaboration Suite, IBM Lotus Notes and many others. But this is the first lot of Watch-Out reviews for you.

(For your information, these are not paid reviews)

Approver.com

Anyone who has collaborated with multiple people on a document knows the true meaning of frustration. You have to distribute the file to the entire group, convince every person to review it by a certain date and time, and get them all to sign off on it. Approver.com lowers the pain quotient considerably. Upload the document you want to track, and the site routes it to everyone who needs to see it. It also lets you set deadlines for reviewing the document, and keep track of approvals and comments. Approver.com works with a number of apps, including Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF, and Open Office; alternatively, you can use the site to create documents, and have your colleagues read them online.
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My friend and one of my regular readers - Ananta Risal wrote me today:

How to help enterprise to retain their knowledge and which in turn helps you manage more?

Enterprises are already moving towards making knowledge more open, sharable and accessible. Knowledge needs to be collaborative, inter-operative and re-usable. Knowledge needs management. It has its own life - initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling and its closing. An exceptionally unique attribute that needs nurturing to make it dynamic & long lasting. How do you proceed in your life, department, organization?

Last year, one of the International NGOs hired me for consulting on managing knowledge in their organization. They use laptops and PCs, they use emails, web based free emails and everything they know about - fully computerized, very few things in hard copy documents. Most of their staffs are short-term contract employees. They join, work for few months as per contract and they leave. They write project reports and reports are archived, but always something is missing. After people leave organization, no way of accessing information in their laptops, personal emails, web based emails. Whatever available in organization network is all fragmented. Some information in emails, some other in PDF, Word, Excel,
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Estimation is the calculated approximation of a result which is usable even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain, or noisy.
-Wikipedia

How many projects you have delivered on time? How many projects canceled because of missing agreed schedule? How many clients you lost because of your inconsistency is delivery in terms of time, cost, resources? Have you ever calculated, how much you loose because of re-work, time extension, under-estimation or over-estimation? Do you remember which of your projects was completed on time with customer satisfaction or even exceeding client’s expectations? How many times you have fired your employees because of missing schedule? Have you given bonus to employees, who completed your assignment before schedule?

Don’t get lost with my questions…

We estimate everyday and many times a day for so many daily activities. We estimate time needed to drive to office, time required to complete an assignment, time and resources needed to complete a house, schedule and cost required to complete a software project and so on. Sometime we estimate purposefully and sometime its automatically done in mind. If we need estimations in detail and accurate, we spare some time and try to be more analytical. If the kind of estimation is more frequent and/or critical, we try to come up with some sort of template, best practice or widely adopted
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