How a first-time project manager can lead a project to success
1. Project goals
If you are in a company that uses projects as a means of survival, then when taking on any project, you must consider whether the project's goals are clear and whether it is worth your time to complete the project, namely: the so-called Project Feasibility Analysis. Of course, this analysis is quite different from the feasibility analysis of the market of the merchants. The analysis of the merchants is to discuss whether the project will create corresponding profits for them, and the project manager not only analyzes the profit that can be obtained by doing the project, but also analyzes the importance of the merchant to the project, and analyzes whether anyone within the merchant will take this project. If the project is hindered, it is also necessary to analyze how to deal with the content of the project development and the team if the merchant cannot pay the project payment in time; if the project is delayed for too long, whether it will have an impact on the company's survival and future business development of the company, etc. In a word, it is necessary to take into account all aspects of the project, and carefully consider the possible problems and solutions as well as the unsolved problems, so that when working on the project, the risks will be smaller and the profits will be larger. some.
Of course, if you are dealing with projects within the company, a large part of the projects cannot be controlled by the project manager, and you can only accept the assignment of the company's leadership to complete the project. However, the project manager must also consider factors such as the leaders in the project company and the importance of each department, and take into account all factors that affect the success of the project, so as to avoid the project from being abandoned halfway (of course, the success or failure of some projects is the project manager is Uncontrollable). This is the important work that the project manager needs to do that will affect the success or failure of the project - project initiation and risk identification.
2. Project plan
After the project manager accepts the project, the first job is to plan. Develop a systematic plan for the project, such as timetable, function table, personnel table, and coordinating department table. This plan is very important, first of all, to give the project a clear idea, secondly to have a goal for the progress of the project, and finally to ensure the smooth completion of the project.
This plan is of course not fixed and needs to be constantly adjusted accordingly.
3. Project Team
After undertaking a project, the project manager must form a corresponding project team. Of course, there are many ways to form a project team. Some are through temporary recruitment and find some corresponding technical personnel to complete the development of the project (this phenomenon is more common in the construction industry); the other is to transfer related personnel from various departments of the company. People form a team to complete the project in a short period of time; there is also a project team that has been running in for a period of time.
Of course, any project manager hopes that the resources assigned to him are as high-level as possible, and as good as possible, but this situation is very rare, because the more excellent team members are added, it means that you are in terms of labor costs. Need to spend more money. Therefore, when the project manager is building a team, he must divide the different time periods of the project accordingly, and select different levels of personnel for different time periods.
As far as the IT industry is concerned, the requirements for personnel in requirements analysis, system design and database design are generally high. After entering the code writing stage, the corresponding personnel level can be reduced, and only skilled in code writing is required. Corresponding testers can also join in at this time and test each module that has been written according to the test plan. Project managers should learn to make full use of resources. Sometimes it is not the more the better, but the time to let go.
Projects can be long or short. For short-term projects, team members should be as familiar with each other as possible. Due to time constraints, familiar team members can reduce the break-in period and speed up the progress of the project. But it is not to say that the selection of the project team is directly proportional to the familiarity of the project team members.
If the project takes a long time, the project manager must organize a certain number of communication or outing activities for the team members, so that everyone can relieve the pressure of work through the team travel, adjust their mood and make corresponding active preparations for the continued in-depth of the project.
The project manager must regularly ask each team or team members to give feedback on the progress of the project, actively feed back the problems in their hands to the project manager, and let the project manager deal with the problems that they cannot handle. Instead of waiting until the problem is covered up and can't be dealt with, it will be a very hot potato, and the treatment at that time must greatly affect the entire project. So, to put it mildly, it's called "nip any problem in the cradle". And in order to do this well, the project manager must do a major job - communication.
4. Project Funds
Project funds are the main means of hijacking more project activities, but for many current domestic projects, project managers cannot access the project funds, which are generally handled by the finance department. Therefore, although there are many project managers who want to make more profits for the project, in fact, they are relatively shy about the control of funds. Most of the reason for this is that the salaries of people in many companies are relatively confidential these days, and companies are not allowed to inquire about each other's compensation. Of course, this method can maintain a relatively stable company team, but for the project manager, there will be a lack of a lot of real evidence in the regular project fund use report, but an approximate estimate and an approximate amount are given, but doing so will inevitably It will lead to false reporting of project funds.
Taking the IT industry as an example, the project manager never knows the specific compensation of any team member, but uses the corresponding personnel-level funds given by the financial personnel to estimate the project cost. For example: Divide the technical personnel in the company into three levels, and each level is calculated by ×× yuan/person/time. There is a lot of water in the cost table introduced in this way. And this is inevitable.
5. Project acceptance
After the project is completed, in addition to customer acceptance, it is best to do a corresponding internal acceptance within the company, so that on the one hand, the success rate of the project can be guaranteed, and on the other hand, it can also have the effect of internal supervision. It can also improve the continuous improvement of the company's project process on the other hand, and provide a model for the success of other projects in the future.
6. Project Summary
After the acceptance of each project, the project manager must do a good job of project summary; make a record of various events and processing methods in the project process, and provide it to other project managers for reference. The project manager needs to complete the evaluation of each team member and provide the corresponding work certificate for the project member.
The generation of a project must have its corresponding market existence requirements. While continuously receiving the project business, the project manager can continuously classify the project, summarize the requirements of the project, and form his own set of unique solutions for the industry project, forming a product. This can not only help the project manager to find past experience in the future project orders, but also find a new survival path for the company and himself through the production of this product.
In addition to the above points, the project also requires the project manager to be able to change flexibly and continuously improve his own level. In addition to the corresponding management skills, the project manager needs more leadership skills. He must lead the project team to success within a specified time period.
The project manager can be a person who is very familiar with the business or a person with good leadership and management skills, because the success of the project is not determined by the project manager alone, he needs a team and other projects The cooperation of relevant personnel, so the project manager is more concerned with handling/controlling unexpected events and communicating with people during the project development process.
To sum up, the project manager is to do five items: project initiation, planning, execution, control, and closing . If each link of these five items is handled smoothly, the project will have 60% hope of success, and the remaining 40% needs to be changed by the project manager in a timely manner. Project managers who can constantly adapt to new needs can lead projects to success.