Clients wonder and ask us, “What is the need of Project Management Professionals (PMP)? Why can’t we just manage it on our own and brief the team about the work? It will be so much cheaper!”
The truth is – A project manager holds the team and clients together. It is more than just managing and delivering the project on time. They form a connection between clients and teams and are responsible for creating a vision for mutual success. Project Management allows everyone to stay on track for success. It is critical to the business as it navigates through the ups and downs, clashes and catastrophes of business projects.
However, there is no doubt that it can be expensive and may take up a major share of the overall project budget. But running projects without it leads to a chaos with unclear goals, poor quality, impractical planning, excessive cost, and lack of resources. So the real question is, can you afford not to have project managers in your team?
Top 4 features of Project Management professional (PMP)
1) Proper Planning And Goal-Setting
It is said that “Failing to plan is planning to fail” by Alan Lakein
When teams work on their own without proper planning, the project becomes a chaos; it gets delivered late and goes over the budget. This is when project management plays its ultimate card. The success of this project depends on having a proper plan. This plan consists of all the tasks that every person in the team is supposed to undergo. These tasks are broken down into small chunks to track the progress and stay focused. It gives the advantage to identify risks at every step.
Project success depends on proper planning to execute the strategic goals. A Project Manager should be able to analyze, balance resources, and create a proper flow of the process. Setting proper goals with realistic deadlines will allow the team members to work within achievable boundaries.
2) Leadership And Constant Monitoring
“Without a project manager, a team can be like a ship without a rudder, moving, but without a direction, control or purpose.”
A project manager enables a team to do their best work. Project management covers the aspects of leadership and vision, coaching and inspiration, and removes roadblocks that may come along the way. It ensures progress by tracking and creating reports from time-to-time to stay on the right track. These reports contain insights of the work completed within the particular timeframe and a track of rest of the planned work, risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies, and any other outputs of the project as it progresses.
3) An Orderly Process To Follow
It is the responsibility of a project manager to encourage “the right people to do the right things, at the right time” and it ensures that the process set must be followed throughout the project lifecycle. Organizations must have a proper proactive planning approach rather than reactive planning approach to mitigate the risks of task duplication, team fractures, and ineffectiveness and hindrance among team members. The proactive planning approach leads to a great difference, as everyone is aware of their tasks and gives clarity of roles, processes, anticipates risks and creates the checks and balances to ensure the project is continually aligned with the overall strategy. An orderly and easily understood process ensures the company’s success and reduces employee attrition rate.
4) Ensuring The Best Quality
“Quality is about meeting the customers’ requirements and the deliverable being fit for use.” When the product exceeds the requirement, the quality of the product is high, whereas, if it doesn’t meet the requirement, the quality of the product is low. This is when Project Management comes into the picture. It plays a key role in assuring the right quality that consistently hits the mark. It is process driven and focused on the development of the product or delivery of the service. A dedicated team in this area will perform quality checks at every stage in the product lifecycle.
There are many other important aspects of Project Management such as risk management, strategic alignment, subject-matter expertise, and retrospective analysis to learn from past experiences. All these aspects will be covered in detail in Cognixia’s Training on PMP. Reach out to us for more information.
