We have here nine things that every successful project manager should have and should apply to their everyday job.

1. 9 things every project manager should
take into account
By David Kiger Image courtesy of Sean MacEntee at Flickr..com

2. In many companies, and in the corporate world nowadays,
leaders are often seen and allocated as project managers.
The reason behind this trend is that companies and
processes are now regarded as projects, with a start and
an end and with tight deadlines that have to be met.
Being a leader is almost the same as being a project
manager. There are some basic differences between those
two and some of them have different styles and
approaches to their projects. Basically, project managers
have to be leaders, managers, bosses, CEO´s and even
secretaries in many cases.
Well, we have here nine things that every successful project
manager should have and should apply to their every day
job.

3. Communicate with each and every stakeholder
Communication is basic. The project manager has many
bosses and many people he or she has to be aware of. From
the very beginning, the project manager has to have the
ability to communicate goals and objectives to all the people
involved in the project, basically, to all the project
stakeholders. Some of those stakeholders are team members,
managers, project sponsors, clients, and valued users.
Manage the risk with a team dedicated to it.
Please don’t be naive and think that risks are not going to
come your way. Projects and tasks are always the perfect
target for risks and for strange things to happen. This is not
weird. The weird thing is that you as a project manager do not
have a response strategy for such risks and do not have a
team that is in charge of mitigating the risks. Think of this team
as the first line of defense when strange things happen.

4. Hold an initial meeting to get everybody on track.
The idea behind managing a project is that it is successfully
managed and that everybody is in for the ride. Project
managers should align all the stakeholders with a starting
meeting. This meeting should include everyone that is going to
have a stake in the project and will help communicating
smaller tasks and assignments to everyone involved.
Detailed work definition documents and work plan
Within every project people need to know their tasks and who
is responsible for what. A document can take care of all the
things that are not clear and uncertain. It also tells the
manager who does what and what is their level of
accountability. When it comes to a detailed work plan,
milestones and deadlines are the most important. They need
to be met and everybody within the project need to be on
board with schedules and goals.

5. Keep track of everything
Every project manager has been late on deliveries and has
been late to get things done. Why does this happen? How can
it be avoided? What are the causes? The only way to know
and to understand your mistakes, to not repeat them, is to
keep track of every little thing. Write it down, save it on a file,
keep post it notes, do whatever it takes to document
everything that happens at the company so in the future you
have an archive to draw ideas from or to learn from past
mistakes.
Feedback
Project managers need to understand this amazing tool.
Everybody needs somebody to tell them that they are doing
things in the correct way. Nobody is perfect, and mistakes will
come along. The feedback approach is the best thing a
project manager could do in order to make his or her team
improve.

6. As a project manager what you have to do is to make sure
that the project runs and never forget that you are also
dealing with humans with their own world. Feedback is the
tool that can make you understand what is happening to
your team and people.
Communicate the progress
Sometimes we forget to tell people what is going on,
especially when things are going well. The idea is to know
what to accept and what to decline so there is no overload
of projects or tasks that affect the timeline or the budget of
the project.

7. New inputs
New requests and ideas often come to the project´s arena.
This is not a bad thing but project managers should be careful
to accept such change in a hurry. If this happens, the best
thing to do is to have everyone sign a new agreement
document so they can have clear information on what is
exactly happening.
Hold an outro meeting.
This is very important because when a project ends the
managers can understand who can be used for the next
project and how they can contribute to the entire corporation.
Also, having this type of meeting is very important for final
feedback and comments so many mistakes are not repeated
and changes for the next projects can be easily applied.
Be sure to also read this post on how to strengthen your
leadership skills