Method 123: empowering managers to succed

As a Project Manager, you are always pushed to deliver your projects on time. Not a day goes by that you don't worry about whether you are behind schedule. To help you out, read these...
5 Steps to Delivering Your Projects
On a project, it is easy to get bogged down with the details and forget about the "helicopter view". You need to take these 5 steps...
Step 1: Define the Goal
Start by setting goals for the project. Sounds easy —but have you actually documented the end goal for your project? Have you specified the objectives, scope and deliverables in a Project Charter?
A Project Charter is like an architectural drawing for a building project. It tells the builder what the end result is going to look like, so the client knows what they will receive and the project manager knows what has to be delivered and by when.
It helps you to direct your team towards the end goal, so everyone is on the same page.
Step 2: Plan the Roadmap
With your end goal defined, the next step is to create a project plan that sets out the path ahead. List all of the phases, activities and tasks for the entire project.
Include delivery milestones and make sure that the right people are allocated to the right tasks so that everyone knows what they are responsible for.
With a concrete plan ahead, you can feel confident about delivering within the timeframe set. Without a concrete plan, no one knows what has to be done and by when, leading to chaos and mayhem (i.e. the usual project environment)!
Step 3: Manage Time Spent
Once you've communicated the plan, you then need to ensure that everyone is working on the planned tasks and not tasks unrelated to the end goal. It's so easy to go off-track on projects because you have lots to do and such little time.
Use timesheets to help your team track time spent. If your team spend more time than that assigned and the task is still not complete, then you will need to investigate why this has occurred and resolve the problems quickly.
Step 4: Keep a Helicopter View
To accurately monitor and report on the project at a helicopter level, you need a crystal clear picture of the project delivery against schedule.
Use smart software to help you get a helicopter view of your project by viewing a dashboard that tells you whether you are on time and under budget, every day of the week (without having to create complex spreadsheets or reports).
You need to know for every task in your project plan, whether it is under / on / over schedule. Only with this detailed knowledge can you control the status of the project and fix problems when they occur, to keep your project on track.
Step 5: Going "Belly Up"
So you've done all this but your project is going belly up (i.e. slipping). What then? Well the first step is to investigate the reasons why. It may be that the scope of the project has grown from that originally agreed, or you have encountered complexities that were not identified when you started, or that the plan was too aggressive in the first place.
Regardless, you need to 1) Stop 2) Investigate 3) Resolve 4) Report. You may need to redefine the scope of the project, hire additional resources to help out, or agree with the customer on a new delivery date.
You can do all this easily, using ProjectManager.com
Tools that Help you
We're often asked: "Which tools should I use to deliver projects on time?"
So here you go...
Software

You need software to tell you the status of your project, every day, to enable you to manage properly.
Smart software like ProjectManager.com tells you whether you're on time and under budget and it also helps you with team communication.
Templates

As well as software to tell you whether you're on track, you need tools to save you time.
Templates like those from Method123.com are a must for any Project Manager. If you have to document something then why start from scratch?
Save time and effort by using pre-filled templates.
It's faster and better than Googling every time you need something!
Methodology

If you want your team to improve the way projects are run, then you need a methodology, like MPMM.com
That way, you can all follow the same steps to deliver projects, making the team more efficient along the way.
Software, templates and a methodology help you manage projects easily, giving you the right tools at your fingertips