Are you worried about running a project remotely? Do you have multiple teams in different locations to manage? Well, thanks to technological advancements, it is now easy to communicate with 4.5 billion people. That means it’s possible to coordinate a project involving different teams in different places if you know what you are doing. Here are some project management strategies that work, to get you started.
Define Your Project Goals
Goals matter. Where project management is concerned, you need to know what the end is before you begin the process of achieving it. And, as always, the key is in the details.
What is the end goal of your project? Do you intend to create a software product, or launch a new service? Should there be a building that people can see and use? Or do people need to access a functioning website?
It is during this stage that you need to define your team and state clearly what each member’s responsibilities are. A well-defined schedule also comes in handy. When is the project supposed to be completed? Deadlines are necessary, even for smaller tasks, to ensure that everyone stays on track in terms of progress. But you should also factor in the possibility of delays due to unforeseeable circumstances.
Break Down Your Budget
How much money do you intend to spend during each phase of your project. Money makes the world go around, and without it, you cannot hope to complete any project successfully. Studies show that less than a third of projects are completed within budget and on time.
Since time and project costs go hand in hand, it’s important for you to factor in the possibility of delay and the corresponding costs associated with it. You are better off overestimating your project management budget and saving your clients’ money.
It’s also important to break down budget based on tasks achieved and services provided or received. Knowing how much different professionals charge can help you understand where your money went and why it was spent that way.
Set Milestones
It would be exhausting for your team to work throughout without any idea of what they have accomplished. There are times when the end goal can seem so far away that it looks like you’re not making any progress. So, by setting milestones, you provide them with moments worth celebrating. It gives gives everyone a better sense of how far you have gone. That, in turn, helps to motivate them to work harder to complete the remainder of the project.
Establish Proper Channels of Communication
Even when you are managing a project remotely, you can still keep the lines of communication open. In this digital era, there are plenty of collaborative tools that you can use to share information with your team and discuss any challenges that come up during the course of your project.
You can also divide team members into categorized groups and give them their own mini-channel within the platform that you all use. That will enable each team to discuss only what is relevant to their team. Of course, they can still take part in the overall group discussion as the project progresses.
Conclusion
You should not let the distance keep you from managing a project that you find interesting. With the right strategies and a good cloud-based project scheduling software, you can manage multiple teams without any problems. Just take on tasks one day at a time and you will be surprised how quickly things can progress.
