Project management is all about
performing tasks that lead us to the desired business outcomes of value.
Now to get to these outcomes a lot of tasks are required and a lot of which are
non-value add or of low value. Not only that, these tasks also consume a lot of
our time and efforts.
And the question becomes, how do
we prevent, reduce and/or optimize the overall project management process to ensure high productivity and
high value outcomes.
Before that, it is important to
identify and understand the nature of our projects and the associated
tasks. Next, bucket all low value tasks and plan to eliminate or optimize
them.
In project
management, there are lot of activities that are considered to be of low
value yet are required or important to ensure the true value of the project is
realized.
Majority of low value tasks fall under one of
the following categories:
- Manual
& Repetitive work
- Reporting
- Data
Silos
- Use
of multiple tools
- Scattered
Communication
Manual and Repetitive Work
During the course of a project there will be a
lot of repetitive activities e.g. reports and meetings.
Of course they are much needed to ensure
efforts and obtained results are in sync. Else you will end up far away from
your original project goal.
But then,
automating as much as possible is the key.
Restrict meetings to a minimum and extend
invites to required personnel only.
Identify what mechanisms or process
improvements can eliminate need of a meeting. E.g. a quick team chatroom to
capture all progress of the day rather than hosting a meeting with all team
members and each one waiting for their turn. Waste of time!
Similarly, creating manual tasks on a daily
basis is also not advisable. Having a tool that automates such tasks and
creates them daily will save a lot of time for your team.
Reporting
Project management is all about reports and
analytics. But if you are in an overkill mode then you will have more data than
action points. Result – there is no plan forward!
Use of project management tools that churn out
daily, weekly digests, task progress reports, resource allocation, resource
utilization, burn-down, project cost and budget reports in real time are a
must.
Or for that matter timesheets and resource
forecasting.
All activities of your project team must be
recorded in a central platform that correlates all data and provides you the
insights you need in real time, from anywhere and at any time.
Spending time in data gathering and manual
reporting should be almost zero. If not, then you must get the right systems in
place.
Data Silos
This is a huge productivity killer. Project
teams spend a lot of time and efforts in scouting for the right information.
And more often than not, the identified data
is stale, inaccurate or no longer relevant.
Information in today’s digital age must be
available in a few clicks.
Review your existing systems. BREAK any and
all data silos unless absolutely necessary due to compliance or regulatory
requirements.
Plan any possible integrations or migration of
data into a central platform and enable roles based access from thereon.
Data silos lead to a lot of inefficiency,
errors and decisions one would regret later as the full context is often
missed! Prevent that at all costs!
Use of Multiple Tools
This is another mistake most organizations do.
Too many tools at the team’s disposal. Hence, they often spend time going from
one tool to another to get their job done.
Imagine the learning curve, adoption time and
overall cost of all team member’s time spent. Forget about implementation
costs.
Integrated systems are the need of the hour
and primarily so we have so many collaboration platforms with project, task,
time, resource
and report management features.
Thus, every business function of the organization
can get their job done from one single tool with minimum dependencies.
Most importantly collaboration is seamless, information access is easier and
in real-time.
They basically help reduce work management via
docs, emails, chats, excels and centralize all key activities within the tool
itself.
As a result, the team is not required to shift
focus for every other activity leading to increased productivity and getting
more things done effectively and in time.
Take a look at your current tool stack and
either integrate them or move to a one-stop solution.
Scattered Communication
Inadequate or untimely communication can cost
your project immensely. If you have to collect information multiple system of
records (SoRs), you are going to need a lot of manpower, time which lead to
significant rise in the project cost.
Thus affecting your project profitability.
And before that a direct dip in timely delivery,
productivity, human errors, reworks and misrepresentation of data. From any
angle, you are at a disadvantage.
As a business owner, project manager and
leader you certainly do not want to be in such a spot.
Decision making becomes slow and tedious. Risk
analysis and mitigation is also impacted.
Look to set the right communication medium,
frequency, format and the audience for each of your projects.
Note, stakeholder communication and
expectation management is key to your project’s success!
Conclusion
We can certainly not do away with all of these
low value items. But some must be avoided at all costs.
Surely revamping your tool stack or system of
records overnight is not an easy task. But you have to start somewhere. Look at
your competition.
Identify the low hanging fruits or the ones
that can be fixed quickly and offer great value.
For e.g. integrate your project, collaboration
and time
management tools
Fix processes by reducing non value add steps.
Do away with unnecessary approval steps.
All in all the key is to focus on the “most
valuable tasks” that generate the most bucks for your team’s efforts.
Do a backward correlation of the outcomes with
the team’s efforts and see where you can help them.
End of the day if your team’s workload is
flooded with low value add then you are not growing your profits, market share
and neither are your employees.
Everything is connected! Hence, connect all
your key activities on a single online project collaboration tool like Orangescrum that
covers all things projects:
- Task
management
- Time
management
- Resource
management
- Collaboration
and chat
- Automated
reminders, recurring tasks
- Operational
reports
- High
security with RBAC!
Book your personalized demo or if you are
self-starter, Sign
Up for a 14day free trial today!
