7 best project management tips for 2022

Project management involves many aspects such as deadline and budget; contacting partners; supervising tasks at various stages. The project manager faces multiple challenges every day. Strong motivation and project management software are always helping to tackle them.

7 project management tips

1. Maintain effective team communication.

Managing a team requires perfect information flow. Many companies still manage their projects within the functional structure of the enterprise. This makes keeping communication between the particular departments at the proper level much more difficult. Information integration is, of course, a good way to find the middle ground, but it is better to rely on more specific solutions in everyday work.

Choosing the right project management software featuring a chat and mail module might be of great help. This way, the employees can talk to superiors and vice versa on a current basis. Furthermore, private conversations are often possible, as are discussions with people who run the given project or task in the group chat. Every instruction or request leaves a trace, so in case of any doubt, you can go back to an earlier reply. When performing tasks, you can update the progress on a current basis using comments and even tag your co-workers. Streamlining communication is, without a doubt, an important tip for a project manager. Remember that?

2. Learn to estimate the project's risk.

Even the most professionally prepared project manager has to consider the possibility that not everything will go as planned at every stage of the task. This risk must be factored in from the get-go. Thus, failures must be controlled and a means to minimize potential losses be found. It becomes easier along with experience gained while working on orders. Theoretical knowledge is an important support tool for managers, but the things you have to pay attention to can only be discovered in practice.

There are several ways to manage the project's risk. In addition to your own experience, you can also use heuristic methods, employing analogous cases to anticipate future events. Out of the endless number of projects the company has completed, the project manager chooses those in which the type of tasks and challenges are similar to the current project. If industry experts are involved in this process, the safeguarding measures are extended by the elements of the Delphic method. Already at the project evaluation stage, it is good to describe the course of its implementation in detail to avoid future mistakes.

3. Choose the best project management software.

Technology will never replace human wisdom, but it is a good ally. It is worth it to be open to new solutions and rely on innovative management. Automation of processes greatly streamlines the recurring and, let us not hide it, boring but necessary tasks. When we use professional project management software, we finally find the time needed to perfect the details. Increased efficiency of operations translates directly into a higher tactical and strategic level of project management. Deployment of project management software is a key tip for the project manager.

Here are several examples of the most interesting options:

• Jira

A legend in the world of project management software. It is a highly developed program with a whole lot of functionalities. Unfortunately, Jira is very difficult to tackle—the number of functions makes it very difficult to implement the software in the company and, first and foremost, to teach your employees how to use it.

• IC Project

This functional and easy-to-use project management tool meets all the key requirements of any project manager. It ensures effective planning of activities using the popular Gantt method and has a cost control module and an invoicing plug-in. The most important aspect is, however, the intuitive mobile application, which allows you to manage projects from any place in the world.

• Trello

A tool with similar popularity to Jura and used as its alternative by many corporations. In Trello, the project manager can only manage the tasks. It is still a useful way to organize work, but this limitation can be seen as a significant weakness of the software.

4. Hone your negotiating skills.

The art of persuasion was a frequent subject of reflection for the greatest minds in ancient times. Oratory skills worthy of Cicero are not indispensable to negotiating. It is, however, preferable to improve your techniques, especially when the stage of contract conclusion with increasingly big contractors begins. At the highest tier of cooperation, the slightest concessions may turn into the largest magnitude of both profits and losses.

The project manager is always negotiating something. Good negotiation practice is the choice of arguments and methods of their presentation that factor in the individuality of the interlocutor. The ELM persuasion model developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo shows that there are two parallel routes of persuasion: one referring to the quality of arguments and one depending on other factors—length of the message, reliability of the originator, and even his or her attractiveness. Awareness of the comprehensive nature of the message allows you to develop the best method to swing the odds in your favor.

5. Don't waste your time

Most models facilitating project management involve tools allowing you to set the hierarchy of goals: from strategic, through tactical, to operating ones. It is at the very beginning when the project assumptions are already known but the future is still vague, that you have to start thinking about the results. You have to consider this each consecutive day, till the evaluation stage. Why?

Time is the only seemingly constant measure. Hours drag during preparatory tasks but tend to escape, one by one when it is time to close the project. But if you use at least the well-worn but also well-proven Gantt model and specify precisely the project milestones, the well-defined goal will never disappear from the horizon. If you want to be a good project manager, you should use this tip.

6. Remember: you're not the best at everything.

After several years, the comprehensiveness of work on projects gives those managing them a sense of infallibility and omniscience. This hurts the relations within the project team, the members of which are gradually discouraged from putting forward their ideas for fear of criticism. Creativity, the one-of-a-kind treasure that drives modern business, suffers greatly as a result of this.

Additionally, the symptoms of the "god complex" have bad consequences for the person concerned as well. Overzealous striving for perfection increases the level of frustration as it is hard to find the time for a perfect performance or correction of the given activity or task. The focus is placed on the goal of the project but on the particular operating tasks, the significance of which is minor in the context of the success of the entire initiative.

7. Learn to rest

Project management entails living in constant stress. Work gives a lot of satisfaction, but it is often at the expense of shattered nerves. Overlapping deadlines or the need to do many tasks at once—are only some of the reasons project management is treated as an unpleasant duty after a couple of years. To find pleasure in work, learn to rest. It is the only way you can improve your productivity. And not only yours. A well-rested employee is an efficient employee. And yes, there will be many sighing: "easier said than done", but you should try not to think about all the "buts" and start acting and... go for a walk.

Most of the above tips concern mostly soft competencies. For some project managers, this knowledge seems useless and lacks specifics. This way of thinking is a mistake. Knowing the universal features that distinguish a good project manager allows you to become flexible and best prepared for any changes. Changes are, after all, unavoidable in business. The stakeholders should be continuously encouraged to be innovators.

In crises, perfect software operation or knowledge of regulations is not what comes to aid. They are, obviously, indispensable, but we must remember that project management is, first and foremost, continuous work with people and persuading others to adopt our ideas—not only our superiors but also, which is rarely mentioned, our customers. This gives rise to the need for diversification of skills, which, in the long run, will translate into the accomplishment of strategic goals.

Meeting only the above recommendations already allows us to manage projects at least a bit more effectively. In this domain, it is not quantity that matters, but quality. Every task must be completed at least duly. However, functioning in conditions of uncertainty and growing competition frequently makes this minimum insufficient. Use 7 project management tips and employ comprehensive solutions, such as multi-task project management software, and always be one step ahead of your business rivals.