Project management in companies in 2022

Project management in companies assumes a breaking of the business strategy down into smaller goals that are easier to monitor and accomplish. These may deal with the orders in execution, but also with recruitment or implementation of new solutions, such as the use of the project management coaches knowledge and skills in teams. What is the popularity of such an approach in businesses, and how can you effectively implement good project management on your own?

Project management in businesses: organizational structure

Performance of projects on various scales and forms has accompanied man since ancient history. Coordination of deliveries, deadlines of stages of work, and quality control all require efficient management at individual levels of organization and communication between them. This can be achieved only by dividing tasks into smaller chunks performed at the specified time by specialized groups of individuals.

The traditional approach to the issue requires complex reporting, which may over time become a burden, paralyzing the completion of tasks. On the other hand, it is true in a lot of cases that the lower levels, those responsible for the basic activities, should not be left with too much freedom. In the case of more complicated projects, problems or delays in one team may even force huge changes in the plan and add work to other units.

For this reason, special importance is attached to the application of modern methods for delegating tasks and supervising their performance in project management. They should always be adapted to the specific nature of the given undertaking, its complexity, technical and legal requirements, freedom in the performance of separate activities, meeting of deadlines, etc. However, irrespective of whether your business deals with logo creation or website development, there are certain aspects of such an approach to a business strategy that remain the same.

Applications of Project Management in Businesses

According to the KPMG report entitled Project Management in Companies from October 2019, 74% of surveyed businesses declared that they applied a project-based approach to their operations. At the same time, the vast majority of respondents use original in-house approaches to manage the tasks to be carried out. On the other hand, very large businesses, being local branches of global concerns, focus on applying the standards in place across the organization.

Recognized and widely spread methodologies like PRINCE2, IPMA, and PM are employed by 19%, 12%, and 7% of the surveyed businesses, respectively. Please note that merely 25% of the respondents declared a willingness to change the management methods applied so far. This can result from the fear of difficulties to be faced when implementing a new system or from the satisfaction with the performance achieved so far, which leads to a lack of motivation to seek new solutions.

A huge dissonance in the survey results can be seen in the comparison of the subjective evaluation of the effectiveness of project management – 56% of good marks and 17% of very good marks – with the fact that as many as 55% of the respondents do not measure project management maturity. This means that an intuitive approach is assumed when evaluating the achieved results instead of an objective, measurable one. This may lead to a situation where mistakes are repeated in an organization and poor performance of projects in the given business.

Advantages of a Project-Related Approach to Business Strategy

The advantages of the project-based approach result directly from its assumptions. A business working in a project-based structure is divided into teams appointed to carry out smaller tasks, all leading to the achievement of the final goal. Within a hierarchical management structure, it leads to improved communication and flexibility in reacting to any occurring problems by delegating current management to lower levels.

As Norbert Sinkiewicz, Head of Marketing at IC Project, explains, more and more businesses are concluding that project management at a high level is key to effective activities and effective organization of business work. At present, most businesses decide to apply the appropriate technologies, which is connected with the deployment of a special project management tool. Such software allows control over a high number of projects and facilitates day-to-day work, which in turn leads to the effective and timely completion of every project. Project-based work is something that has already taken root in Polish businesses and is doing very well.

Software for Project Management

The deployment of project management in businesses is much easier when dedicated software is used. A perfect example of such software is the IC Project. This is a cloud-based tool that serves to manage separate tasks and the whole business comprehensively. It allows dividing projects into tasks and task groups and managing them using the Kanban method. Thanks to it, you can create a task, assign employees to it, and set deadlines or guidelines easily.

Moreover, IC Project features a built-in calendar, instant messenger, and file manager, which makes it easier to gather appendices in the dedicated folders. Its additional advantages are an invoicing module and the possibility of co-creating a project with the given client. This considerably simplifies the supervision over the performance of individual tasks both for the management staff and for the client and shortens the communication path in matters concerning the given order.

Proper project management software should stand out with its transparency and ease of management of the wide variety of features it offers. Key functions include those that allow for the monitoring of deadlines, employee absences, supervision of task performance, and the provision of communication channels. Apart from the IC Project, similar assumptions are implemented by such software packages as Jira or MS Project.

Project Management in Brief

According to the traditional approach to project management, it should cover project duration, lead time, budget, and quality, striking the sweet spot between all of them. Naturally, a short time, broad scope, and low budget will not allow us to achieve high quality. However, the Agile approach is more frequently used nowadays, which is based on a set goal and a prototype of a solution to which refinements and new functions are introduced according to real-time guidelines and feedback from the client or beta testers.

Such an approach works first and foremost in IT projects, but it is gaining ground in other industries as well. It lets you achieve a result impossible to plan traditionally and has considerable flexibility in carrying out tasks. An individual approach to each of them and breaking them down into smaller tasks always results in the formation of a unique product meeting proper quality requirements, the final shape of which was initially impossible to predict.

For this reason, the project-based approach works in every place without repetitive mass production processes. This is especially well-visible in the IT industry, for instance, when developing websites, but also in marketing agencies, architectural studios, and research units. Project management in companies can also be used in the developmental part of a production business to develop new products and implement innovative solutions.