Project meetings can take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. A simple way to encourage meeting efficiency is to display the hourly cost of the meeting for all attendees to see. It is a simple way to keep attendees focused on getting things done and ending the meeting sooner.
You should not do every project you are offered. You need to carefully consider each opportunity and assess whether or not it is the right fit for you and your team. Doing every project eventually leads to project failure. Learn to say no! If you don’t, project failure awaits.
Keep good control of client communication. Ensure all important communications are between the project manager and the client project manager, especially for cost, schedule and scope decisions.
Automation of the collection of project expense receipts is a key element in improving project efficiency.
Implement a receipt scanning system in your company finance software or project management software.
Get to know useful project contacts within your client and supplier organisations. This will save you lots of time and will improve the efficiency of your projects and reduce the difficulty in getting the information or decisions you need.
Urgent requests are not always good. Be specific in your requests. Instead of using the word “urgent”, state the required due date and time, along with what is required. This will lead to better and more timely responses to your requests.
Don’t treat your project team with favouritism. Be fair and even with all your project team.
Use job performance related metrics rather than personal preferences when allocating roles, tasks and rewards
Short RFP/RFQ/RFT response times reduce the quality of project proposals and ultimately increase project costs. Reduce the chances of this happening by allowing sufficient time for companies to prepare quality proposals.
Good, regular project status reports are a very important way to ensure you and your projects are noticed. If you regularly make project status reports for all your projects, you will get noticed and be more likely to keep your job and get promoted.
Project controls are important. They help you keep track of project costs and schedule. A good project controls system will help the project manage its costs and schedule, preferably part of a project management tool. It should be easy to use and automate as much of project controls as possible.