Understand the what, when and why of the project and its due dates. This involves clear communication, and results in a realistic schedule that should satisfy the requirements of the client and your team’s ability to deliver it.
Use good, concise and informative email subject lines (email titles). Doing so will save people’s time and make your project team more likely to open and read your emails. A proper title allows the readers to know whether they should keep reading, and also makes searching for that email later much easier.
Don’t delete the history in email chains. Keep it in place so your recipients can read the full details if they need to. This will save time and reduce the possibility that people may miss out on important discussion information.
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.
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
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.
At the start of your project, ensure you ask the client what kind of reports they want. Automate or standardise your client reports if possible. Ask the right questions to get the best results for you and for the client.