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.
Projects often fail because the project team members are not clear on their roles and responsibilities. Make sure your project team members know what they are supposed to do with defined roles, clear role descriptions and briefs of what they should be doing.
Ensure your request for offer and also your offer documents list a single contact person for contacting for further details or clarifications.
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.
Manage with contracts to improve your project success. Define scope and roles clearly. Putting a lot of the project work out to contract is one way, with the benefit of being able to control the schedule and cost by applying contract terms. Or contract internally.