By mastering a few critical project management principles, you can overcome common project challenges and lead your team to success. These basic principles are the backbone of any successful business endeavor, offering structure, efficiency, and direction.
In this article, we delve into four essential practices you need to follow that will not only keep your project on track but also ensure active engagement and optimal resource utilization.
4 Key Project Management Principles: Overview
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Here’s a quick overview of the main principles of project management—focusing on these will lead to successful projects:
1. Create Efficient Workflows
Project managers use software, documentation, and frameworks to formalize and standardize business practices. Successful workflows are maintained and repeated, while inefficient ones are reworked or abandoned.
2. Project Management is People Management
Project plans can’t move forward without the support and engagement of its project stakeholders and the alignment of its team members.
3. Your Most Valuable Tool is Data
Company, industry, competitor, customer, and employee data offers you the insights you need to manage complex projects efficiently and effectively. Collect, organize, and analyze this data regularly.
4. There’s the Right Tool for Every Job
A project’s success depends heavily on its environment. We’ve compiled helpful lists of popular project management software, including comparisons, pros and cons, and full reviews.
These tools help with everything from identifying milestones to building out an approval process. They also help project managers avoid scope creep, manage risk, and more.
The Key Project Management Principles Explained
Out of the 12 project management principles outlined by the Project Management Institute, here’s a closer look at the 4 core ones:
1. Create Efficient Workflows
The #1 goal of project management is to create a formalized, structured, standardized, repeatable work environment that increases productivity and efficiency, reduces costs, and ensures project success.
Project managers can achieve this by leveraging the many tools at their disposal, including:
2. Project Management is People Management
Out of all the principles of project management, this one is harder to follow, as there are no key and measurable criteria for monitoring one’s performance as a project manager.
Project management is fundamentally about people management, as it’s the support of your stakeholders and the effort, collaboration, and dynamics of your team that ultimately drive a project’s success.
Managing stakeholders can be tricky business. Here are some things to keep in mind:
Listen without interrupting, show empathy, and paraphrase what you’ve heard to ensure understanding. This demonstrates respect and validates their concerns, fostering a supportive environment and building mutual trust.
As a project manager, create a communication plan and regularly communicate updates on project progress, even if there are no major developments. Project transparency is vital.
Use what you know about your stakeholder’s interests, goals, motivations, and values to communicate and provide updates that clearly align with the project plan and outcomes.
The more closely aligned a stakeholder feels a project is with their own goals, the more likely they are to support it.
Actively seek stakeholder input and encourage open dialogue about project challenges and solutions. This approach not only yields diverse perspectives and innovative solutions but also increases stakeholder buy-in and commitment.
Where your own team is concerned, use the following project management principles and best practices to keep everybody on the same page, engaged, and moving forward:
Set project goals that are realistic and achievable within the given timeframe and budget and ensure everybody has an equal understanding of them.
A good project manager should solicit feedback often, both in formal and casual settings. You can use forms and surveys for quick, unobtrusive feedback and regular meetings for more in-depth discussions. Make it clear that nothing is off the table.
Celebrate achievements and encourage innovation, creativity, and risk-taking within your project management team—even if it doesn’t always pay off.
As a project manager, don’t put yourself above the standards, expectations, project requirements, and methods outlined in your own documents and meetings. Respect your own deadlines, support your entire team with theirs, and lead by example.
Read More:
3. Your Most Valuable Tool is Data
As a project manager, you’ll encounter a wide variety of data that’ll help you monitor progress and measure success. This includes:
- Progress reports from team members and project management software
- Feedback from your project management team and customers
- Financial data (including projected and actual costs and value)
- Resource allocation records
- Stakeholder communication (e.g. emails and meeting minutes)
- And quality-control data
Knowing how to spot trends within this data as a project progresses is a project management superpower. Here are just a few ways you can use data to your advantage:
4. There’s a Tool for Every Job
Monday – Affordable, Easy to Use, and Powerful
- 10+ Project Views
- Generous Free Plan
- Powerful Workflow Automation
Throughout this article, we’ve mentioned a few different tools project managers can use to ensure project success. However, no two project management solutions are alike.
It’s important to carefully assess each tool’s pros and cons to find the right one for your next projects. However, hunting down and testing all these different solutions is time-consuming.
To help, we’ve compiled a number of lists, complete with pros and cons, features, and full reviews of popular solutions. Check out these powerful tools to maximize your team’s efficiency, stay on top of what’s happening, and smash through OKRs:
Project Management Software
Conclusion
The key project management principles highlight that the cornerstones of effective project management are a well-defined, well-organized project environment, good people management, data-driven decision-making, and the right tools.
Implementing these strategies can foster a productive team environment, help make informed decisions, optimize resource use, and help you reach even the hardest project goal.
Embrace these principles to lead to successful project completion.
FAQs
What are the most important success criteria for project management?
How can project management software improve team efficiency and productivity?
What are some effective ways to manage stakeholder expectations in project management?
How can data be used to make better project management decisions?
References
- A Five-Stage Approach to Predictive Project Analytics (WSJ)
- Company-Wide OKRs: What are Some Examples? (What Matters)
- 12 Project Management Principles (Project Management Institute)
Christian Rigg
Business Management ExpertChristian holds a BSc in Psychology with an emphasis on organizational management and is the current Head of Operations for Eleven Media, where he oversees day-to-day business operations, manages a team of project and account managers, and otherwise greases the sticky wheels of company-wide collaboration. Prior to this, he managed operations for a hotel chain in the South of France while completing a Masters in History. When not geeking out over automations and data analysis, he can usually be found cycling and hiking around the French Riviera.
