Project managers face a range of challenges. Scope creep, lacking resources, too little time and team communication problems are just the tip of the iceberg. However, organization processes and tools can offer vital help in the face of myriad issues. Without the right organization tips and tools, project managers face an uphill battle, but with the right help, things can be much simpler. What should you know about organization? Below, you’ll find some important help for PMs struggling to keep things organized.
Use Templates
During the course of your project, you will have to record a great deal of information. Whether you’re documenting something within the project for future reference, collating information to share with your team members, creating a document to send to stakeholders for their reference or something else, there’s a lot to be gained by using templates. Templates offer a number of advantages, including the ability to avoid creating a new document layout every time you need to record information. If you aren’t using templates, you’re wasting time and losing productivity. There are plenty of free templates available in a range of formats, from Word docs to Excel and just plain text formats, so there’s no excuse for not having the tools you need.
Backing Up
How often have you heard consumers admonished to back up their computer files? How many businesses have encountered serious problems because they failed to back up their data? Don’t let that be you. Backing up your project data is absolutely vital. There is no way to over emphasize this. If your project isn’t being backed up on a daily basis, you are in serious danger of suffering a catastrophic loss. If you don’t have one already, invest in a backup solution that works for your entire team. Each team member should back up their files daily, preferably to a cloud-based storage solution (Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive are just a few of the options here). You can also use solutions like external hard drives and servers, though this does not alleviate the risk to your project’s data if there were a physical disaster.
Team Knowledge
Project documents, notes and deliverables are essential to success. There should be a single place where those items are stored, and you must ensure that every member of your team knows not only where that is, but the importance of putting their information in place daily. That might be a physical location in your building (like your desk, if you’ll be inputting the information into a computer). That might be a virtual location – your team’s Dropbox folder, for instance. Regardless, make sure that every member of the team is clear on not only the importance of keeping documents in the master location, but where that location is.
With these steps, you should be able to ensure that you and your team remain as organized as possible throughout the course of the project. Disorganization can spell doom for a PM – avoid it.