I often hear people asking why is project management important.
Whether we realize it or not, project management has become a part of our lives. It is no longer restricted to managing complex tasks at work but also takes the shape of planning a birthday party at home or buying groceries from your task list.
However, managing projects tends to be a daunting task and a multi-faceted affair. It requires a deep level of understanding of project planning, scheduling, reporting, tracking, and importance of project management.
“Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.” ~Joy Gumz
To become an effective project manager, you need to develop the right understanding of project management, your roles and job description, and the importance of project management. In this article, you will learn about all these essential things about project management but let’s start with the basics first.
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Table of Contents
Why is project management important?
The project management landscape is changing every day. We need to know the importance of project management in the real sense before aping these trends happening in the world of project management.
It’s interesting that project management apps were prevalent for much longer to our knowledge. However, they were mostly used by the government and military sectors. Soon after private businesses began to understand the benefits of online project management and tools that it was being put to use around the late 1950s by Henry Gantt, who later played a pivotal role in developing and evolving project management.
Coming back to the 21st century, a PWC study concluded that a staggering 97% of organizations believe project management is critical to business performance and organizational success. That’s why more and more companies are implementing project management into their workflow and checking out new tools for project management to contribute to their overall success.
Why do we use project management?
Project management is a process which includes the application of different skills, methods, and tools to plan, organize, and manage different projects within specific parameters. It’s all about how to effectively manage the flow of your projects so that each one is completed on time.
Whether it’s a project manager leading a project, team members trying their hardest to give their best work, or a client waiting for updates and project completion, project management benefits everyone, not just a single section of an organization.
To put things into perspective, project management is essentially about delivering an output(s) that will affect some change for the benefit of the organization. And, to know more why project management is important, below is a list of some reasons that will give you a convincing explanation on its importance and relevance.
1. Better project planning
It is perhaps the most crucial aspect of project management that decides the fate of a project.
You will be able to deliver projects successfully when the right expectations are set around what can be delivered by when and for how much.
On the contrary, a project is doomed already if there are vague budget estimates and unrealistic deadlines and delivery expectations. Without effective project management, teams might start working on a project without even clearly defining the project plan.
When team members understand the focus and objectives, a project progresses without any confusion or chaos. The half of the battle is already won if you begin a project the right way.
2. Brings in more productivity
Efficiency and productivity is the ultimate goal of project management and planning. Businesses want to accomplish as much as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.
Unproductive employees and missed hours are a dangerous combination for any firm and its customers. This situation leads to a detrimental impact on the project’s overall efficiency.
However, with the correct project management methods in place, businesses can address numerous productivity challenges while also empowering their employees to do their best work at all stages of the project, from planning to execution to delivery.
3. Maximum resource utilization
Whether you are working on an easy-peasy task or complex project, inappropriate resource utilization can wreak havoc. Using the right project management methodology can help you realize how to utilize resources to the best advantage of a project.
For example, small and medium scale projects work best with an agile approach whereas large-scale projects work best with the traditional project management approach.
4. Risk management
Oftentimes, we begin a project with the best strategy but fail to recognize potential risks that could hamper the overall progress of a project.
With effective project management and the right project manager, one can always stay a step ahead from unwanted risks and threats.
5. Quality control
There is enormous pressure on project members to adhere to the project guidelines, deadlines, budgets, compliance standards, and quality control.
Project management is important to identify, manage, and control the quality of whatever is being delivered.
6. Strategic alignment
Project management is important for the strategic alignment of a business. It is necessary to ensure that an organization’s strategy is aligned to its long-term goals and strategic framework.
Effective project management helps individuals ensure that an organization’s vision, mission, strategic goals, and objectives are aligned with the project goals.
It helps firms stay ahead of the competition by contributing to overall profitability and success.
7. Effective leadership
Being an effective project manager necessitates the ability to lead. Someone with the appropriate vision must be able to lead the entire team in the proper way.
At the end of the day, leaders are supposed to guide, motivate, and inspire others in order to lead and manage teams.
Therefore, project management paves the path for effective leadership.
8. Efficient planning
When the entire team knows who’s working on what, when and how, the planning becomes better and more efficient.
A good plan clarifies responsibilities, streamlines procedures, assesses risk and allows you to come up with the required strategy to keep your team and project on the right track.
Thus, it is another reason why is project management important because without a well-organized, easy-to-understand plan, a business might be vulnerable to various risks like project failure, loss of trust, misinterpretation of information, and more.
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9. Continual monitoring
Continuous project monitoring guarantees that a project is going according to the original plan and is essential for keeping it on track.
The reason why is project management important for regular monitoring is because it makes it easy to spot when a project is starting to stray from its intended path when effective oversight and project reporting are in place.
10. Saves time and money
Believe it or not, an organization’s top priority is effective time and money management. Every company strives to complete projects on time keeping a specific budget in mind, and project management is the most effective approach to accomplish it.
Teams can ensure that their projects are delivered on time with proper preparation. From the planning stages to fulfilling deadlines, project management allows you to outline your entire project.
It outlines how things will unfold so that you may deploy your resources appropriately, be prepared in the event of a problem, and avoid delays as well as extra costs.
11. Better communication
When you start working on your projects randomly without considering project management practices or making required plans to achieve your goals, things may start falling through the cracks.
It only brings in conflicts and confusion which ultimately leads to project failure. A good project management streamlines team communication and keeps everyone aligned to the same goals.
When working across different teams and departments, efficient project management minimized the complexity of collaboration and coordination. It also promotes more transparency and provides a sense of accountability to everyone involved in the project.
12. Better decision making
When you have a clear picture of how your project is progressing and you have a bird’s eye view of every little detail of the project, it gets easy for you to make quick and timely decisions.
Project management provides you an in-depth understanding of who’s working on what, where your resources are being spent, what are your priorities and if things are going off-track.
Project management is important because it lets you figure out issues at very early stages, avoid bottlenecks, and make wiser decisions.
How does ProofHub benefit project management?
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management software that empowers teams to achieve their best by providing them with the best project management solutions in one place. ProofHub eliminates the need of using multiple tools as it is a one-stop solution for all your project management needs.
The project management software is based on the concept of centralizing all of your project requirements for simple accessibility. ProofHub eliminates the need for several apps to share updates, collaborate, or manage tasks; all can be done in one spot.
ProofHub offers a variety of productivity tools to help teams of all sizes improve their productivity and project performance.
Here’s how ProofHub benefits project management.
1. Task Management
If you want to be a great project manager, you need to be able to handle your team’s tasks effectively. It assists your team in keeping track of their priorities and meeting deadlines.
It’s simple to assign tasks, create priorities, track progress, eliminate bottlenecks, and keep track of your team’s work with ProofHub.
The primary task management features of ProofHub are listed below, and they will help you manage your tasks without any hassle.
- Kanban boards
Kanban boards also known as board view from ProofHub are the most efficient method to manage your tasks and projects. They’re a visual depiction of your project’s and team’s overall progress.
The board view gives you a comprehensive picture of your team’s workflow, allowing you to track status and progress. It divides your tasks into divisions known as stages, such as to-do, in progress, and completed.
As a result, you’ll be able to see what tasks are currently in progress, how many tasks have been completed, whether there are any bottlenecks, what has to be done next, the priorities, and much more.
The Table View organizes all your task related data in a table layout, similar to a dynamic Excel spreadsheet. It’s quite useful for someone who has spent their entire working life working with tables, because it’s jam-packed with column functions.
You can assign, sort, color-code tasks, and personalize the Table view with ease. It lets you communicate crucial information, and make sure all critical data is in the appropriate place. The table view allows you to filter data by importance and organize your work in whatever way you want, ensuring that you never miss out on vital information.
You can also use custom task fields to track and capture specific information about your project, and you can arrange your tasks the way you want in order to meet project requirements.
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2. Planning
The most crucial stage of any project is planning. It instructs stakeholders and project managers on how to proceed with the subsequent phases of the project.
It aids in the identification of objectives, the avoidance of missed deadlines, the prioritization of critical tasks, the reduction of risks, and the delivery of desired outcomes.
With ProofHub, work planning is significantly more thorough and simple. ProofHub’s work planning features are listed below.
It is critical in project management to have a visual representation of how things will unfold over time. This is why ProofHub provides you with robust Gantt charts.
A Gantt chart is a time-based visual representation of projects, related tasks, and resources. It shows you who is allocated to which task, the duration of tasks, how long it took the individual to finish a certain assignment, dependencies, and overlapping tasks by displaying tasks against time.
The Gantt chart is an excellent tool for planning, scheduling, and organizing projects in order to meet deadlines.
The Calendar view in ProofHub is a work planning tool that keeps you up to date on critical project milestones.
It puts all of the key tasks, events, and milestones in front of you so you don’t miss anything.
You may schedule all of your essential events and set a reminder for them on the calendar.
You can even see all of the tasks that have been assigned throughout the week so that you are always aware of when to follow up on important work. Overall, it provides you with a clear picture of how to design your project.
ProofHub generates thorough bespoke reports for each team member or the entire project, allowing you to track overall project progress in real time.
It allows you to see every single aspect of your project in a centralized location.
A thorough burn-up chart allows you to rapidly compare the quantity of work done against the total work.
Not only that, but you can also get a sense of how quickly tasks were completed, which section of the project is lagging behind and what is the overall team productivity.
3. Collaboration and communication
It is impossible to overstate the importance of communication and collaboration in project management. It is another aspect that explains why is project management important.
By ensuring that key members are aligned on project goals and understand exactly what is expected of them, effective team collaboration minimizes disagreement and uncertainty from bogging down your project.
It also aids in the development of team trust, allowing everyone to work together more effectively from start to finish.
Some of ProofHub’s team collaboration and communication features are listed below.
- Chat application and Discussions
ProofHub’s in-built chat tool allows you to receive immediate responses and facilitates direct interaction with your team and clients. You can communicate with your coworkers individually or in a group chat. It allows you to send files, documents, and emojis.
The Discussions section in ProofHub allows you to brainstorm ideas with your team to address a specific problem or come up with new project ideas.
It also allows you to create different subjects and pick certain people with whom you want to conduct separate conversations.
ProofHub Notes are simple to use and provide a great place for teams to jot down all of the details about their projects and assignments.
It allows teams to jot down notes during meetings, establish Wikis, keep track of project needs, mention rules or standards for a certain issue, and much more by creating different notebooks for the same.
Individuals can capture their thoughts, conclusions, and decisions made in meetings in real time and refer to them at any time.
With sophisticated markup tools, the Proofing tool allows teams to thoroughly review, amend, and prove project files. With the help of annotated in-file comments, you can provide detailed criticism.
Team members can see each other’s comments, make changes as needed, and submit new versions for approval.
ProofHub’s digital proofing tool eliminates the need of bouncing the same file back and forth as you can keep track of everything in one place.
ProofHub allows you to upload all of your project files and categorize them into specific folders. You can also attach files to communication features like team Chat, Discussions, and Tasks, and all of your attachments will be conveniently accessible in the Files section.
You can proof files, download them, or restrict access based on your team’s hierarchy once they’ve been uploaded.
You can make numerous versions of the same file under the files section, each with its own version history. Upload new versions, revert to an older version, and share the final work with your team with ease.
4. Time Management
Time management assists teams or departments in being more effective in project management and completing projects on time and within budget. This offers up the possibility of managing more projects in the future.
Efficient time management not just helps you save time and effort, it also allows you to save money and helps your organization grow better.
Here are ProofHub’s top time management features.
- Timer and Timesheets
ProofHub’s time tracking features help you bring all your time related data to one place. The Timer is an automated time logging system that keeps track of how much time you spend on each activity. You can start the Timer while starting the task and stop it once you’ve completed it.
Timesheets show you how much time your team has logged. You can get detailed reports on how your staff spends their time, which tasks take up the most time, and how many billable hours they’ve racked up.
Conclusion
When a company does not use project management, there is a high risk of project failure since team members are never sure what the ultimate objective is. And excellent project management brings in more sanity in the team as it keeps everyone on the same page and makes it easy for a team to work together efficiently.
Here’s hoping that you’ve gained a better understanding of why is project management important by now.
FAQs
What is Project Management?
Project management is a process that allows teams to plan, manage, organize and deliver projects within a period of time keeping a specific goal in mind.
Why is project management important?
Project management is important because it keeps all project stakeholders on the same page, avoids conflicts and makes sure that project does not go off course.
Why choose a career in project management?
Project management lets you learn something new everyday. Project managers use their set of skills to ensure continuous improvement of an organization.
Why is project management an important skill?
Project management is one of the most important skills in any organization as it enables you to complete a project more efficiently from start to finish.
