Easing the burden of effective project management

Successful project management can be difficult to achieve, especially when companies are faced with high expectations and tight deadlines. This can be a very pressurised time - but help is at hand. Flowlio has developed software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools that streamline each stage of the process and ensure the effective and successful delivery of the project.

There are three main stages of good project management, so we’ll explore these in more detail and explain how our software can help.

1. Planning

Aims and expectations

Before even starting the project, make sure you’ve defined its ultimate aims. Only with thoughtful planning can you decide how you’ll achieve these. Involve your stakeholders at this early stage, so you understand their needs and expectations and can explain how the project will meet these.

One way to achieve this is by ensuring your aims are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound). This will also help you to measure the ultimate success of your project. You’ll need to explain the project’s scope to the stakeholders, including details of what you hope to deliver and what will be excluded from the scope.

Flowlio’s SaaS tools can help you in creating SMART objectives, engaging stakeholders, sharing information, and monitoring project progress. They enable you to clearly define your project objectives and scope. The collaboration features allow project managers to engage stakeholders efficiently and share scoping documents seamlessly. The software supports SMART goals and tracks progress against them, ensuring all stakeholders are aligned from the outset.

Creating the plan

With the aims and scope of the project defined, you can start to develop a detailed project plan. But how do you do this? The first step involves breaking the project down into smaller tasks that you can assign to the appropriate people. You’ll also need to define the resources (both human and material) needed to complete each task.

Underpinning this is a budget that realistically defines the project costs, and a projected timeline. Both of these must be carefully monitored as the project proceeds. You’ll also need a risk management plan that identifies potential risks and how to resolve them to minimise any disruption to the project.

How can our software help? Our intuitive platform enables you to create detailed project plans, using resources such as Gantt charts for visualising your project and milestone tracking. Its features will help with resource allocation and assigning tasks, and with monitoring project costs. Meanwhile, our risk management tools will help to identify and resolve potential issues before they arise.

2. Resource management

Assembling and motivating the right team

Ensuring you have the right team for the project (who can work together well and effectively) is vital for its success. Each member must understand clearly what aspects they’re responsible for. A key element of good teamwork is excellent and consistent communication. Regular meetings and collaborative tools will keep everyone updated so they know exactly what’s happening at each stage.

Team members should be encouraged to feed back any concerns. They should also be recognised and rewarded for their contributions so they feel engaged and motivated – which in turn will boost both morale and productivity. Finally, if new skills are required, these can often be found by using internal talent or upskilling team members rather than looking externally.

Our Project Management Fundamentals Training initiative will help individuals within your team to gain an OfQual Accredited qualification in project management. In terms of communication, our platform will enhance collaboration between team members and also helps to define their roles. A feedback feature and engagement tools will aid you in recognising and rewarding individual contributions.

3. Execution and review

Project execution

Effective execution includes continually monitoring the progress of the project and making changes as new issues arise. It’s important to keep the project on time and on budget throughout. This means monitoring each task; identifying potential bottlenecks or other issues; and carrying out regular inspections and reviews to ensure everything is delivered to the required standards.

This means your team must be agile and adaptable, as changes will often be required as you proceed. And you’ll need regular evaluation of your team’s performance to assess whether you can make any further improvements along the way. Our software makes this process much easier, as it includes real-time project management, monitoring and performance tracking along with change management tools for making rapid adjustments to your strategy. It also includes a range of quality control features.

Project completion

Once the project is completed, it’s important to review its success. Have you achieved all your aims on time, within budget and to the required standards? If not, or if you’ve encountered challenges along the way, make sure you document any lessons learnt; areas that need improving; and best practices.

It's important to celebrate your successes and the significance of individual contributions. This will encourage engagement in future projects. The final key element is a report, shared with stakeholders, that summarises the project and its findings, and any lessons learnt and recommendations that will help future projects.

Our SaaS tools streamline project completion by helping you to evaluate its outcomes and generate the final report, including best practices. The software communication and feedback systems will also help you to recognise and celebrate team contributions.

Bringing it all together

So, for a project to be truly effective, it needs excellent planning, the right team members, and great, high-quality execution. This might sound like a lot of hard work. And it can be. However, much of the load can be eased by using our tailored software to streamline and manage the different stages. Because we specialise in cutting-edge project management software, we’ve been able to focus on addressing all the issues involved. Our software therefore makes the whole project management process easier, more efficient and more effective.

Find out more about our innovative software solutions and our training initiative at Flowlio