14 Vital Project Management Tips to Keep Projects on Track

Whether you’re spearheading a construction project or developing a new software feature, managing a project can be incredibly rewarding. Tracking a seed of an idea from start to finish gives you more autonomy over your company’s operations, and can impact the results. Understandably, this is something businesses want to do well. 

Haven’t got an extensive amount of time to invest in developing project management skills? Don’t worry. From setting measurable, attainable goals to delegating clear roles, this article covers 14 quick and effective project management tips that’ll help you to launch your next project off the ground with ease.  

Read on if you’re interested in learning the basics, or skip to relevant sections using the links below.

Top Project Management Tips:

1. Pick your methodology, first
2. Establish SMART goals
3. Set milestones
4. Don't skip the detail
5. Manage your time, ruthlessly
6. Trust your team members
7. Delegate!
8. Write everything down
9. Keep your workload organized
10. Communicate more than you'd think
11. Test your deliverables
12. Run a pre-mortem
13. Learn from other project managers
14. Celebrate your successes

Project Management Tips

1. Pick your methodology, first

If you’re starting a project from scratch, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with project management methodologies before anything else. Following a tried and tested methodology can help you to structure and organize your workload simply and effectively, while choosing the wrong approach could hinder your project's progress. Moreover, since most of the most commonly used methodologies are extremely versatile, they can be applied to virtually any pursuit, irrespective of its size, complexity, or focus. This means getting familiar with a particular one will help you in future, too.

If you’re currently unacquainted with core project management principles such as Agile, Waterfall, Scrum and Kanban, educating yourself about these roadmaps to success should be your first port-of-call.

Project management methodologies are extremely versatile, and can be applied to virtually any pursuit, irrespective of its size, complexity, or focus.

2. Establish SMART goals

Before you assemble your team and start disseminating tasks, you need to establish your goals. If you’re working with clients or stakeholders, you should consider their demands first. Then, when the project's final vision becomes clear, you can work backwards and determine which tasks are required to help you reach your end result. 

When setting goals, you need to make sure they are SMART. SMART goals refer to objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. By following these metrics when setting your goals, the steps you'll need to take to reach your targets will become clearer. Not only can this increase your project's chances of success, it’s also an effective way to make expectations clear from the offset.

3. Set milestones

Once goals have been set, milestones should be next on the agenda. Milestones refer to critical points along a project's life cycle that separate one phrase from the next. They break down the wider goal into smaller, more manageable achievements and they help to inform the Project Manager (PM), clients, and employees about the project’s progress, along the way. 

By establishing defined milestones, managers can easily assess whether a project is on track and if key deliverables – identified in the goal setting stage – will be met. With this information, they can then make adjustments to the project’s life cycle if necessary. 

The nature of project milestones will vary case by case, but common examples include project approval, beginning and end dates of key phases, client and stakeholder approvals, and important internal or external meetings. 

4. Don't skip the detail

There’s no denying it, planning is one of the most crucial elements of project management — but it takes time, and is easy to skimp on. Don't. Crystallizing your vision into a solid, detailed plan will make it much easier for you to hit your milestones, avoid scope creep, and ultimately, produce the highest quality project possible. A detailed plan can also be used to guide clients and employees through the project's key stages. 

When it comes to working out your plan of action, this isn’t a process that should be rushed. Cutting corners during the planning phase will only come back to haunt you further down the line. Therefore, when creating a plan it’s necessary to – before running it through your team to make sure they’re all on board with your proposal.

5. Manage your time, ruthlessly

Every project has a timeline. Understandably, the idea of working against a ticking clock can be stressful if you’re new to project managing. However, with effective time management strategies, even the most inexperienced managers can meet all of their deadlines without sacrificing their quality of work.

The key is to prioritize and question your daily activities, ruthlessly. Do you really need to attend that meeting? Is the task you're focused on now the most important thing you could be working on?

Aside from forming and following a structured and detailed plan, breaking down your workload into smaller, more manageable tasks is a great way to keep the project on schedule. Deconstructing larger deliverables can make it easier to focus on the key steps that matter and prevent you from becoming overwhelmed — a true asset in a role where having a clear head is key. 

If you've got the budget, software can also help. The right software will enable Project Managers to automate key processes and keep track of their time more effectively. monday.com is a popular and powerful option, and is actually free for individuals to use. This can be an invaluable way to accelerate your productivity while minimizing project delays. 

For more time-tracking tips, check out our project management skills guide.

6. Trust your team members

When delivering a project, your team is your biggest asset. And, just like in an orchestra, when each individual performs their role correctly, a wider harmony across the team is able to be achieved. Accordingly, to get the most out of your employees, you need to trust their ability to contribute to the success of the project. By doing so, decisions can be made faster, and more responsibilities can be assigned to individuals. 

While trust among teams helps to move your project forward, it’s not able to be built overnight. Instead, trust is established over the span of a working relationship. If you’ve worked with your team for a while, this shouldn’t be hard to achieve. If not, you can gain confidence in your team's abilities through successful role delegation, as we explore next. 

If you really can't trust your team, or a certain member of your team, to produce the work needed from them, it should be addressed as a matter of urgency, or it will hinder the success of the whole project.

7. Delegate!

It's one thing getting “stuck in” and another to overload yourself with responsibility. No Project Manager should be expected to have all the answers. Therefore, at the beginning stages of a project, assigning clearly defined roles should be very high up on your agenda. 

If work isn't divided in the best way, team members may end up with unfair workloads, too. This will demotivate them and hamper progress, as they struggle to complete their tasks in the given time period. Ultimately, it will waste your company's valuable time and resources and interrupt the project's development. What's more, preventing your workers from showcasing their best skills could also weaken levels of trust. To stop this from happening, it’s the project leads responsibility to delegate roles considerately and fairly.

While there’s no fool proof way to do this, we recommend that you make the expectations of the project crystal clear and include staff in the delegation process when possible.

8. Write everything down

Managing a project can often feel like spinning plates. And when you’re juggling multiple tasks at once, it’s easy for important details to get lost along the way. To avoid this from happening, you shouldn’t just rely on your memory. 

You should create consistent records of the work being done at all times. From meeting schedules to client feedback, keeping notes will help you gain a clearer overview of the project's development and it will also help you learn from your previous mistakes if a pursuit doesn’t go according to plan.

Going paperless? Don’t worry. You don’t have to do this by hand. Recording discussions or typing notes up digitally is a very effective way to keep important details on hand. Assigning scribe duties to one of your team members is also a useful strategy if you’re too busy to take on this task yourself.

9. Keep your workload organized 

Being organized goes hand in hand with being a successful project manager. Without the implementation of an air-tight organization structure, the work of your team can be impeded and in extreme cases, the delivery of the project can fail. This is a fate no project lead wants. So to ensure the success of your project, you need to do what you can to keep your workload as organized as possible. 

Fortunately, gone are the days when we needed to rely on manual methods. Project managers can now rely on an array of useful software to organize their tasks, manage their performance, and keep their workflow on track. For example, project management tools by Asana and Monday can help your team to stay organized and connected, even when you’re working on a project remotely. You can see how the software titans compare here.  

10. Communicate more than you'd think

Even the smallest of projects contain multiple moving components. To make sure confusion doesn’t derail your development, clear communication needs to become a cornerstone of your project. As project manager, you'll likely be on top of all the moving parts on a regular basis, but that doesn't mean everyone else will be, so you might need to communicate updates more often than you'd naturally think to. 

By maintaining clear communication channels across members of your team, clients, and stakeholders, you can ensure that everyone is rallied around the same vision. Not only does this make the shared goals clear, but it also helps employees to understand what is expected of them.

If you’re working on-site, it’s advisable to follow up with workers informally and, when possible, schedule catch-up meetings, so they can offer you feedback. Alternatively, if you’re managing fully remote or hybrid employees, communication software, like Zoom, can be used to keep your team connected. 

To make sure confusion doesn’t derail your development, clear communication needs to become a cornerstone of your project. 

11. Test your deliverables 

To make sure your project meets its desired objectives, it’s important to test your deliverables as you go. In project management, a deliverable can refer to any output, be it tangible or intangible. For instance, engineering deliverables could include design drawings and product prototypes, as well as presentations to clients and the final end product. Software deliverables could be certain functionalities created as part of the overall build.

By testing these along the way, you can check if your product or service is functioning (or will function) as it’s intended to. This will help you to monitor the results of your project and keep a document of your progress. What's more, if your deliverables are consistently being met this will fill your stakeholders with confidence.

12. Run a pre-mortem

No matter how hard you try to avoid them, every project carries risks. Whether they be technological, operational, or financial, the unfortunate truth is that a number of factors could derail the development of your project at any moment. While it’s impossible to stamp these threats out entirely, risk mitigation can be practiced to limit their impact. 

One option is to run what's called a pre-mortem. This is a process for identifying the potential hazards and their impact before they arise. You work backwards from an imagined catastrophe, to the steps which could have led to it, so you can prepare to avoid those mistakes. Then, you can determine if it will be of a low, medium, or high priority to monitor various potential turning points, and form a plan to mitigate each risk. 

By considering problems before they emerge, you can keep nasty surprises to a minimum and tackle them swiftly when they occur. 

13. Learn from other project managers

Topping the chain of command might feel a bit daunting. But it’s important to remember you’re never going through the process alone. No matter the complexity of your project or the industry you work in, there will be countless other project managers who can relate to your experiences – some who will have navigated the path successfully, and some, undoubtedly, who will have been forced to learn from their mistakes. 

By reaching out to these project leads, you’ll be able to gain valuable insights into what techniques and processes are required to make a project work. Then, by following their project management tips and sidestepping their pitfalls, you can give your project the best chance of succeeding possible.

If you're unable to find other project managers within your own business, social media, networking events and online forums can help.

14. Celebrate your successes

Projects can be hard work for everyone involved. And while the completion of a project can be hugely gratifying in itself, it’s also important to celebrate the team's collective success along the way.

By rewarding hard work and sharing your triumphs externally, it can motivate your team and improve your company’s reputation. Taking time out of your schedule to unwind and socialize is also a great way to bond employees and boost morale — a benefit that can often be translated into future project wins. 

Plus, while celebrating shared successes is important, singling out employees who have gone above and beyond is an excellent way to recognize accomplishments and elevate your team members. The nature of these rewards can vary, but common examples include team lunches, employee bonuses, or shout-outs. 

The Benefits of Project Management Software

If it’s not already clear by now, technology can be a trusted ally for project managers looking to rise to the top of their domain. When used alongside the project management tips above, software has the power to streamline the delivery of your project in more ways than one. 

Speedier project roll-out 

One major way the software could benefit you is by speeding up the rollout of the project. More often than not, your stakeholders will want to see results as soon as possible. Fortunately, project management software allows managers to keep the process forward flowing by letting them view their projects status in real-time, communicate with team members instantly, and eliminate risks in a timely manner.

Simplified task management 

Project management software can also be used to simplify task management. By giving professionals the ability to manage a large and dynamic series of tasks on a single platform, the whole project can be taken care of in a much simpler fashion. Not only does this keep workflows on track, it reduces unnecessary paperwork.

Greater time efficiency 

Screenshot of Monday's time tracking software

Various pieces of software, like Monday, ClickUp and Asana can help Project Managers to use their time more efficiently. These tools inform users about how much time they spend on different parts of a project by providing them with a timeline of their working day. This can help workers to manage their time more effectively by keeping guesswork to a minimum. 

Automated stakeholder feedback 

Finally, in a profession where communication is key, project management software can also benefit Project Managers by automatically keeping stakeholders in the loop. Specifically, certain feedback tools allow managers to inform stakeholders about the progress of their projects without the need for manual input. Since keeping stakeholders informed is one of the easiest ways to maintain good relations, this software can be an extremely useful tool for PMs.

If you’re looking to leverage project management software but you’re not sure where to start, not to worry. Our latest breakdown of the top project management providers can help you establish which solution might be best for your business. You can see a snapshot of our top picks, in the table below.