Project management largely revolves around problem-solving, strategy and conscientiousness, but let’s get real – we also want to have a life. We desire positive outcomes and success for our projects, but we also want to leave at a reasonable hour, too. When it comes to efficient project management, ‘work smarter, not harder’ is the name of the game. We must put in enough effort to get the job done right, but we also need to monitor the time and energy it’s taking to get there. Today, we’re talking about 10 must-know project management efficiency tricks and hacks!
Our 10 Project Management Efficiency Tips!
Why beat around the bush? Let’s be efficient about this article and dive right in. Here are our top 10 project management efficiency tips, which we’ll explore in the following sections.
- Spend Time Planning. Seriously.
- Take Notes As Often As Possible.
- Remove Physical Space From The Equation.
- Work With Others In The Morning & Alone In The Afternoon.
- Sketch Out A Flowchart.
- Work On The Top-Priority Items First.
- Keep Meetings Structured & Brief.
- Anticipate Revisions, Errors & Mistakes.
- Create Shared Files For The Project.
- Schedule Meetings, Reviews & Discussions In Advance.
Let’s get into the details of why each technique saves time and effort.
1. Spend Time Planning
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.” – Abe Lincoln
In project management, the tree is our work for the day and our axe is how well we plan it.
The ability to plan ahead is one of the factors that distinguishes good P.M.s from the bad. Planning ahead allows us to design our futures.
Have you ever been so busy that you just dive right into work without planning? This is what’s considered reaction mode. In this mode, we’re all go-go-go mentally, trying to work through a task with sheer willpower.
When we run around and react instead of plan, we always work less efficiently. Just when we finish the present task, we’ll have a new problem to solve!
Planning ahead saves way more time than it takes. This goes for the day, the week and the month.
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2. Take Notes As Often As Possible
If I don’t write something down, I’ll forget. Sometimes that’s not true, but I pretend it is.
Whenever new information comes to light, it’s vital to write it down, ideally in one consistent place like a notebook. Once we’ve written it, we can plan for it (see step no. 1).
Projects move fast – without good notes, a conversation from several weeks ago will be tough to recall. If we take note of all key items discussed, we’ll be much better off.
Once it’s written in ink, you “have it”. Just don’t loose the notebook!
Read Next: Project Management Note Taking Tips: Double The Value (With Examples)
3. Remove Physical Space From The Equation
Time spent driving to/from meetings during the day can be a big waste of time, especially when the meeting isn’t terribly important.
If an office consists of ten management personnel and each of them spend two hours per week in transit for meetings, they better be worth it.
That’s 20 hours of lost time per week for the office and over 1,000 lost hours per year. These figures are for a SMALL office!
If your project needs an efficiency boost, consider hosting conference calls, using services like Skype or doing screen-sharing to present information. In-person meetings are becoming more obsolete and less necessary with time.
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4. Work With Others In The Morning & Alone In The Afternoon
Early on in my career as a Project Manager, I got some great advice from qa mentor.
“Get things into other people’s hands first.”
The reason why is simple – if these other people need to get a specific task done, they’ll only be able to work on it after discussing with you first. Once you’ve worked together on it, the other people involved can then get their part done during the remainder of the day.
As the day moves on, you’ll have several other people working on tasks that need to be done while you’re working on your own stuff.
This technique is a combination of delegation, prioritizing and efficiency all in one.
Read Next: Common Issues Project Managers Face & How To Solve Them
5. Sketch Out A Flowchart
All projects have several moving parts. Larger projects have many moving parts. It can be difficult to know exactly how the tasks within the project need to get done, and in what order.
This is where flowcharts can come in handy. They can be extremely simple and informal; they’re purely to figure out an order of events for completing a task.
Just like we wouldn’t just start climbing up a mountain, we shouldn’t just arbitrarily start working.
Instead, we need to consider the specifics of the mountain. Going all routes but one may lead us nowhere. One particular route may be twice as dangerous as another without any real advantage.
An extremely simple example of a flowchart can be something like this:
Create Outline –> Send To Team For Review –> Gather Comments –> Revise Letter –> Send To Team For Final Approval –> Review With Boss –> Submit
Exercises like this bring us clarity and understanding of how a task needs to be approached.
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6. Work On The Top-Priority Items First
The Pareto principle states that 80% of a project’s results come from 20% of its’ actions. As Project Managers, we must make sure that we (including our teams) know what those 20% items are. These tasks are critical to the overall outcome of the project.
One project management efficiency trick is to use tools like the Eisenhower matrix. Tools like these are extremely simple to make and help figure out what should be completed first.
If our to-do list for the day consists of submitting a bill to our client, drafting a letter and printing out some paperwork, our time is absolutely best spent working on that bill first. Yes, we want to do all of the work, but some is just more important than others. Billing the client and collecting revenue is much more important than the other stuff.
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7. Keep Meetings Structured & Brief
When meetings do need to happen, it’s in the best interest of all involved to keep it structured and brief.
Check out these statistics surrounding meetings:
- Meetings are shortened by 80% when agendas are used.
- About 1/3rd of meetings actually use agendas.
- Most meetings last between 30-60 minutes.
Most projects require multiple meetings per week. When it comes to project management efficiency, P.M.s can find a windfall of recovered time simply by following these steps:
- Draft an agenda before the meeting and issue to all ahead of time.
- Take notes during the meeting.
- Issue meeting minutes shortly after the meeting concludes.
This allows everyone to come prepared, stick to the agenda topics and reference the same information once it’s done.
Read Next: How Do You Run An Effective Status Meeting? 10 Best Practices
8. Anticipate Revisions, Errors & Mistakes
When we don’t plan for revisions, errors and mistakes, they’ll seem like nothing but setbacks and delays when they occur.
One consistent theme through this website is this: projects rarely go according to plan.
As Murphy’s Law states, “What can go wrong, will go wrong.”
What if we instead accounted for reviews, multiple revisions and setbacks when we make our plans? (See item no. 1)
When we give ourselves, our team and the project room to accommodate these inevitable things, everything will run much smoother.
This technique works well when giving timeframes, producing a schedule and making our plans for the days and weeks ahead.
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9. Create Shared Files For The Project
An incredible amount of time can be spent looking for files, requesting files, sending them to others via email and making sure that everyone’s using the most up-to-date versions. Yuck.
Instead, implement shared files!
This can equate to shared computer files on a local network, using services like DropBox for cloud storage or even using apps like Trello or Monday to share to-do lists.
Creating shared files for your project is a great way to cut out logistical B.S.
Read Next: How Do You Organize Project Documentation? A Few Must-Know Methods
10. Schedule Meetings, Reviews & Discussions In Advance
Calls, texts, group chats, emails…they sound great until you’ve spent way too much time messing with them.
These tools are invaluable to modern business, but they quickly can become the things we spend our time on instead of the means to the end they’re supposed to be.
As text threads become more numerous and email threads multiply, the original concept of exchanging information quickly is totally lost.
One of the simplest project management efficiency tricks to implement is to schedule discussions and reviews in advance. This eliminates a lot of the back and forth through email – both in terms of logistics and the actual project-specific information.
People can instead save their questions and comments for the scheduled discussion. Fewer emails, more quality & efficiency – win-win!
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Project Management Efficiency Tricks: In Summary
Project management efficiency is learned more than inherently known. We must use techniques and strategy to truly get our projects in motion. Using the ten techniques discussed above, you’ll experience a massive increase in productivity, efficiency and overall project quality.
I hope you’ve found this article helpful. Thanks a lot for reading!
