5 project management tips for new managers

Project management involves leading a team and managing resources to achieve a company goal. It involves keeping employees motivated, organized, and on-task to get a project done! New managers need to be proficient in project management in order to meet their business goals, and this has become slightly more difficult in the last couple of years with so many employees now working remotely.

In this article, we’re going to provide you with our top project management tips for new managers. Let’s get started.

^{Set clear goals and regularly assess your progress}

As a good project manager, everything you work on needs to have a strong goal. This will help you to ensure that you’re hitting specific KPIs and can adapt your strategy if something isn’t quite working. 

Always set your goals at the beginning of a project. To ensure yours are realistic and measurable, you should always set SMART goals. 

SMART goals are :

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

If you set a SMART goal, you can ensure that you’re taking steps to achieve it. Once you’ve set your goals, you need to ensure that you’re assessing your progress on a regular basis! This will help you determine whether your current strategy is working or if you need to make adjustments.

Use a project management tool to keep everyone on track 

It’s a good idea to use a project management program to track most areas of your business — the more projects you start to undertake, the more important this is! This will help you stay on top of everything and monitor your progress closely. Zentao has a great project management software program. Their tool can help you edit documents online, keep track of tasks, manage your products, and more.

Project management tools can help you set deadlines, collaborate with other team members, keep your documents organized, and keep track of everyone’s work. They’re very helpful programs, but they can have a learning curve, so be sure to introduce your new tool to the team gradually so they can learn the program. It could even be helpful to have a dedicated training session!

Have a plan for managing remote team members

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot more people are now working from home. In fact, a 2020 survey found that 4 in 10 workers are in jobs that could plausibly be done from home. This means that you need to have a plan for managing your remote team members.

As a project manager, you need to create a plan that will allow your team to reach their goals while working with people they may not see face-to-face. Here are a few tips for managing a remote team :

• Set clear expectations
• Be sure that you and your employees have organizational tools to stay on top of work
• Train your team to have the skills they need to operate independently
• Have open communication channels so people can get their questions answered
• Have regular check-ins with team members to see their progress

If you keep open lines of communication with your team, you’ll make it much easier to get work done.

Streamline tasks with the right tools

A lot of project management involves helping your team to work as effectively and efficiently as possible. This means that you need to provide them with the right tools to help them do so! Depending on the type of project you’re managing, you might want to provide your team with social media analytics tools, physical equipment for their work, templates, or scheduling software, for example. 

The best way to determine what type of tools are needed is to ask your team. They’ll likely know better than anyone else what would help them complete their work. Consider sending out company-wide surveys, having one-to-one meetings, or holding focus groups with employees in order to find common trends in what your team needs. This will help you find out which tools your staff will benefit from to complete their projects quickly, efficiently, and to a high standard.

Clearly outline every role and process to avoid confusion 

It’s incredibly important that project managers ensure all of their team members understand their roles and the processes they need to follow. So, process management is a very helpful skill for project managers to have! To help ensure your workers understand what they need to be doing at all times, create materials and process infographics that everyone on your team can refer to. This will help them stay on track with team goals and avoid stepping on the toes of other colleagues.

It’s very important that everyone on your team understands their place in a project and knows what they need to be doing. You don’t want two different people accidentally doing the same job and doubling their work, as this will waste time. If you clearly outline your team’s roles with guidelines and infographics, you can better help your team achieve their goals.

Summary

Being a project manager takes a lot of skill. So, in this article, we outlined different project management tips for new managers, including using project management software, creating specialized templates, and clearly outlining roles. 

Need more help? Check out the Zentao blog. They have more articles on properly running a business, software management, building cross-functional teams, and so much more.

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Author bio & headshot:

Alex Ratynski is a Content Strategist at Loganix, an SEO fulfillment partner that works with agencies and marketers. The company focuses on helping businesses to improve their online visibility, so they can grow and reach their goals. If you enjoyed this article, visit the Loganix blog for more expert advice.