7 Insider Tips on How to Be a Successful Project Manager?

This is an all-time question on How to be a Project Manager? We all understand that no matter how small or large a project is, we need a skilful person who can consistently maintain efficiency and productivity. Project management is crucial for successful businesses and businesses need leaders with the right skills, strong vision, and right know-how about the challenges. Hence, project managers are an integral part of nearly every kind of organization. 

However, just being a project manager doesn’t help a project to succeed. You need to be a successful project manager, who can tackle any issues and inspires the team for the best.

This article will talk about project management tips, roles and responsibilities and tips on how to become a successful project manager. So read the article till the end.

Why a Project Manager?

Good project managers are people with a great entrepreneurial mindset. This mindset allows them to think beyond the basic skill needed to manage it. It is the project manager’s job to guide a team to the finish line. They are the ones with all the responsibilities of the project. 

A project’s success or failure solely rests on the project manager’s shoulders. A successful project manager is the one with the right amount of skills and manages to reach all the expectations of the client on time. To be a successful project manager in managerial life you require project management skills. Along with that, you also need to know the responsibilities of successful project managers.

Basic Technical Skills of a Project Managers are:

  • Risk Management
  • Project Planning
  • Team Management
  • Project Scheduling 
  • Budgeting 
  • Project Lifecycle Management
  • Meeting Facilitation

These are some common basic technical skills every project manager must possess. There are other subject-specific technical skills of project managers which they should have. 

Soft skills are- Communication, Leadership, Problem-solving, Adaptability, Critical Thinking, and more.

Roles and Responsibilities

Activity and resource planning

Planning is of utmost importance in a project, especially to reach deadlines. A good Project Planner first starts with defining the project’s scope and regulating resources. Then they create a concise and flexible plan based on which process is to be executed and monitored. 

Organizing a project team

Another responsibility of a successful Project Planner is, they develop straightforward and clear plans. They organize the team to reach their full potential. They motivate their team and cut down the bureaucracy to direct their teams down the final road.

Ensuring customer satisfaction

The scenario of completing a project on deadlines, on budget, and giving the best outcomes is all for customer satisfaction. The key responsibility of project managers is to involve their clients, minimize uncertainty, and avoid unwanted surprises. A successful project manager knows how to keep effective communication with the company’s clients.

Controlling time management

Even if a project is great what can it be of importance if not delivered on time? The success or failure of a project is dependent on whether it has been delivered on time. 

Good project managers know how to set realistic deadlines and how to communicate them consistently with their teams. They know how to efficiently do the following:

Define objective

Sequence activity

Estimate the duration of the activity

Develop schedule

Maintain schedule

Monitoring progress

During the initial stages, project managers and their teams have a clear vision. However, it’s not life if everything goes as expected. Every project process has its failures and setbacks. That is where another role of the project manager comes, to monitor the progress at every level and where needed do project recovery. This process can become simpler if the project manager chooses the right project management tool.

Managing reports and necessary documentation

Even after the process is finished, the responsibility of a project manager doesn’t get over. They have to present extensive reports documenting the projects’ history, all the project requirements, including what has been done, members involved, and scope for future development. 

Tips for Becoming a Successful Project Manager

7 Pro-tip on How to be a Project Manager

Set realistic goals and priorities 

To be smart and successful you need to set SMART(Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. Without a motto, our life becomes unorganized, frustrating, and with no clear path to move forward. That’s the same scenario when it comes to project, as a project manager setting SMART goals and project checkpoints is a step towards success. 

Goals should be such which can be achievable on the given timeline. Once goals are set, you can plan and set your priorities.

Communicate effectively

If you are a good communicator, you’re automatically a successful project manager. It is better to know too much than to not know enough. Every step requires some or another way of communication. So, either be a communicator pro or don’t be a project manager at all.

Be a leader

Successful are those who stand out to be a leader and inspire others. To be a successful project manager you first have to be a team leader. A person who motivates their team members, inspires them to move forward, listens, and helps everyone. 

The situation should be “we work with you, not for you.”

Delegate Properly

It’s one thing to know details of your project and altogether a different thing to force yourself to know everything. Project managers are leaders and it’s part of their work to give the responsibility of the tasks to people.

If you don’t want to do project recovery at the latter stage, then involve the right people in the right project. Besides, it is also necessary to put your trust in a suitable person and assign them tasks.

Be Honest and realistic

Honesty and being transparent are essential parts of a successful project manager. From planning to delivering work, don’t lie to your clients and your team members. 

A successful project manager sets realistic deadlines and estimates. If you think clients’ deadlines are not realistic to complete a project, then say no and explain to them why you need additional time. Better to be demanding than a fool.

Always have a backup plan

We always dive into something with possibilities of things going out of the way with a backup plan. That’s the same thing a project manager should do when working on a project. You should always have a safety net to fall on if the original plan doesn’t work. 

Delivering value and quality to your clients is the crucial thing, so you should know how to manage these even in your backup plan. 

Don’t be afraid of failure

Successful leaders are never afraid of failures because they know it is the building blocks for success. They are successful today because of all the failures they faced and accepted. It is said by all the great leaders that, you will learn more from your failures than your success. 

It is a choice that you have to take, either cry over failure or learn and recover quickly.

Use helpful PM tools

Work smarter, not harder, and using a project management tool can make your work smarter and more organized. The right PM tool can help you in estimating, scheduling, organizing, and communicating with your team and clients effectively. 

The project management tool Projectopia can be your preferred choice for all your projects. It not only provides you with all the features that can make your work smarter and faster but is also one of the inexpensive tools to work on. 

  • You can add clients and team members with their dashboards. 
  • You can schedule deadlines for tasks and milestones along with quotes & estimations. 
  • Clients can also add their team members as additional logins. 
  • Other benefits you get are task messaging, role-based permissions to team members, recurring invoices, stripe, and Paypal payments. 

Conclusion

This was all about the topic, always keep in mind, to be a successful project manager you must know your responsibilities and skills well. Besides, the above tips will definitely give you a complete idea of how to be a good project manager.