Why Project Management Is Important - And That's for All of You

Project management is a frequently used term in B2B as well as in B2C environment. While many large companies employ full-time project managers, project management in small projects often has to be done on the side. Now you might rightly ask whether you need to apply project management at all and what the benefits are. Finn Reiche explains this to you in this article.

What is project management?

To understand when project management is sensible and important for you, you first have to think about whether you are working on a project basis. A project is always a unique venture, which means that the goals, timeframes, costs and resources vary from project to project. If you work on projects, you always have to deal with uncertainties, because every situation is different. Project management involves all management tasks that arise in order to achieve the goals of the project as favourably (cost), as quickly (time) and with as little effort (resources) as possible. This can involve ZEP or awork as supportive software in project management, which can be divided into five phases: initialization, definition, planning, control and conclusion.

What different types of project management are there?

Basically, you can distinguish between traditional and agile project management. Traditional project management is plan-based, which means that time and effort are adjusted, but the scope of the project is fixed. Agile project management, which is used in software development, specifically, reverses this relationship: here the scope is adjusted. While a plan is made at the beginning in traditional project management, who is to do what and when, usually a sprint is scheduled in agile project management. A sprint is a time interval, e.g. four weeks. Every four weeks, the team meets and discusses which scopes are to be implemented in the next sprint. Simply put, the project is finished when all scopes have been implemented. When this is the case is difficult to predict. The advantage of agile project management is that changes can be easily made. You have another idea for the product? Agile project management is not an issue, it can be implemented in the next sprint.

In addition to this, there are two other forms of project management: hybrid project management and company-specific project management. In hybrid project management, traditional and agile approaches are mixed and company-specific project management is used where neither traditional nor agile or hybrid approaches work – usually in highly specialized and complex industries.

Examples of good and bad project management?

To explain the benefits of project management, we have a positive and a negative example for you: Good project management was provided in the construction of a cruise ship, the My Ship 2. The project had a cost framework of almost 1.5 billion Euros and was completed earlier than planned thanks to good planning and robust risk management. The result: fewer costs were incurred, fewer resources were used and the ship could start its work earlier.

As a negative example – how could it be otherwise – the BER airport serves, which was still calculated in Deutsche Marks (DM) in the first planning. The problem of the project was lack of project management, which did not or too late saw risks, acted too late and made false assumptions. The result was the construction did not start until 2006, the planned end was in 2011, the costs have exploded. The opening was in 2020 instead of 2011 and the costs are over 700% higher than planned.

Good project management must be able to foresee risks and already work out possible measures when the risks have not yet occurred. In relation to the airport, the fire alarm system is an excellent example. Fire protection is a legally strictly regulated area and there is a risk that the legal framework conditions will change. There is a need for continuous monitoring of the laws and possible reactions. The BER airport was built over such a long period that the regulations changed in the meantime, but there was no reaction to the changes. Hardly were the changes implemented, a new law was already passed. With laws, however, changes are continuously possible and the process largely transparent. Monitoring new laws from the relevant areas would have been necessary and would have saved time, costs and resources.

You can remember that the larger the project is, the importance of good project management increases. Good and bad project management can be decisive for the result.

The benefits of Project Management are:

• You have a clear plan of all tasks.
• Your goals are clearly defined and you know what needs to be achieved.
• The roles within the team are clear and everyone can focus on their tasks.
• You know whether you are faster or slower than planned.
• You can react better to risks.

This Project management also important for small projects?

Many small and medium-sized enterprises do not have full-time project managers, it is assumed that project management can be done alongside daily business. But even small projects need to be planned and controlled, which is why project management offers itself regardless of the scope of a project. This begins with a clear definition of all goals, setting the cost framework or allocating tasks within the team. There is no rule as to which size of project which project management methods should be applied.

How can I apply project management myself?

If you now ask yourself how you can introduce traditional project management into your projects, we have a simplified procedure for you here:

1. Define the project: goals, costs and resources must be clearly set.

2. Create work packages: divide the project into work packages (and sub-work packages), in which you note what needs to be done – as well as costs, duration and who will take over this work package.

3. Add the work packages to a timetable: some work packages can run in parallel, others can only start when those before are completed – Arrange the work packages into a timetable with the help of ZEP.

4. Derive cost, deadline and resource plans: from the plan of the work packages you can see when which resources are needed or how the workload is distributed over the weeks.

5. Risk Management: Think about what risks exist for all work packages and what measures could help mitigate these risks before they occur and if they have occurred.

Here is an example of your project plan.

At the beginning, a normal Excel list is enough to create the plan. As the projects become larger, professional project management software is recommended. Which software you use depends on your needs. You can find an overview on OMR Reviews.

With Kanban Boards to success? So-called Kanban Boards are often used in project management. It is a board, for example a board or a whiteboard, which is divided into different areas: usually ToDo, Doing and Done. In the first column, the toDos are collected, in the second column what is being done is noted and in Done the finished tasks or work packages are listed. The advantage of Kanban Boards is that it is quickly apparent which tasks are still pending and which ones are being worked on.

If Kanban Boards are used in larger projects, they are usually extended by a prio column, i.e. very urgent tasks. With a Kanban Board, you can control your project, and not just very small projects. If you use different colors for the task cards, one color for each team member, you can immediately see who has too much work and who can possibly provide additional support. This greatly facilitates resource planning for your project management.

Here's what your Kanban Board could look like

Taking the next project management level with software support

We already mentioned that software support is available. But specifically, Kanban Boards become effective and remain simple with software support. Examples for project management software, which works on the basis of Kanban Boards, are Trello or Meistertask. In Trello any number of columns can be created, so you are not bound to ToDo, Doing and Done, but can individualize your project. You can also assign the tasks to your team members, set deadlines, make notes, attach appendices, comment and much more. If you want to apply Trello, you do not need any prior knowledge, but can start directly and intuitively.