If you are the project manager, the following scenario should be familiar to you.
- Limited resources, time and budget but you are asked to achieve the star and moon at an unreasonable deadline.
- Project scope creep – unexpected changes to the project requirement and scope.
- Ineffective communication within the project team and between customers.
- Your office culture of resistance to change hinders the adoption of complex project management skills and software.
- Office politics is the least thing you expect but it happen; your project team is not operative and giving you more headaches.
- Your boss is not supportive and expects you to solve all the problems, in short you have no one else to turn to.
If the above is what you have gone through, you are not alone; many project managers bound to face one or more project management challenges while managing the projects. While some scenarios are concerned more with management and human resources, some scenarios such as number 2 to 4 could be better managed with an effective project management toolkit or templates. These templates should be simple to use and easy to understand for all project team members or even to other stakeholders as they need to be kept informed of the project progress.
If the project team is resistance of using complex project management software, such project management templates could be an alternative as most of them are created using Microsoft Office Excel and Word. To most people, Microsoft Office Suite is a familiar tool so the length of learning curve could be reduced drastically.
A good project management kit should cover all the phases of the project management cycle, starting from the project initiation phase, project planning phase, project execution phase to project closure phase. Each phase contains a detailed set of templates for different needs for example, business case template for developing business case, feasibility study template during feasibility phase, project charter template during project charter phase and more.
The individual project templates should allow you to effectively track the project progress and hold your team members accountable for responsibilities and deadlines. The concise and well-documented reports can allow you to communicate clearly to your other stakeholders such as your customers, boss, sponsors and outsourced vendors. When right information is channeled to the right people, there will be less miscommunication and surprises.
Such project templates should be reusable so that every project produces the same documentation and make it easy for future tracking and checking. It can be customized easily according to different project scenarios.
These templates could be a solution to your project challenges and may become your essential toolkit for achieving your project success.