We’ve all heard the popular saying: time is money. And this couldn’t be more true when it comes to project management. Saving time is essential for any organization, whether small or large. For each project you complete early, you can free up more time for your individual improvement, as well as for the development of your team and company. Some of these steps include taking on more projects and improving the efficiency of your individual and also the team.
However, the reality is that most employees tend to be short on time on most days at work. From managing deadlines to devoting effort to administrative activities, there can be many activities that take up your time. And your role as a project manager can help you come up with strategies to improve the way you and your team spend time. This would help you plan capacity building activities and improve team coordination and support.
Let’s take a detailed look at some steps you can take to improve time management in your team.
Prioritize tasks for your team.
The usual way to approach a project is to plan the details of the work to be done. While this step is important for your team, prioritizing the tasks proves to save more time for you and your team. The usual approach to saving time at work is to complete urgent tasks on priority. You might find that your employees adopt this approach as standard, especially at the request of project managers and other stakeholders. However, at senior management levels, prioritizing tasks can prove difficult, especially when balancing multiple competing interests.
The Pareto analysis method, which follows the 80/20 method, can be useful if you are a manager. It means that you must first complete 20% of the tasks that would generate 80% of the sales. This will help achieve the maximum efficiency and also save time in the long run.
Provide visibility among resources and stakeholders.
One of the most time-consuming activities among team members is keeping each other informed about the work that needs to be done and the work that has been completed. From status updates to troubleshooting issues, coordination can become difficult when critical steps need to be updated. You may face even more serious problems if some or all of your team works remotely. The solution to this problem may be to hold regular update meetings from time to time and make sure everyone else is aware. But on the other hand, you can also take the help of technology to keep your team members informed.
With the help of resource management software, these problems can be minimized to a large extent. It provides clear insight into resource demand and capacity, allowing senior management to better plan them into projects. Whether you have a remote team or multiple stakeholders, project updates can be updated in real time and resources can be scheduled for projects in minimal time.
Participate in collaborative activities regularly.
Needless to say, communication is not only critical to the success of your project, but also to the development of a healthy team. And while the benefits of collaboration are numerous, one of the ways that teams working together can benefit is by saving time for the business. Teams that work together and are in constant contact with each other can grow together and build better bonds than teams that are separated.
Resolving workplace bottlenecks and projects together will not only improve coordination, but also get more work done in half the time. If you have remote teams, you can ensure that they join in occasionally and stay involved at the main office. Once you introduce collaboration among your team members, you will find that there is a good exchange of skills and intellectual knowledge among the members. Wherever your team is located, you can encourage people to work together by putting them in teams and assigning tasks to them as a group.
Keep your meetings short with time limits.
Meetings can take up more time than you realize at work. However, in most cases they are unavoidable when progressing through important project milestones and informing senior management of progress. But there are some steps you can take to keep meetings on your team to a minimum. The first step you can take is to schedule meetings. This small but quite important step will help your team members and other participants schedule the meeting and show up on time. It is also important that you only invite the relevant team members, so that no one is wasting their time. Also don’t forget to emphasize the importance of being on time when sending out invitations.
It is also important that you have a clear agenda for the meeting. This allows you to focus on the important issues and prevent discussions from wandering off. Once the meeting starts, you can also ensure that the meeting runs on time and that all important questions and issues are resolved as quickly as possible.
Ensure regular compliance measures among your staff.
Efficiency in your workplace is directly related to time savings. And for an all-round efficient team, hard work is just as important as some free time instead of free time. A committed leave on the calendar can help your employees reflect on the progress they have made and also make changes to the way they work.
As a project manager, internal audits can be a good way to assess which decisions took the most time to implement, and how they can be replaced in the future. Make sure you get good feedback from your team members and the steps you can take. If necessary, you can also schedule training and capacity building sessions. This will help you increase productivity and help the team complete projects on time.
Finally: make sure every meeting produces results!
Another way to improve efficiency is by implementing a results-oriented work environment, or the ROWE method. This method measures the employee’s performance not based on the number of hours worked or the hours spent in the office, but on the performance, results and output of the staff.
It can be said that saving office time makes the process more flexible and also helps employees manage their work efficiently. With small changes in the workplace, you can get the most out of your employees and plan your team’s growth towards a great future.