Four Modern Methodologies to Reduce Project Management Stress

We’re all under pressure to get more done every day – especially as project managers. You’re responsible for delivering projects that will transform your business while providing valuable, strategic insights to stakeholders at a moment’s notice. Is how you’re managing projects helping you accomplish these objectives – or are your methods contributing to your project management challenges? Here are several components consider when evaluating your project management methodology that can streamline project delivery, increase visibility, and relieve some stress.

1. Single Source of Truth: Many teams are using a series of systems to manage their projects, including whiteboards, spreadsheets, emails and to-do lists. Meanwhile, the accounting team uses a different system for expenses, and yet another sales system tracks income. Using a single, integrated system saves time in consolidating data and gives you (and your stakeholders) all of the information you need, anytime you need it. Much less stressful than assembling dozens of spreadsheets, right?

2. Collaborative: Teams of people work on projects- so your project management should be accessible to the team as well. A collaborative project management method gives all of the involved parties, from the project manager to the client visibility into the progress. Your method should also allow parties to update and view project progress (within reason) in real time to facilitate teamwork and better project outcomes.

3. People-Centric: Collaborative and people-centric are not the same. While collaboration focuses on the team working together, a people-centric methodology is about finding the right team members. Project managers must seek the talent that aligns with the skills and experience needed to deliver the project. The work doesn’t end when the team is assembled – then the project manager must motivate that talented team to achieve the goals.

4. Efficient: Some might even go so far to say that your methodology should be ultra-efficient. Consider how do you tailor your solutions to the specific jobs and roles. Does your programmer need to worry about, or even see, project financials? What about a team working in the field? Can they see and update their task progress from where they’re doing their work? Or do they need to email it back to a project manager, who then updates it on a spreadsheet back at the office?

Of course, all of these methods contribute to one overarching goal of project managers today – that their project management is insight-driven. As the project manager, having a single, up to date, single point of truth for project management data that allows our carefully-selected team to collaborate efficiently helps reduce our stress, and increases the likelihood of success. Project success is what we’re all here for, right?