You have probably experienced this scenario: You go to work with a set to-do list in your mind, just to have it blown apart by fire drills. Even though you planned to have hours to catch up project statuses at your desk, you are pulled into meetings, additional tasks are thrown your way, and you must try and maintain a schedule while finding ways to communicate with local and geographically dispersed team members. It doesn’t have to be this way—the Project Manager Survival Guide can help.
In the on-demand webcast, Survival Guide for Managing Projects and Working in Teams, Sr. Product Manager Zach McDowell discusses 7 tips for surviving the workplace chaos and addresses many of your questions. Below is a summary of the tips from the webcast.
Whether a trained or accidental project manager, you will conquer workplace chaos when you:
- Stop juggling too many tasks—45 work days a year are wasted due to inefficiency, so start prioritizing and delegating assignments to better manage your time
- Work smarter, not harder—62% of project managers don’t have formal management training, but they can work smarter by remaining flexible and balancing their teams’ workload
- Use one tool that does more—using different tools is one of the top five collaboration hurdles, so eliminate inefficient tools and start keeping everything in one place
- Adopt a virtual office—teams are becoming more geographically dispersed, so having a virtual office will allow you to stay connected wherever you go
- Understand the benefit of Kanban and agile—display the progress of work visually in Kanban boards, then connect individual tasks to the bigger picture with agile management
- Embrace planning as reality—only 14% of employees understand their company’s strategy; fight this statistic by allowing everyone to see how their work contributes to the end goal
- Report on your success—let your team tell you about their work, monitor their progress with reporting dashboards, and easily present information to stakeholders
I encourage you to watch the webcast, as it contains valuable information to further these 7 tips. You may even want to print out this list and take extra notes, or simply pin it to your desk as a piece of inspiration and guidance. You’ll be amazed the benefits that will come from improved collaboration.
Comment below with the tip you found to be most helpful in the webcast, and how following the survival guide has benefited your organization.
Content Contributor: Hayley Eubanks
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