25 Tips For New Project Managers

Estimated reading time: 2 mins

Are you a new Project Manager? Then you won’t want to miss these tips to get begin a string of successful projects!

Here are 25 essential tips for you new Project Managers!

1. Where your budget allows, recruit the best, most experienced people onto your projects
2. Play the role as ‘Project Leader’ too – inspire, encourage and create the best environment for success
3. Take the heat for your project team, if you must
4. If required, role up your sleeves and do the work that frees up your people to focus on what they’re good at – even if it’s getting the coffee
5. Be a good listener to your team, and ask questions about their well-being, stress-levels and satisfaction
6. Inject humour as well as discipline. Allow time for a little fun
7. Sell the benefits of your project to all stakeholders constantly – you need to keep them focused on the result!
8. Your project sponsors must always be involved in making big decisions
9. Ask sponsors to assign or approve all experts onto the team, especially external people
10. Ensure that your sponsors approve of (and physically sign-off) deliverables at each stage of the project
11. Always ensure you have enough time to do the job, even if it requires a tactful challenge of stakeholders
12. And allow time for rest. Don’t pile on the work!
13. Don’t move onto ‘building’ the end result until you have a satisfactory set of requirements (what is being built) and a working design
14. If you have to break rules, then break them. But get approval from sponsors first
15. Communicate bad news as well as good
16. Be brave. Be courageous.
17. Stand up and do the right thing. Always
18. Learn, consume and sleep your project life-cycle. Know each stage and phase off by heart!
19. Plan, re-check, plan again. But don’t go overboard. A slightly flawed plan is better than no plan
20. Hold regular reviews with sponsors, especially at the end of stages
21. Hold short and regular team meetings
22. When you’re in the run up to final delivery, hold (extremely) short ‘sun-up’ and ‘sun-down’ meetings (meetings at either end of the working day)
23. Always, always, use your experience as a source of learning
24. Don’t ever turn away an offer of help
25. When you wake up each morning, read the business case/objective of your project. Never let this escape the front of your mind!

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