By Kerry Wills

Project Managers must make sure that they prioritize their time to focus on high value activities that will help them and their teams to be successful. There are many techniques for being an effective Project Manager, but they all require being proactive and spending time on them. Some of the important activities where a Project Manager needs to spend time include:

  • Looking ahead at the project plan to identify upcoming activities and plan accordingly for them
  • Management by walking around (MBWA) to obtain critical project information and build rapport with team members
  • Building and fostering relationships with team members and stakeholders
  • Communicating project information to stakeholders
  • Recognizing and celebrating successes
  • Being available at their desk for real-time conversations and walk-ins from project team members
  • Preparing for meetings by gathering information, soliciting input and considering the audience
  • Looking at informative metrics to understand the progress of the project and key risk areas
  • Proactively considering risks to the project and the proper mitigations

There is an inverse relationship between the workload/meetings that a Project Manager has and their ability to focus on the proactive activities. The more time that a Project Manager can free up, the more time they can spend on being proactive. What happens is that Project Managers can sometime lose the ability to be proactive and only focus on the issues at hand, which results in quickly falling behind in their ability to manage all of the project activities?

Too Many Meetings Can Impact Us All

In order for a Project Manager to focus time on the proactive activities, they will need to reprioritize their attention. This probably means not attending some meetings and freeing up time on their calendars. There are a few ways to make time for these activities:

Empower team members to own pieces of work

This will free up time to focus on other activities and will also improve morale and motivation of the team.

Get help

Some projects create a Project Management Office (PMO) to run the operational aspects of the project such as financial management, metrics, resource planning and communications. This allows the Project Manager to get the information they need to manage the project but not spend the time in collecting it.

Do not go to all meetings

Once the team members are empowered, the Project Manager should determine the critical meetings which they need to attend. This is not to say that they shouldn’t read meeting minutes or understand the details of the project.

Block off calendar

Blocking time on the calendar for “office time” or to walk the floors is an effective technique for planning to perform those activities before calendars fill up with meeting invites.

About the Author

Kerry Wills has worked as a Consultant and a Project Manager for Fortune 500 companies on multi-million dollar technology projects since 1995. During that time, he has gained experience in several capacities; as a Program Manager, Project Manager, Architect, Developer, Business Analyst, and Tester. Having worked in each of these areas gives Kerry a deep understanding of all facets of an Information Technology project. Kerry has planned and executed several large projects as well as remediated several troubled projects.

Kerry is a member of Mensa and has a unique perspective on project work, resulting in eight patents, published work in project management journals and books, and speaking engagements at over twenty Project Management conferences and corporations around the world. Kerry is a passionate speaker who has a reputation for delivering entertaining presentations combined with vivid examples from his experiences.

Read Kerry’s blog at http://kerrywills.wordpress.com