
Managing projects remotely is not easy at all. A lot of managers need to frequently communicate with their teams to handle all the important matters. Many project managers and their team needs to see each other face to face to discuss ideas and progress of the project, and to take advice on the project.
On the other hand, the virtual project management situation is a perfect fit for many. As there are many distractions and time wasting factors that can affect the performance of the whole team at the office.
For some managers, it is very frustrating to see their resources and coworkers treat the professional place as their own personal talk spot. Getting those resources out of your workplace is the only solution in order to get back to work and get your tasks done.
If managing projects is something you are considering, or is a possibility within your company and you are about to go for this option, follow these tips to hone your abilities in this area prior to implementation.
1. Getting organized is the Key
In order to remotely manage your tasks, you need to stay organized. Everything needs to be organized from managing documents, project plans, project software tools and other important stuff need to be in place and ready to go.
It is advisable to plan everything in advance so that your clients and organization must see you as an organized person. Get everything organized, work hard to make your first remote project a big success.
2. Use a Project Management Software
Use productivity management, project collaborative tool to keep the whole team engaged, informed and productive at the same time.
Finding the right project management tool is the key as there are dozens of tools available online.
Here I must suggest TaskQue – an amazing task management tool that is unique for its Queue feature, helping project managers to set the workload of every resource according to their capacity.
You can assign tasks to the queue and distribute the workload using its intelligent allocation algorithm without overwhelming any resource.
3. Connect on a Personal Level with Your Team
According to some managers the personal connection with team members can be a huge time waster.
In order to promote the personal discussion side from time to time, you need to create the situation where team members are willing to communicate with each other remotely.
The project manager needs to encourage this cohesive team environment. Remote communication and connection with each other can be difficult for some, but having more fun and personal connection with each other can prove that making the virtual part of the project easier to get used to for those who find it more difficult to handle.
4. Keep Senior Management and the Clients in the Loop
The management and your clients may be the hardest ones to convince that you have everything under control when you are managing projects and teams remotely.
The perfect way to convince them is to keep them well-informed about the project status.
Always ensure that they have timely updates of the project status reports, the project schedule and resource forecasting and financial status information as well. The more you involve them, the more confident and comfortable they will be with the remote management model.
5. Act Confidently to Succeed
As I mentioned earlier, remote project management and managing teams virtually is not for everyone. It is certainly not a good option for the disorganized people.
A project manager must have sufficient experience and know-how to deal with multiple projects prior to taking on the role of remote project management.
As nearly every project manager skills can significantly improve in remote and virtual team setting. They need to excellently communicate with their team members and solve their team concerns.
So if you are going to deal with the projects remotely and handling a virtual team, follow the above cited tips and proceed with confidence and caution.