Every part of business can be broken into a project. That means an organisation should look at the best approach to manage each part to ensure the best results.  

Project management overview

Project management is the handling of money, time, goods, services and personnel to ensure that a project is completed to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders within a given time and budget.   

If a project is managed effectively, then the people in your business can develop at an exponential rate. On top of that, a company can grow its reputation by as able to deliver on promises made to a client.   

Facilitator and coach Chris Byles from Priority Management says there is open project management going on all the time in your business.    

“Even your sales should be project managed,” Byles says.   

“This is because your sales team should have a list of contacts, when to contact them and what they will say. Then there will be a follow-up plan to get a beneficial outcome hopefully. To me, that’s a project that requires a degree of planning and management.   

“So, whether you’re a small to medium business planning sales target or small build, or large resources company building a mine site, you should always be looking at your business as if it is a project because we always have milestones, sales targets, human resources development that need to be continually addressed in the day-to-day operation of a business.”   

Byles says no matter what you are managing, its critical resources, milestones and morale are engaged on equal measure.   

Cash flow  

Cash is king, and the lack of funds is what closes businesses down. Especially with large construction projects, long lead times can mean companies are paying large sums of money up-front and not receiving payment from the client for up to nine months.     

Milestones  

No matter what the project is, it is vital to be flexible with planning milestones because the best-laid plans sometimes tend to fall victim to good intentions. Project creep can cause something to fall behind as others progress and this can have a knock-on effect down the track.   

Morale  

Project flexibility and agility will help keep a team happy, focused and healthy. Employees who are confident that their employer cares about them and their wellbeing because safety is paramount in people’s minds has become a crucial part of project management. It almost runs as a sub-current under things that we would typically think are project-management based.    

Case study   

A services contractor was approaching the half-way mark of a multimillion-dollar rail project. The company hadn’t implemented a project plan and, as a result, was facing the prospect of failing to deliver production specified under the agreement with the client. 

A remedial consultant was appointed to input outstanding orders and products – which enabled lead times to be scheduled.  

From this simple intervention, procurement staff were able to track outstanding orders and inform the workshop of the delivery schedule of parts so they could plan jobs. That was all that was required to get the things back on track.