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5 Project Planning Templates to Help You Write a Good Project Plan

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monday.com templates can be lifesavers when it comes to visualizing each section of your project plan, and they make it easy to get started. Try these 5 project plan templates to kickstart your project planning process.

1. Structure your project

Looking for a general project plan template? Try one of our project plan templates.

Using this highly visual template by monday.com, you can structure your subprojects by set time periods and allocate accountable personnel to each phase.

Prioritize each project and add a timeline to show when deliverables are expected.

2. Plan out your resources

Resource management is a breeze with this easy-to-use template from monday.com.

monday.com resource management

Use this dashboard to organize all your project resources—from your technological tools to your specialist staff members.

You can allocate resources to individuals and tack on timescales so your staff knows what resources they’re responsible for in which phase. Adding a location makes it easy for teams to know where to hand over resources as they transition from one phase to the next—and they can check this on our mobile app.

3. Calculate your project budget

It’s far easier to plan a budget when you can see all your costs in one place.

That’s why this Project Cost Management Template from monday.com is so incredibly handy.

monday.com Project Cost Management Template

Add each subproject and plan out projected costs, allocating totals to each department. You can use the document to estimate the budget you’ll need and to record your approved project budget. You can then use our dashboards or reports to see the information in a different, more colorful way.

4. Sketch out your project schedule

Plan out your schedules with this Project Timeline Template.

monday.com Project Timeline Template

While this dashboard isn’t really suitable if you’re working with the Kanban framework, it’s ideal for those operating under Waterfall or Scrum frameworks.

For Waterfall projects, add in your milestones, attach a timeline, and allocate a set number of workdays to complete the tasks for each milestone.

Tag the team leader for each phase so project managers know which milestones they’re responsible for.

During project execution, teams can use the status bar to track progress. They can also add updates to each milestone by clicking on each item, which encourages inter-team collaboration.

For Scrum projects, you can organize the dashboard by Sprints, adding in the specific tasks as they’re decided.

5. Work out potential project risks

Visualize all your project scope and schedule risks in this Program Risk Register Template.

monday.com Program Risk Register Template

There’s nothing better than a vivid color-coding system to highlight which items are a seriously risky business. Use color-coded status bars to illustrate risk status, risk probability, and risk impact for your project scope and schedule.

You can even categorize risks, add a risk owner, and suggest mitigation strategies. That way other project team members know what to do if these risks start to blossom into real glitches.

Optimize your project management plan with the right tool

Project plans are an essential part of your team’s success.

While they are detail-oriented and complex, creating one and managing it shouldn’t be a struggle. Use monday.com’s pre-built planning templates to help you break down each section of the plan as you go and monitor everything in real-time.

How to Write a Killer Project Plan in 6 Simple Steps

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Project plans are often viewed as something that is good in theory but not in practice.

Why? It probably has a lot to do with how they are created—without useful preparation and stakeholder follow-through, they can quickly be abandoned.

This 6-step, high-level guide will help you write a project plan and provide recommendations for project management software that will make each stage of the process simpler.

What is a project plan?

Your project plan is a formal document that outlines an entire project’s goals and objectives, specific tasks, and what success looks like.

In addition to setting the purpose of your project, it should include other materials and deliverables relevant to the project, such as:

  • Timelines and Gantt charts for key milestones
  • Communication plans
  • Work breakdown structure—especially if you have multiple team members working on different or simultaneous tasks (in that case, you may also need a Project Planner)
  • Resources need to complete the project, like project management tools, cash, freelancers, and more.

In short, your project plan serves as a central hub to define, organize, prioritize, and assign activities and resources throughout your project’s life cycle.

Why are project plans important?

Over half of all projects experience something called scope creep. This is where the team ends up doing more work than originally planned. Much of this can be avoided by accounting for unexpected holdups or changes in circumstances within your project plan. A project plan also makes it easy to pinpoint when problems arose, so you can be better prepared for future projects.

If you look at the numbers related to project management, it’s easy to understand where a project management plan could have a positive impact—50% of projects aren’t completed on time, and 45% of projects are over budget. A project plan can help to curtail wily overspending and late turnaround by identifying these issues early. This leaves no room for confusion and delay in the workflow and progress of your projects. 

A project plan can help to curtail wily overspending and late turnaround by identifying these issues early.

 

How to create a project plan in 6 steps

There are no hard-and-fast rules for a project plan. However, we recommend you use the following six questions as a springboard for creating one.

1. Should you start with an executive summary?

The executive summary goes at the beginning of your project plan and should summarize the key points of the project plan. It should restate the purpose of the project plan, highlight the major points of the plan, and describe any results, conclusions, or recommendations from the project.

Even though it is at the beginning of your project plan, it’s something you will write last, as you’ll be pulling out the main points from the rest of your plan.

It should be no longer than a page, offering a brief overview of:

  • The project objectives and goals
  • Your chosen project methodology/framework
  • The final deliverables and acceptance criteria
  • Key scope risks and countermeasures
  • Summary of milestones
  • An overview of the project timeline and schedule-based risks
  • Resource and spending estimates

This snapshot of your project makes it easy for key stakeholders who aren’t actively involved in the mechanics of the project to understand it. For project managers, the executive summary serves as a quick reminder of the key project goal, scope, expectations, and limitations. Since a third of projects don’t meet their original goals, it’s important that project managers review the project plan regularly to stay on track.

2. What’s the scope of the project?

There are few things worse than starting on a project only for it to balloon. By defining a project’s scope, you set the boundaries for a project’s start and end dates as well as expectations about deliverables and who approves requests—and what merits approval— throughout a project.

It also involves outlining the potential risks associated with meeting these expectations and providing countermeasures to mitigate these risks. Identifying exactly who’s accountable for tracking these risks is essential.

This step will help you prevent scope creep, or how a project’s requirements tend to increase over a project lifecycle. Organizations complain that half of all their projects experience scope creep, yet only 27% of organizations go to the effort of creating a scoping document every time.

3. How will you structure your project?

There are several frameworks you could use to guide your project and this will affect your workflow’s organizations and how deliverables are produced and assigned.

For example, if you’re using the waterfall framework, you’ll be planning everything in advance, working through each stage of development sequentially, and specialized task owners executing their work at a defined time.

Remember that creating too many dependencies within your project structure can negatively impact success, so try to work out ways that teams can work autonomously to achieve deliverables in a timely manner. It’s also good to consider how many approvers are needed to maintain order but also to prevent bottlenecks.

Above all else, it’s important to incorporate set times for team knowledge-sharing, so your projects can be more successful. Make a note of the communication structures you’ll use to encourage collaboration.

4. What resources do you have available?

Define the resources you have available for this project:

  • Team
  • Time
  • Budget
  • Technology
  • Physical resources

You need to be precise when you’re assessing what you’ll need, otherwise you’re baking a cake with all the wrong ingredients. A resource manager or project manager can lead this.

As an example, when teams have the right highly skilled people, projects are 30% more likely to succeed. Yet, a third of people don’t believe their teams have all the right skills for the project—a recipe for failure.

The quantity of team members is also important—if the ratio of work to available people is off, efficiency and quality will suffer. If you want to effectively allocate your resources to meet expectations, you’ll need to be realistic about resource limitations.

This may, for example, mean adjusting timescales if you’re short on staff or increasing your budget if you need more specialist equipment.

5. What does your timeline look like?

Organizations that implement time frames into project plans are 52% more likely to succeed. Despite this, 80% of projects don’t always set baseline schedules. That’s probably why 43% of organizations say they rarely or never complete successful projects on time.

In this sense, it’s wise to add a project schedule section to your project plan. This part of your plan should set expectations on when you’ll deliver and how you’ll stick to your project timeline or calendar.

Your project schedule will look a little different depending on which framework you choose.

The tasks that you have a ‘Work in Progress’ (WIP) will depend on your team’s capacity. In this section, you should set your maximum number of WIPs you can have in each column at each time.

6. How will you manage change?

Organizations put change control in their top 3 project challenges. If you don’t solidify a change management plan, your team will be clueless on what to do when unplanned change hits. A dynamic change management plan will outline the steps to follow and the person to turn to when unforeseen changes occur.

A key part of this is having a change management tool in place. monday.com Work OS is flexible enough to help you manage all parts of the project life cycle—from planning and monitoring to reporting and resource management. Let’s take a look at a few of our templates that can help you get started—we have 200+!

How to Ensure Exemplary Project Deliverables Every Time

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So many projects deliverables. So (very) little time.

As the number of projects and their accompanying deliverables continue to rise and time remains constant (still only 24 hours in a day!), project manager plates across the world are getting more and more full. These “overflowing plates,” in turn, can negatively impact results.

Between juggling projects, tasks, schedules, stakeholders, and all the things in between, critical aspects of job roles and responsibilities began to fall through the cracks. We are, after all, only human.

Is this avoidable? After all the hard work and time that goes into each and every project, there must be a way to ensure solid output, right?

The short answer is a resounding yes.

Before we get to how to make all of this work, let’s back up and define a few things.

What are project deliverables?

In short, a project deliverable is any deliberate output created for a specific project.

There are two main types of deliverables for any given project:

  • Process deliverables … which play a key role in reaching the project’s overall goal
  • Project deliverables … which serve as the project’s ultimate goal

Yet, as always, the devil is in the details.

It’s important to remember this: project deliverables can come in many different shapes and sizes. A deliverable can be:

  • Tangible or intangible
  • Internal or external
  • In multiple formats: reports, products, and more

All of it depends on the specifics of each and every project.

Project deliverable examples

Not all project (or process) deliverables are created equal.

Deliverables can — and do — vary from industry to industry, organization to organization, and from project to project. This variability makes it quite challenging (if not impossible) to build a list of “one size fits all” deliverables.

That being said, there are some deliverables that are similar.

For the purpose of this example, we chose a project that many can relate to: redesigning a company website. Here is what process and project (and product) deliverables may look like:

Your initial list of project/product deliverables should encompass every one of your stakeholders and every phase of each component all the way up to the aggregated final result.

As seen in the website redesign example above, deliverables often rely on someone else doing something. This is what’s called a dependency. There tend to be more dependencies the larger the project scope is and the more project milestones it has.

So why are deliverables so important?

Why are deliverables so important for project management?

Deliverables are not really important for a project, they are essential.

When managing a complex project with multiple stakeholders, every project team member is well aware of the final project objectives. Every stakeholder knows their responsibility.

That’s the good news.

However … there are no project deadlines, no project milestones, no progress progress reports, no way to know that everyone is on the same page. Oh, and there is nothing to share directly with the project’s sponsor.

This is certain to result in a poor outcome.

Fast forward to the final deadline date and (surprise surprise!) many of the internal and external stakeholders are behind schedule, some are not aligned with the main objective. And to top things off, you — the project manager, the lead — are completely out of the loop.

Enter chaos. 

To avoid this complete and total disorder (or at least to mitigate it to some degree), it is crucial for project managers to ensure a tight schedule of high-quality deliverables and establish a cohesive approval process to guarantee that the progress is aligned with the specific project’s KPIs.

Note: Too often, internal deliverables are pushed to the side … viewed as not as important as external deliverables.

WRONG.

A far too common — yet often deadly — mistake is not investing in the quality of internal deliverables. Many pass it off as just another “unnecessary bureaucratic step” in the long project process.

Again, WRONG.

The quality of your external deliverables is highly dependent on the deliverables submitted by you or your stakeholders throughout the entire process.

Revisiting our website redesign example above, if the wireframe is delivered half-backed an./or late, it will negatively impact the quality of the entire project. Every internal and external stakeholder depends on receiving high-quality deliverables in order to create deliverables of their own. Bad data in, bad data out.

So what do high-quality deliverables look like?

The two keys to high-quality deliverables

Thorough preparation + a quality checklist = a high-quality deliverable.

Key #1: Preparation

Alexander Graham Bell is quoted (some say incorrectly) as saying, “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”

While you might not necessarily be the one to execute the deliverables, if you are responsible for their quality ultimately you are held accountable. There is some essential preparation to be knocked out before the kickoff meeting with your stakeholders.

  1. Clearly define every deliverable. If you find yourself adding deliverables during the development phase, there may be a problem. You will likely have to alter the project scope, a huge headache and not all that efficient.
  2. Be thorough when outlining each deliverable. The more vague the outline, the more lengthy the back-and-forth with the stakeholder will be, and the more room for misinterpretation and confusion.
  3. Create and share a clear project phase schedule. This will help both you and the stakeholders track their progress and understand their role within the larger scope.

Key #2: a quality checklist

Your average workday requires a constant process of submitting, requesting, or reviewing multiple deliverables. It’s easy — and understandable — to overlook certain mistakes or omissions.

Unfortunately, these issues don’t miraculously disappear; they will always resurface … often at the most inopportune times.

That’s why it’s important for you to lead by example, establish a well-oiled approval process, and hold the stakeholders to the highest standards.

Instill best practices and measure each deliverable by leveraging the 6 Cs of project deliverable quality:

Breaking each one down …

  1. Concise: Does the deliverable focus solely on its original objectives?
  2. Clear: Is the deliverable coherent and easy to understand? Is it well structured and ready to be reviewed?
  3. Consistent: Is the deliverable aligned with project goals, and does it clearly communicate with all of the other deliverables?
  4. Correct: Is the deliverable error-free? Has it been carefully reviewed?
  5. Credible: Has the deliverable gone through sufficient testing if needed? Has it been proofed by a credible professional?
  6. Complete: Does the deliverable cover everything it should? Is it 100% ready for submission?

The 6 Cs should be a constant checklist for each and every deliverable that passes your desk. 

The more experience you have, the longer your checklist will get. You can — and should — customize it to your specific projects in your specific industry. 

But don’t make the mistake of keeping this checklist to yourself; it is made to be shared. No matter what the project, it’s important there are clear standards in place that are relevant for any stakeholder.

What does this all look like in practice?

Mini-Case Study: How Creativeans uses monday.com

While all of the above sounds wonderful in theory, what does it look like when implemented in the real world?

Creativeans is an interdisciplinary design and branding company for real products (not online products). It focuses on 4 disciplines: branding, product design, packaging, and communication design.

Thanks to the breadth of its solution, Creativeans helps clients from conception to implementation. Team members often start by designing the product, then move into package design and the overall branding. Finally, it helps with the communication strategy through marketing and other online means. Thanks to this deep level of involvement, the team builds a very deep understanding of its clients’ products ensuring great customer service.

How Creativeans uses monday.com: “clarity, not confusion”

Before we answer that, let’s look at Creativeans in a pre-monday.com world.

Prior to implementing monday.com, Creativeans had fewer projects. This made it easy as team members could use their own calendars, the company whiteboard, and so on.

However, as the organization grew, its “own stuff” became more challenging to manage. Once there were 20+ projects happening all at once, they needed to be on the same page, very clear about milestones.

“monday.com makes it really easy for us to work on projects,” co-founder and current Director Yulia Saksen, told us. “[The Work OS] is about efficiency and productivity. It’s a very useful solution for managing the complexity in such a diverse team like ours.

“We do all our planning on monday.com. When we kick start a project, we will have the different deliverables, the scope of the project — all this in monday.com.

Saksen shared how the team uses monday.com for internal meetings, where they pull up various monday.com boards and “everyone speaks about their work.”

Again, Saksen stressed how with monday.com, “It’s all very clear. Everything we need is there. We can see all that’s going on and can make changes on the spot.

The beauty of monday.com is its simplicity. We did try other project management softwares before, but they were all too complicated. We need clarity, not confusion.

Your list of project deliverables

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view it), your list of deliverables is unique to you, your project, and your stakeholders.

The good news? Just like your quality checklist, over time, you will have your own deliverable lists in place for your recurring projects.

The even better news? There are actually plenty of customizable monday.com templates to make that task a whole lot easier.

All it takes is a little preparation, strong standards, a good communication and approval system, and you’re well on your way to ensure high-quality deliverables, every single time.

What Does the Future of Project Management Look Like?

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Many project management trends are shaping how we work. Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the biggest force with the largest, lasting effect. In fact, in PMI’s Pulse of the Profession survey, 81% of respondents reported their organization is already being impacted by AI technologies.

Technology writer Peter Giffen believes,

“AI could incorporate data analytics and automatically analyze project team data, providing clear indications about how to improve performance.”

As outlined in this Forbes article, in addition to AI, there are three other project management trends we can expect in the near future:

  1. Project managers will need both AI and EI skills: EI — emotional intelligence — is becoming a required skill in the PM space. The ability to understand other humans is critical. Read this article for other essential project management skills.
  2. Adoption of customized or hybrid PM approaches: Gone are the days where a single PM methodology will suffice. It’s likely that models will need to be flexible to accommodate different teams and various projects.
  3. A more diverse team structure: As mentioned above, your team will grow more diverse. Though ultimately a positive trend, increasingly diverse teams will also create a broad range of challenges as teams collaborate effectively and efficiently.

No matter what, project management is here to stay! But not all project management software is created equal. The best project management software for you depends on your needs. We’ve outlined which we believe is the top choice below.

Why use monday.com for project management?

monday.com’s Work OS goes beyond project management software because it allows teams to manage all projects and tasks in a single place.

Our solution means teams can:

  • See project progress at a glance (visually)
  • Stay on top of schedules and deadlines
  • Collaborate more efficiently and effectively
  • Build their dream workflows

Try our platform now, the first two weeks are on us. To dive in right away, check out our project management template:

Project Management in 2022 – A Complete Guide

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With all of its different frameworks, jargon, and concepts, the realm of project management can have you saying to yourself, “It’s all Greek to me.”

That said, project management functions a lot like a language, with key structures and details that result in real meaning.

Project management (not to be confused with program management) is the process that guides a team’s work to accomplish all project goals within certain parameters.

The goal of project management is producing a complete project that meets objectives. In this guide, we’ll break down how to effectively use project management — all in plain English.

What is project management?

Project management (PM) is defined as the framework used to guide your team to success—this includes your team objectives, tools, and techniques both over the long-term and your day-to-day work.

Why is project management important? 

Project management is important because it provides the leadership, motivation, and roadblock-removals that help teams introduce new products or services, grow revenue, and meet other company goals.

According to a study by the Project Management Institute:

In 2020, 11.4% of every dollar invested in projects was wasted due to poor performance or management.

By prioritizing the use of effective project management methods and frameworks, organizations can proactively and continuously improve their workflows to avoid overspend and mistakes. During these fast-moving times, the companies who rise to the top rely on solid project management to remain efficient and productive.

ow that we know what project management is and why it’s important, where do you start?

Is there a process to project management? Yes—and we break down all five phases

The Project Management Institute (PMI) breaks down the project management process into five phases that are relatively well-agreed upon in the project management space:

Entire books have been written on the above structure and what each step comprises of—but we’ll give you the high-level information you really need to know:

1. Initiating

As with any good project, preparation is vital to ensure it will be completed on time and within budget. During the initiation phase, determine the following to create the project foundation:

  • Project scope: the specific limits and boundaries for the project. It essentially covers what will be accomplished in the project and what will not (i.e project objectives). Establishing these boundaries prevents something called “scope creep.” You can learn more about it here.
  • High-level project overview: This considers the resources, time, and goals required to complete a project. Included in the overview is a way to monitor these requirements over time.
  • Budgets: How much is needed to achieve a successful project?

For larger projects, a project charter or “Project Initiation Documentation” (PID) might be established.

2. Planning

During this phase, key milestones and dates are set, including the final project completion date. By getting clear and intentional about project timing, you can help ensure that all team members move towards the same goal. This will also save you a road of confusion ahead when you encounter roadblocks.

During this process, it’s important to outline which project management methodology the team will follow. There are many to choose from: Agile, Waterfall, PRINCE2, PMBOK, Scrum, Lean, and Kanban (to name a few of the more popular ones). We’ll get into more specifics around some of these later in this guide.

The planning phase also includes:

  • Selecting the team members
  • Outlining deliverables
  • Estimating resources
  • Determining associated activities

3. Executing

At this point, it’s all about getting stuff done. During the execution phase, you will carry out the details of your project plan (or project deliverables) to deliver your products to your specific stakeholders. This stage occurs simultaneously with the monitoring and controlling phase and might involve:

  • Managing workflows
  • Recommending changes and corrective actions

4. Monitoring/Controlling

This is crucial in any project life cycle as it helps project managers answer the question: where are we at any given point in the project vs. where should we be according to the project plan? Effective monitoring requires:

  • Regular, consistent project “check-ins”
  • Use of proper project documentation and tracking tools or frameworks (such as Kanban boards, Gantt charts, and team stand-ups). The more visual and real-time this is, the better as you can then easily communicate it to key players and adjust.

5. Closing

This final step, sometimes known as “project delivery,” is when you wrap up all activities and deliver the final product to the client (an internal team or external stakeholder).

Some additional components could be:

  • Conclusion of any formal contracts or agreements
  • A full review or audit of what went well, what didn’t go as planned, and how future teams and projects could learn from this one.

8 tips for successful project management

When managed right, projects allow companies to develop new products or services, transform internal business processes, and produce value for customers. However, without the right building blocks in place, they can lead to a lack of innovation and drain on your time and money.

Here are 8 tips for successful project management that propel your organization instead of holding it back.

1. Invest in the initiation and planning stages

When it comes to answering, “Why do projects fail?”, many of the reasons can be traced back to poor planning and research—crucial parts of the initiating and planning stages of the project life cycle. By establishing, syncing, and agreeing on key aspects such as organizational priorities, objectives, and requirements early on, there is less of a chance for confusion on them later.

2. Pick right framework or methodology for your project

The second step toward successful project management is finding the right framework or methodology. Project management methodologies describe a set of guiding principles and processes that are used to plan, manage, and execute projects. Whether you choose the critical path methodology or Waterfall, these frameworks determines how work is prioritized and completed, as well as the way it is visualized.

3. Promote a culture of transparency and ownership

Transparency can make all the difference when managing a project as complexities and sensitivities arise. With a strong culture of transparency in place, team members and leaders can rely on each other to raise flags or take ownership for their work regardless of how granular or stressful your plans get.

This starts with clear communication, so each contributor can understand your long-term goals, KPIs (key performance indicators), and plans—as well as where they fit into the puzzle. One way to achieve this is to involve every employee in the planning process (at some level), and give them ownership over tasks and deliverables by using a solid project management workflow, which you can create with monday.com Work OS. An added perk of this culture? Employees tend to self-manage more effectively (so long, micromanaging) and with a greater sense of accountability, their motivation to perform their best will also rise.

4. Decide on a realistic scope

Scope creep is one of the main challenges project managers face. 52% of companies experience scope creep or unforeseen changes to the scope during a project. While this could be related to uncontrollable factors throughout a project, having the right people at the planning table can help you more accurately define project scope from the start. By including experienced stakeholders and team members in the initiating and planning stages, you can avoid a lot of frustration later. You can even refer back to old project data to help set the scope stage more clearly.

5. Get wise about scheduling

If you want your team to stay productive, you need to create work schedules that are realistic to your team’s workloads and the intended delivery date. While it’s almost impossible to develop the perfect project management timeline, balancing these two factors is a worthwhile investment. With a Work OS like monday.com, you can see individual or team workloads with Workload View in the same workspace that you manage calendars, timelines, and resources.

Proper and clearly communicated schedules help mitigate delays and other costly setbacks. The type of project management methodology you use can also impact the way your team uses its time to reach a goal or several smaller goals. If you use an Agile framework like Scrum, you will focus on the short-term and smaller deliverable increments. It’s also important to schedule time for things you don’t plan for in a project.

6. Practice effective resource management

Resource management is an important tenet of project management and describes the process of pre-planning, scheduling, and allocating your resources to maximize efficiency. In the physical sense, resource management could be explained through the example of a contractor managing construction projects—they could decide to book a concrete pourer for two sites in lieu of having to pay the cost for two at the same time.

For digital projects, resources often refer to specific employees or teams. A graphic designer may have several concurrent projects, so you’ll need to plan with them in order to get the job done. The list goes on to include any number of resources including people, capital, and other material goods.

7. Get stakeholders engaged

A stakeholder is someone directly invested in the project’s success. They could be a key client, internal product user, executive, or product manager. In order to garner their support—financial or otherwise— that fuels a project, teams and project managers shouldn’t skimp on any work needed for their projects.

Communication and input between these two parties should be established before, during, and after a project. Why? Because each offers unique insights and perspectives relative to the organization’s goals and the team’s capabilities. A Work OS with robust features will help you to present important data and timelines in real-time you can refer back to again and again.

8. Choose next-level project management tools and software

To succeed in the modern world of remote work, inter-departmental collaboration, cloud file sharing and 1,000 other variables unique to your company, you need a modern project management platform.

monday projects offer the complete toolkit for every project and is built on an easy-to-use Work OS. This gives you the freedom to work in whatever project management framework you prefer. With views ranging from our custom table (with color-coded statuses) to Kanban board, Gantt chart, timeline, and calendar views, you can truly customize the experience to your workflow.

You can also seamlessly integrate monday.com with other tools in your tech stack, and share boards, dashboards, and updates with your entire team in real-time.

6 Steps to Get the Most Out of Project Management Software

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While spreadsheets, email, and whiteboards could suffice for very simple and small-scale projects, large and complex projects require a robust project management platform to succeed.

monday.com gives you all the functionality you need, from platform-specific templates, boards, and workflow automations to collaboration tool integrations.

Here’s how you can use set up a digital workspace like monday.com Work OS to empower your project teams.

1. Use project documentation to speed up framework adoption

Project documentation is the practice of recording key project details and documents required to successfully implement projects. If you are bringing multiple teams together in a specific project methodology, it’s important to make documentation clear and understandable for everyone.

With a Work OS, you can create, share, and collaborate on documents right from within your workflow—or larger workspace. On monday.com’s workdocs, team members can explore and understand in real-time the flow of a project and their part.

2. Create your roadmap and high-level project plan

A project roadmap is a visual, high-level overview of a project’s goals and deliverables organized on a timeline. This is an incredibly useful tool for managing stakeholder expectations, as well as for communicating plans and coordinating resources with other teams. Project management software allows you to create a living and dynamic document that everyone can easily access. Better yet, project roadmap templates like this one from monday.com can help you get started even faster.

3. Build an awesome workflow

Once you have a roadmap or some other form of high-level project plan, it’s time to get more granular with your workflows. This is crucial, as it makes it easy and intuitive for your team members to execute their work and for project managers to monitor and control project progress.

The advantage of using a Work OS  over traditional project management software to build your project workflows is that you can start with solid templates and quickly customize them to accommodate different project methodologies, incorporate different views, automations, and more.

For example if you favor the Waterfall model, you can use what’s called a work breakdown structure (WBS) like in the image below.

4. Encourage ownership

On a more robust Work OS, you can add a People Column and easily assign ownership of tasks and subtasks to individual employees and teams—some project management software will only let you choose individual owners. These columns empower project managers and individuals to assign work and see it through. You can even implement automations that send notifications to task owners when a phase of the project is complete.

In addition to assigning task owners, it’s also a good idea to give each team member simple responsibilities like reporting on progress during status meetings and identifying their own roadblocks. This helps maintain a culture of transparency and builds momentum.

5. Get dedicated to data-driven decision making

Take your projects to the next level with actionable insights. Depending on which solution you choose, we included a few features that will help you get the most out of your data:

  • Time tracking – this allows teams to see how long tasks take
  • Customizable statuses – any stakeholder can see where your projects get held up the most
  • Deadlines – holds every team member accountable to the project’s success

Once you’ve created different workflows, use them as a resource and easily create reports and dashboards.  Assess project success against KPIs—this data can then be used to guide decisions or new projects.

6. Automate repetitive tasks to speed up project management

 

Automations can speed up your workflow for more efficient project management. For example, you can notify managers automatically when due dates are passed, create a new task item every week, and more.

How Can You Build a Productive Project Team?

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How you structure your project team largely depends on your framework and the scope of your project. Here are a few proven strategies for building a successful and productive team.

1. Recruit talent across departments

Your project team will likely come from different departments because projects benefit from and require varied expertise and input.

Instead of hiring new talent, you can utilize existing resources and sync multiple departments on a larger organizational goal. For example, a new marketing campaign could require website designers, copywriters, and product managers.

2. Choose a project manager wisely and define responsibilities accurately

A project manager could be a professional PM or a subject matter expert (SME) — someone who’s extremely knowledgeable in the area of the project. You can see here a breakdown of who typically wears the project manager hat.

A professional PM might play more of a facilitating role during initial planning. They give room to stakeholders and SMEs to shape the project plan with their hands-on experience. Smaller companies may not be able to afford a dedicated project manager role, in which case, an SME or executive is the logical choice.

What does a project manager do?

A project manager might look different from team to team, but overall they are responsible for day-to-day management of a project and its people. They must also manage these 6 aspects:

  • Scope
  • Schedule
  • Finance
  • Risk
  • Quality
  • Resources

3. Set an “all hands on deck” expectation

If the project manager has to babysit every team member and make the final call on every minor decision, the project will crawl forward at a snail’s pace. Instead, empower your team members to exercise their own judgment and push forward.

Employees at “high-trust” companies report 50% higher productivity than their low-trust counterparts.

Micro-managing employees slows down progress and hurts team morale. By encouraging task ownership and providing complete transparency of what’s expected at the project’s early stages, your team members will propel it forward.

As detailed above, you’re aiming for the “perfect” team. It’s important to understand though that as time goes on, your teams will likely become more and more diverse (ethnic backgrounds, socio-economic status, and even location (the move to a more work-from-home team has only accelerated due to the global pandemic).

While this will certainly benefit the project (the greater the diversity, the more perspectives and expertise you’ll have), it means you’ll also need flexible tools to accommodate different teams and various projects. This is where project management software comes in.

4 Frameworks to Guide Project Management

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One of the most crucial project management decisions you’ll make is choosing a framework because it dictates how you structure your team and how you plan and monitor your projects.

As promised, here are high-level descriptions of the leading project management frameworks (with links to even more comprehensive deep-dives):

1. Waterfall project management

Waterfall or traditional project management is focused on “perfect planning.” Before you even get started, you break down and schedule the entire project from start to finish.

If you’re working with physical products with lots of dependencies or services where your SLA demands perfection, consistency, and set-in-stone deadlines, there’s no better alternative.

Check out our complete guide to Waterfall project management here.

2. Kanban project management

Unlike the Waterfall framework, Kanban project management focuses on continuous improvement. Using a Kanban board like the one above, your team plans how to improve products, campaigns, or processes.

Who should use Kanban? Kanban helps you visualize your work to limit work-in-progress (WIP) and quickly move work from “Doing” to “Done.” Kanban is great for teams that have many incoming requests.

To learn more about Kanban project management, check out our guide.

3. Scrum project management

The Scrum framework is the most popular way to implement Agile project management. It divides larger projects into shorter, 1–4 week sprints that adapt to demands as the project evolves.

It also lays out rules for team size, team roles, planning, meetings, deliverables, and more. While popular among software developers, it’s also great for teams that seek to deliver functioning increments of their work during a project. For example, you could use it for marketing campaigns, product design, or other creative projects.

Read our post on the Scrum methodology to learn more.

 

4. Agile project management

Agile is a project management buzzword and is often prescribed as a catch-all solution to inefficient companies. However, it has its own unique shortcomings, like the ones below.

Agile frameworks, like Scrum, are designed to leave room for mistakes, trial and error, and unanticipated changes. In other words, if you employ an Agile approach, don’t expect your operations to run perfectly. They can also be hard to scale beyond a smaller team level. On the other hand, for many teams, having the flexibility to amend project plans as time goes on is integral to ensuring they can finish the project at all.

To learn more about running your next project using an agile framework, check out our walkthrough. 

We also have a great blog on top project management methodologies to further help you understand your options.

We’ve covered the project management phases, its frameworks, and tips for success, but what about the key players who will take the project from A-Z? We’re talking of course about your team. Here’s how to ensure you choose the right people for the project.

Product Manager vs. Project Manager: What’s the Difference?

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A product manager is in charge of a product’s success from the beginning to end of its lifecycle, while project managers shepherd projects to completion.

Product manager vs. project manager: What do they do?

Product managers and project managers often work together, they have distinct roles. While a product manager sets the vision, goals, and business trajectory of a product, a project manager leads the many projects to make those goals a reality. So if the product manager is a strategic thinker, the project manager is more of a doer.

It might help if we distinguish products from projects. A product refers to any service or item that an organization creates to serve a customer need. Products can be physical, like furniture or clothing, or digital, like an app, or a video feature on a website. A project, on the other hand, is a set of tasks completed to achieve an outcome. A project’s goal could be to create or maintain a product—like construct a house, or roll out a new software update.

What does a product manager do?

A product manager is in charge of a product from the beginning of its lifecycle to its end. This means they set the vision of a product, direct any updates, and make sure the product is filling customer needs until the product is retired. Unlike project management, product management usually doesn’t have a clear beginning and end.

At larger organizations, product managers can take on high-level work like managing a team. In smaller organizations, a product manager might do more hands-on work, such as market research, or even some project management. 

Because product manager is a relatively new role and can change from company to company and team to team, specific tasks can vary widely. But generally, a product manager does the following:

  • Defines key metrics for product success

  • Understands consumer needs and relays them to the product team

  • Works with cross-functional teams—like engineering, design, and marketing—to develop and pursue product strategy

  • Finds ways to improve or grow a product through market analysis and other research

  • Keeps an eye on product performance

  • Tests and monitors new product features

  • Monitors competitors

Read more: What Does a Product Manager Do? Strategizing for Product

What does a project manager do?

A project manager oversees projects from start to finish. Projects are a set of tasks designed to achieve a specific goal. Projects can be big, like constructing a new building, or smaller, like rolling out a new tool for a team to use. A project manager is somebody who plans these projects by creating teams, determining schedules, managing budgets, and communicating with stakeholders, until each project is completed. There is generally a clearly defined beginning and end to a project.

Project managers can do the following specific tasks:

  • Determine key goalposts like project scope, timeline, and budget estimates

  • Collaborate and communicate extensively with leadership and stakeholders

  • Create and maintain processes for changes in the project

  • Use project management software to keep track of tasks and schedule

  • Make sure teams are collaborating well, and staying motivated and on schedule

Looking for more detail? Read What Does a Project Manager Do? A Career Guide

How do product managers and project managers work together?

Product managers and project managers often work together. What would this actually look like? Let’s look at an example.

Imagine a company that sells furniture online. They want to launch an app that customers can use to browse products on mobile devices. The company might hire a product manager to be in charge of the app’s development. The product manager will define the goals of the app, decide what features should be in it, orchestrate a team of product developers, and monitor new challenges as they arise.

The company might then hire a project manager to turn these goals into reality. Let’s say the product manager determines that people like to discuss with family members before making a purchase, and wants to make this a key part of the app. A project manager might lead a project to roll out a feature on the app that will allow customers to share furniture they like through a messaging platform. The project manager may put together a team dedicated to the new feature, set a schedule for production, and make sure the team completes the project on time and within budget. In the meantime, they might be communicating with the product manager a few times a week with updates on progress.

Who earns more: product manager or project manager?

Generally, product managers make more than project managers in the US. The average product manager’s salary in the US is $111,755 a year, while a project manager in the US makes an average salary of $87,637, according to August 2021 data from Glassdoor.

Product owner vs. product manager vs. project manager

In addition to product managers and project managers, you may have heard of product owners. A product owner’s role is to make sure a Scrum team is aligned with the product’s priorities by managing the product backlog (that’s the to-do list of a development team). This makes sure that individual projects are aligned with the overall product goals. So while the product manager is in charge of the overall product, the product owner sits on a smaller team that is working on one aspect of the product. 

So where do project managers fit in here? A project manager often works with product owners within the same project team. A product owner is one of two designated roles in an Agile or Scrum team, the other being the Scrum master, a type of project manager. The two roles generally coexist on a development team.

Becoming a product manager vs. project manager

You’ll find that there’s a lot of overlap between the paths of project and product managers. But there are key differences too.

Career paths for product managers and project managers

The road to becoming a product or project manager have many similarities—project managers can, in fact, go on to become product managers.

While some people might become product managers straight out of college, it’s common to build up experience and skills beforehand. Since product managers need a good sense of business and customer needs, you might see product managers with backgrounds in business operations or marketing. Product managers might go on to become senior product managers or vice presidents of product.

Project managers on the other hand often get their start in industry work. For example, a software development project manager might spend a few years working as a software developer. They might also work first as an associate project manager or project coordinator. Project managers can go on to be product managers, senior project managers, and directors of project management.

But keep in mind that these two fields are very flexible and new. There’s no one way to become a project manager or product manager.

Skills

For both product managers and project managers, human skills, also known as soft skills, are crucially important. You’ll also need some specialized technical knowledge.

Product manager skills:

  • Data analysis

  • Market assessment

  • Price modeling

  • Basic user experience (UX) knowledge

  • Basic business knowledge

Project manager skills:

  • Knowledge of project management approaches like Scrum, Agile, and Waterfall

  • Risk management

  • Project management tools like Asana or Gantt charts

  • Basic budgeting

Read more: 12 Project Management Methodologies: Your Guide

Certifications

Certifications aren’t required to become either a project manager or product manager. They may, however, give you an edge in job applications; sometimes they can be required. Project management certifications are more common than product management certifications. 

Common project manager certifications include:

  • Project Management Professional (PMP)

  • Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)

  • Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)

  • Professional Scrum Master (PSM I)

Read more: How to Get a PMP Certification: An Overview

Product manager certifications are available as well. These include:

  • Product School – Product Manager Certificate

  • Pragmatic Institute – Certified Product Manager 

  • AIPMM Certified Product Manager Credential

Getting started

If you’re ready to get started, consider the Google Project Management: Professional Certificate. You can learn the basics of project management and gain job-ready skills in six months or less.

How to Handle Schedule Conflicts

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Everyone faces schedule conflicts at work at some point. They may be caused by tight deadlines on a new project, an error in schedule plans, or a team member calling in sick on a busy day. 

Schedule conflicts are disruptive and annoying and can result in total project failure or the delivery of subpar work. It is crucial to set up good workflow management and internal systems to minimize their occurrence or deal with them as they crop up. 

This article sheds some light on the five common scheduling conflicts in the workplace, how to handle them, and the best software to minimize them. 

What are scheduling conflicts?

A scheduling conflict in the workplace is when you have two tasks or events vying for your time and attention simultaneously. It is also a situation in which a team member is assigned two tasks or double shifts at the same time. 

Regardless of how it occurs, a work schedule conflict demands that one person be in two places at once, which isn’t possible. This calls for a change to the schedule or an extra hand to help with the tasks or events.

Take this as an example: your team usually has stand-up meetings at ten every Monday, but this week there’s a client meeting scheduled to take place on the other side of town at the same time. 

Or, in another scenario, you underestimate how much time a task would take to complete and now have another task due, leading to more dependencies and eventual project delay if you don’t get help or work faster.

What are the different types of scheduling conflicts?

There are five common schedule conflicts in the workplace:

  1. Overlapping events: This happens when the end of one event overlaps with the start of another. For example, you may have a team meeting from 11 am to 12:00 and a client meeting from 12:30 to 1:00 pm. To make it to both of these events, you would have to miss the end of the team meeting or reschedule the client meeting for later. 
  2. Booking unavailable time slots: This occurs when you schedule a time-sensitive task or event at a time already dedicated to other work. For example, you might assign a new task to a team member who’s working on something else. This team member would have to decide which task is more important to work on or communicate with you to let you know they’re unavailable at the set time.
  3. Booking unavailable team members: This happens when you schedule tasks or events with team members who are unavailable — for example, inviting a team member who’s away on a work trip to lead the next team meeting. If you don’t notice this error in time, the meeting may be delayed or canceled because there’s no leader. If you notice the discrepancy early enough, you have the time to find someone else to lead the meeting. This scenario underscores the importance of encouraging communication and confirmation of assigned work within your team or organization.
  4. Double-booking: This happens when you schedule two tasks or events in the same time slot. Say, for example, you assigned two tasks set for the same time to one team member. They would have to complete both tasks faster, risking errors and lack of focus due to multitasking — and are likely to fail to complete either of them in time. 
  5. Last-minute callouts: This may be the most commonly reported work schedule conflict. Last-minute callouts happen when an employee or team member backs out from an assigned task or event at the last minute due to a sick day, need to travel, or some other unavoidable reason. The best way to solve this type of schedule conflict is to find another team member with a similar skill set quickly. 

Tips for preventing scheduling conflicts

Our top tips for preventing scheduling conflicts in the workplace ensure that the occurrence of schedule conflicts in your teams is significantly reduced.

  • Allow free slack when schedule planning: Create free slack time in your project plans to allow time to tackle schedule conflicts and delays when they occur. Free slack time gives you a chance to find solutions depending on the type of schedule conflict you’re facing. 
  • Encourage team communication and collaboration: Encourage team members to let managers know immediately when they spot calendar conflicts. Set up a process through which they can notify their managers, submit a form, or even find replacements for themselves before reaching out to the managers. When there is a process in place, schedule conflicts are easily managed before they become big issues. 
  • Use a centralized work schedule: Use a centralized work schedule that displays what all team members are up to at any given time. When everyone on the team can see who’s working on what, there’s reduced possibility of a schedule conflict. You can use one for important projects and even the day-to-day operations of your team. Remind your team members to check this work schedule often and let them know that they are responsible for communicating any schedule conflict that relates to them and their projects. 
  • Use good project management software: Using robust project management software is the best way to avoid schedule conflicts in your teams and projects. It eliminates confusion, even when there are multiple managers working on a project, by providing a clear view of each employee’s workload at department and team levels. Good project management software also helps you communicate about project-related issues, encouraging transparency and proactiveness in the entire team. 

Tips for handling scheduling conflicts

If you are already facing work schedule conflicts in your teams, you need a system to handle them swiftly as they occur. Our top tips for preventing and handling schedule conflicts include:

  • Breathe and get a clear head: Instead of rushing into panic mode, take a few calming breaths to get into a better headspace. Remember that your reaction, warranted or not, affects your team members who are trying to do their jobs. When you’re calm, you’re more likely to think clearly and come up with the best solutions for the conflict at hand. You can see your available options, communicate clearly with the person taking over, and ensure a successful project finish. 
  • Reschedule non-urgent tasks: If you have other team members who are involved in less important or non-urgent tasks at the time of calendar conflict, enlist their help, and reschedule their other tasks for a later date. If the schedule conflict involves clients, they may be willing to work with the rescheduled dates if you give them a heads-up early.
  • Always have a backup: This may be the most important tip in this section — have a backup team member who can step in if there’s a conflict. You may keep this backup list to yourself or openly name backup employees for each project in your schedule plans. Keep a list of employees with similar work skills on every project so you can quickly find replacements, even for last-minute callouts. 
  • Learn from your mistakes: Every schedule conflict is a chance to learn something new. If your team faces these issues often, it’s a sign that you need to rework your workflow and internal processes. Resist blaming teammates without understanding the cause and offering a solution for the conflicts. When you tackle each conflict, incorporate the solution into your schedule planning for future projects. Look at how and why the schedule conflicts happen and institute safeguards and processes to prevent and handle them.

Tools to help you schedule effectively

Scheduling conflicts in the workplace may lead to loss of productivity and revenue if not tackled strategically. Good tools and processes help to set you up for success. You must find the best fit for your team to schedule tasks and events and improve collaboration throughout the organization.

You can use simple scheduling software or, even better, go for project management software. These allow you to create schedules and timelines and offer more benefits, including in-app task-related conversations and dashboards that display where bottlenecks occur and if there are any calendar conflicts you may have missed. 

Wrike’s conflicts monitor, for instance, displays calendar conflicts in a bright red color, calling your attention so you can fix the issue immediately. The conflicts monitor finds all clashes in your projects and displays them in a dashboard widget so you can always tell when there’s a problem on the horizon.

You can also enable notifications to prompt your team when a new task is assigned. This way, they can immediately let you know if there’s a calendar conflict or schedule conflict with another meeting.

How to prevent scheduling conflicts in the workplace

Prevent scheduling conflicts in the workplace by ensuring: 

  • Thorough schedule planning: Establish an organized project and schedule planning process to minimize the occurrence of schedule conflicts. Establish a system for team members to confirm assigned work and communicate any change in plans a set period before a task is to begin. Whether it’s through daily stand-up meeting updates or simply sending an email, it’s important to have a clear process every member of your team is aware of. 
  • Good communication: Encourage proactive communication, feedback, and transparency in your team to limit last-minute callouts or other schedule conflicts. Clear communication from managers also helps to reduce burnout and time spent on unimportant tasks. Instituting an open communication system puts power into the hands of your teams. 
  • Clear expectations: Set clear expectations regarding each project. Estimate each task (or user story)’s importance and set due dates with some free slack time to enable your team to meet these expectations. 

How to prevent scheduling conflicts with Wrike

Wrike’s project management software helps prevent schedule conflicts by increasing visibility into projects, schedules, and timelines based on each team member’s permissions. It also serves as a single source of truth, reducing the chances that a schedule conflict goes unnoticed. 

Using Wrike, you can create schedules and track employee workload easily. Assign tasks to teammates with clear descriptions and due dates, and create a process where team members communicate proactively about any schedule conflicts and take steps to solve them before involving their managers. 

You improve your chances of success when you empower employees to complete their work in good time and with some level of autonomy. Does your team frequently struggle with work schedule conflicts? Get started with a free Wrike trial today.