Project Management Best Practices for 2021 and Beyond

Below, we’ve compiled the 15 best practices in project management that experts say are vital to ensuring your project’s success:

• Hold a Kickoff Meeting — Or Two — with Internal Team and Clients
  
  It’s important to hold a kickoff meeting in which you explain the overall goals of the project and how the project fits with the strategic goals of the organization. You should also provide an overview of the work and the timeline. 

• Alan Zucker, a project management consultant and founding principal of Project Management Essentials, says you should do the following in the kickoff meeting:
   
  • Establish ground rules for how the project will move forward.
  • Establish clear expectations regarding roles and responsibilities.
  • Set the project’s objectives and goals.

Some experts say you may want to hold two kickoff meetings. The first meeting should include any client(s) for whom you’re doing the work, important external stakeholders, and your staff. The second meeting can be for the internal staff assigned to the project.

Still, some experts emphasize the importance of that all-hands kickoff meeting with your staff, the external client, and important stakeholders. That allows your clients or stakeholders to become familiar with the project team and enables the team to gain a fuller perspective on a client’s needs and goals.

“Sometimes you may need to have separate meetings. But I would encourage teams to, as frequently as possible, have a team meeting with everyone from the team and the stakeholder executives present so that everyone hears the same thing,” says Saman Pourkermani, the Director of Digital Transformation and Product Development at Inspirant Group, a Chicago-area management consultancy.

“It's so much more impactful when I have a client representative talking to the whole team, including the people doing the day-to-day work. This way, they understand, ‘This is my problem.’ That means a lot more for the team. And it motivates them,” Pourkermani continues.

• Emphasize the Project's Overall and Strategic Purpose
  
  Don’t just move your team into a project with a to-do list and deadline. It’s important that every team member understands how the project relates to the overall strategic goals of the organization.
  
  “Emphasizing a project's overall strategic purpose — that's huge,” says Pourkermani. “I think that's very important. I would highlight it as one of my top 10. And make sure that not only the leadership and stakeholders are on the same page, but that everyone on the team knows what the project purpose is, too. There are going to be decisions that come up when team members are doing work from day to day. When they have that context very clearly embedded in their mind, it's going to help them to make the right decisions faster. We’ll get fewer situations where I need to pause and raise a flag and ask questions to clarify — ‘Is this really what you need for is this?’ That slows us down. Having that purpose will help them obviously create a much more meaningful product.” 

• “It’s also important to be politically savvy enough to understand the organization’s true objectives and goals for any project and for its overall strategic direction,” says Sergei Brovkin, an international project management consultant and Founder and Principal of Montreal-based Collectiver, Inc. “There is a saying by an American politician a long time ago that there are always two goals: the good one and the real one,” says Brovkin. “With a project, there are two purposes: the good one and the real one.”
• Create a Project Charter
  
  A project charter is a document that details some of the basic goals and requirements you covered in the kickoff meeting. The project charter outlines the project and includes key participants, the scope, objectives, and overall goals. People can always refer to the document and understand their responsibilities.
  
  “[The project charter] is the project birth certificate,” says Brovkin. “You don’t know anything about your child yet — except that these are the parents and this is the name. Then, you have a goal: The project has to accomplish this, this, and this, and it has to be done by this date. This document makes your project legitimate.”
  
  To learn more about the important elements of a project charter and download free project charter templates, visit “Project Charter Templates and Guidelines Every Business Needs.”
• Consolidate, Track, and Report on Project Information Using One Easily Accessible Database
  
  You’ll want to continually monitor and track progress in one online database that all team members can easily reach. 

• “Collaboration tools are becoming more complex, because you end up having more complex, larger teams. And having that single version of truth is important,” says Elizabeth Harrin, Director of UK-based Otobos Consultants Ltd and an author, trainer, and speaker on project management.
  
  Tools that provide this sort of tracking and reporting are continually changing. And some don’t focus as much on words and detailed reports as they do on visuals, says Zucker. (Learn more about new types of visual project reporting below.)
• Coach Employees to Break Down Tasks into Smaller Chunks
  
  Some tasks within a project can seem overwhelming at the beginning. And when team members face an overwhelming task with a distant deadline, they often don’t complete their work by that deadline. Good project managers help teach their team members to break down large tasks into small and achievable chunks of work. And they then set deadlines for each of those chunks.
  
  You can learn more about breaking tasks into smaller chunks and other top project management practices recommended by the Project Management Institute by reading “A Complete Guide to the PMI PMBOK® Method.”
• Keep Unhelpful Scope Creep in Check
  
  External clients or executive leaders within your company will sometimes want to suggest new and different work that the team did not assume at the beginning of the project or in the project charter. Sometimes, that additional work doesn’t fit with the project goals or will have a major effect on deadlines within the project — or both.
  
  At this point, project leaders must try to convince clients or executives that the new or expanded work isn’t appropriate for the project. 

• “Sometimes I find that when you're working for a customer, people are afraid to push back when they see stuff that may exceed cost and schedule. So they have to get the courage to tell the boss that the baby's ugly,” says Cindy Young, a project management consultant and the President and CEO of CJ Young Consulting.
  
  Many projects still appropriately follow the Waterfall method, where tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks before them. Scope creep can be especially troublesome in those projects. “You can tell the sponsor everything that will go right or wrong with this project if they make that change,” Young says.To learn more about effective ways to combat scope creep, visit “Scope Creep: A Project’s Worst Enemy.”
• Expect Change and Embrace It
  
  While project leaders should fight scope creep in specific situations, they must also understand that changes are almost inevitable in projects — and those changes can result in a better product and a better result.
  
  The Agile method of project management — at first most common in software development but now used in many other projects — embraces project changes. Even project managers who lead a modified Waterfall method of project management must be ready for changes in their initial plans.
  
  “Sometimes that's the philosophy with traditional project management — to minimize the changes that come up because they can impact the timeline,” says Pourkermani. “Instead, acknowledge the fact that change is going to be a constant. We should expect it. Ask, ‘How do we get good at managing the change, adapting quickly based on the change, and actually taking it and using it to our advantage?’”
  
  Harrin, from Otobos Consultants, asks: “What's wrong with changing what's in scope? If it's going to make the product more useful, we need to be far more nimble about achieving what our stakeholders want in an ever-changing environment.”
  
  When issues arise involving possible changes, it can be helpful to bring your team together to brainstorm a solution. Having the right tools in place to facilitate collaboration and communication will expedite this process and the eventual resolution. Learn more about managing this type of project change at “PMI PMBOK® Guide Method.”
   
• Check In Regularly with Clients and Key Stakeholders
  
  It’s vital to check in regularly with clients you’re working for, as well as with other key stakeholders. These check-ins will allow you to give an update and get their opinions.
  
  “Seek regular feedback from customers and key stakeholders,” says Zucker. “Show them what you are developing. This reduces gaps in expectations of delivery.”
  
  Pourkermani also suggests holding periodic meetings with the full team, including clients and important stakeholders. If the full team includes hundreds of people, those meetings may happen only about once every three months. If the team includes a dozen or so people, hold the meetings every two weeks or month.
  
  “The purpose of [these meetings] is just to stay aligned and synchronized as a project team, with your stakeholders and customers,” he says.
• Continually Review and Make Needed Changes to the Project and Your Processes
  
  You must do more than embrace change in elements of your project as you’re doing the work — you must also be willing to make changes in your processes.
  
  “We should focus on having frequent retrospectives throughout the project,” says Pourkermani. “It’s not just about the product or the thing we’re building or delivering, but also about how we’re working in the process we’re using. For example, is the planning process we’re doing the most effective way? Re-evaluate frequently throughout your project and have a mechanism in place to continuously improve the way you're actually doing the work.”
  
  “Agile has these retrospectives,” says Harrin, “so we’re iterating on performance and process at the end of every iteration.”
  
  Zucker is an advocate for Kaizen, a Japan-born practice that focuses on continual process improvement. The Japanese word translates into “change for the better,” and organizations use the practice in project management, manufacturing, and other areas.
  
  “Kaizen is a concept that came out of Toyota and the company’s Lean production system,” Zucker says. “It was the idea that teams of workers that were building cars could identify ways of improving the process, and those changes were actually implemented. That whole idea of continuous improvement — in scaled Agile they call it relentless improvement — is the idea that at the end of our sprints, we have our sprint retrospective, where we identify ways of improving. And we actually implement those improvements, or some of those improvements, in our next iteration or our next sprint.”
  
  To learn more about Lean and Kaizen, visit “The Definitive Guide to Lean Project Management.”
• Make Your Relationship with Your Client a Priority
  
  Young says that means more than obligatory check-ins. That means you read and answer their emails, as well as return their phone calls, quickly.
  
  “Your customer feels important and more than just dollars,” she says. “When your customer realizes that you are prioritizing them, they will respond to the questions needed to support them and won't feel that you are just working for them, but that you are part of their team as well.”
• Develop a Process to Escalate Problems and Issues Appropriately
  
  Issues and problems often fester at the lower levels of a project team. Lower-level workers don’t want to tell senior project leaders, clients, and key stakeholders of the issues for fear of rebuke or censure.
  
  At the beginning of your project, create an issue escalation matrix that identifies the level of importance of an issue and the appropriate escalation path for different types of issues.
  
  Zucker also says that escalation can happen less formally — if you have daily stand-up meetings and follow-up meetings that are part of Agile and other project management methods.
  
  “Create processes so that problems and issues are solved quickly,” he says. “Identify issues in the daily stand-up meeting and resolve them immediately in the meeting after.”
• Ensure Proper Documentation of Work, Changes, Decision Making, and Progress
  
  Maintain detailed documents about the basics of what’s happening with the project. This means documenting project objectives and tasks, bottlenecks, scope changes, and task dependencies. This documentation can help new team members become familiar with the project. It can also help you make better decisions and learn from issues and problems.
  
  The software that your team uses to help monitor and track the project should aid your documentation. For more assistance, you can also download free project management templates to use by visiting “Top Project Management Excel Templates.”
• Be Ready to Kill a Project if Necessary
  
  Sometimes it’s necessary to acknowledge that the goals of your project no longer fit with business realities. Those business realities — potential demand for a product or a product’s usefulness in the marketplace — can change quickly. 

• “We’re now running into a different kind of scope creep,” says Raman Attri, an author and speaker on project management and business proficiency. “Because what happens is that when we run the projects, the danger is not about going out of scope. The danger is that technologies change in the meantime so that the solution we had originally in mind may not even be workable.”
  
  When that happens, you need project leaders strong enough to recommend ending the entire project. You have to ensure that you don’t waste more organizational resources on a suddenly bad idea.
  
  In those cases, your organization must make a very basic decision, Attri says. “Should we continue doing this project or should we kill it? There are instances where management has been very harsh in killing the project — because they know it's not valid anymore,” he says.
• Understand the Importance of Context
  
  Every organization and every project is different. Even a similar project within the same organization is different when it occurs at a different time.
  
  The bottom line is that the environment and context a project exists in are very important. Keep this in mind as you consider which best practices are essential to follow for your project and which you can leave behind.
  
  “One of the things that I spend a lot of time talking about when I'm teaching is the idea that context counts,” says Zucker, from Project Management Essentials. “Every project, every organization, and every industry is somewhat different. Recognize that projects and project management are not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. When you're making decisions as project managers, you need to understand the environment that you're operating in, and then make decisions accordingly. That is very valuable.”
• Best Practices Isn’t Only a List — It’s an Ongoing Process with Tweaks
  
  Harrin, from Otobos Consultants, says you’re not doing good project management if you only follow a best practices list. You must make adjustments that make sense — even if they aren’t on a list or even seem different from traditional best practices.
  
  “The term ‘best practices’ implies there's one set of things that we have to do and tick every box,” she says. “And because of how project management is now moving away from Waterfall … into a way that's far more inclusive — that covers Agile and hybrid methodologies — then there is no one single set of best practices. So what you're coming up with is a list of good stuff that people should do. But I'm not sure that I would be comfortable describing everything I do as a ‘best practice.’ That implies that anything that deviates from that is incorrect, in some way. Or that it might not give you an optimum outcome.”