What are the 12 Basic Project Management Principles?

The term “project management” is a simple way of describing a complicated process. Stakeholders and sponsors must approve the project before it can even be planned. Then you have to plan, schedule, and budget it all while staying within the parameters of what has been approved. Furthermore, you must form a team to complete those duties, as well as monitor and report on their progress to the project executives. It just goes on and on!

If you can boil down this many elements into a dozen core project management principles, it will help. That’s exactly what we’ll accomplish, and even better, we’ll show you how to apply them to project management to help ensure a successful outcome.

1. Success Principle

Even before you start managing a project, you must commit to making it a success. As a project manager, your primary goal is to see the project through to completion.

It’s not just about keeping the project on track and on budget. Many projects have been completed on schedule and on budget, yet the purpose has never been fully realized. That is the definition of project failure.

2. Project Manager Principle

If a project manager isn’t in charge, it’s certain to fail. The project manager devises a project plan to meet the project’s objectives, and they supervise the team established to carry out those responsibilities.

As a project manager, you’re in charge of getting sponsors on board, communicating with them, managing risks, budgeting, scheduling, and everything else.

As a result, you’ll need a skill set that encompasses technical expertise, management experience, interpersonal abilities, and more. The most essential thing to remember is to never stop learning and to never stop learning.

3. Commitment Principle

Are you fully invested in the project? You’d better believe it! However, everyone else involved in the project must have done so as well. You must also have the stakeholders on board, otherwise, the project will not be viable. This dedication is essential even before the project is designed, let alone carried out.

By commitment, we imply a shared understanding of the project’s goals, objectives, scope, quality, and timeline. You’re ready to get to work once you have these.

4. Structure Principle

When you’re in charge of a project, this is the first item you’ll have to consider. The framework will be built around three pillars: your project’s aim, resources, and timeline.

What you need to know is the project’s purpose, which may seem self-evident, but this question defines the project and directs its structure.

The next stage is to figure out how long it will take to achieve that goal. To do so, you’ll need a timetable with milestones that highlight significant project phases.

5. Definition Principle

As learned in the PMP training, you have a structure, but to truly comprehend the project, you must go into the definition phase. This is a principle that is frequently overlooked at the expense of the enterprise.

It’s easier said than done, though, because many people have different ideas about what the project should be. As a project manager, it’s your job to make it obvious what the project is all about, which can be difficult when there are a lot of people involved.

Defining the project is a continuous process that must be revisited as the project progresses. To work efficiently, you must ensure that everyone, especially your team, has a clear definition in mind.

6. Transparency Principle

By transparency, we mean that you must keep your sponsors and stakeholders updated on the project’s development. You can’t keep anything from them, or at least you can only do so at your peril since it’ll surely come back to bite you.

Of course, you don’t want to bore your sponsors and stakeholders with project details. They want to see the whole picture in terms of development, budget, and timeline.

Keep the specifics for your team. Yes, you must be open and honest with your colleagues. They require reports as well, but you want those reports to be customized in order to build successful reports that reach the intended audience.

7. Communication Principle

While reporting to the project’s numerous participants is important, you and the project sponsor must have a primary communication channel. This is the only way to guarantee that project decisions are carried out correctly.

You’re not being efficient or effective in project administration if you don’t have a single mechanism to communicate what the sponsor wants to the project manager. Even if there are several sponsors, they must speak with one voice or the project will be thrown into disarray.

You are responsible for establishing this line of communication by identifying the appropriate executive team member with the necessary abilities, expertise, authority, and commitment.

8. Progress Principle

To advance in a project, well-defined roles, policies, and procedures must be in place. That implies everyone must be aware of their responsibilities and who they report to. For any project to function, the authority must be delegated.

It also implies that you’ve considered how you’ll manage the scope of work, maintain project quality, establish the project’s timetable and cost, and so on. You’re putting the project at risk if you don’t sort these things out right away.

9. Life Cycle Principle

The phases of a project’s life cycle are planning, beginning, monitoring, and closure. The planning and execution of each phase of the project are intertwined.

The beginning and end of these project life cycles are determined by milestones. You might think of them as road signs on the way to the finish line of your project.

10. Culture Principle

A culture that supports the needs of all individuals engaged is required for a project to succeed. It may sound like mollycoddling — after all, this is work — but you don’t want anything to get in the way of your team’s effective output.

A positive work environment will result in a more productive project team. As a project manager, you must be aware of this dynamic and have buy-in from all levels of management. In this scenario, style matters, therefore make sure the management style is appropriate for the project.

11. Risk Principle

Risk is an inevitable aspect of life, and any undertaking is no exception. What you need to do is figure out what the potential hazards are before you start working on the project. Of course, identifying them isn’t a precise science, but you can leverage historical data and expertise from yourself, your team, and your sponsors to figure out where the risk is. You may capture all of this information by using a risk register template.

It’s not enough to recognize that risk may increase at this or that stage in a project; you must also devise a strategy for resolving the issue before it becomes a problem. That implies assigning each risk to a specific team member who is in charge of keeping an eye on it, identifying it, and trying to resolve it.

You won’t be able to anticipate every risk, but you should be able to identify the major ones. As a result, you must keep an eye out for any anomalies. Make sure your staff is prepared to act as your eyes and ears on the project. The sooner you recognize a risk, whether predicted or not, the faster you can address it and keep the project on track.

12. Accountability Principle

You’ll need a metric to track your progress as your project moves further. You can hold your team and yourself accountable in this way. As a result, you’ll want to be able to measure the many parts of your project and see if the actual statistics given match the ones you anticipated.

The beautiful thing about project accountability is that it allows you to recognize those team members who perform exceptionally well. They can then be awarded for their efforts. Everyone enjoys being acknowledged. While underachievers can be provided training or direction, they must improve their performance effectiveness.

Putting Principles into Action with a Project Management Tool

Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals, it’s time to receive the tools you’ll need to put them into action. However, you don’t want to go through a plethora of programs. There are solutions that are all-in-one project management software that you can use to keep track of projects from start to finish.

· Balance Your Resources

Once the project is completed, it can soon spiral out of control if you are unable to keep track of resource usage, which is a project in and of itself. With a color-coded workload page, a project management tool automates most of your resource management. You can see at a glance who is assigned to what and reallocate as needed to maintain the team’s workload balanced. There are additional task management and collaboration solutions that help teams collaborate more effectively.

· Get Live Progress Updates

Of all, progress is the name of the game, but if you can’t track it as it happens, you’ll be behind before you’ve even begun. A project management tool is a web-based application that includes a real-time dashboard that displays job progress, costs, and other indicators. These figures are produced automatically and shown in colorful graphs and charts that provide excellent visual aids for stakeholder presentations.

“There are additional project management principles. The list could go on and on, but these provide a road map to success. However, you won’t be able to get there unless you have the correct tools for the job.”

Want to learn more about such Project Management Principles? Enroll in a CAPM or PMP Certification training program today!