Question

Why is time management such a critical skill for a project manager? What are some time wasters to avoid on a project? Explain how time is wasted on a project.

Answer 1

Time Management is the ability to plan, organize and control how we use our time to maximize our productivity in order accomplish certain goals.

Time Management - A critical skill for a project manager -

1. A project manager is responsible for managing the work of his entire team through application of required knowledge, skills and techniques to meet project requirements. Effective time management is important as the project manager has to coordinate all the team members.
2. An important part of a project manager's job is to communicate to his team members the scope, the deadline, the importance of the project. If effective time management is done by the project manager, he can get better results at a lesser time from his team members.
3. Lack of time management has a negative impact on the project. Ineffective time management increases the cost of the project. It leads to higher stress level of the team members, results in poor work quality.
4. In today's cut throat competitive scenarios, we might feel overworked if we don't plan ahead of time.
5. Effective time management helps to avoid repetition and duplication of work. It also minimizes the wastage of resources and efforts.
6. Time management helps us to prioritize the tasks. Then the urgent or the complex tasks can be finished first. Easier tasks can be done at the end as it is less likely that they will cause delays.

Time wasters to avoid on a project -

1. Lame Communication
2. Too many meetings
3. Distractions
4. Disorganization
5. Unhygienic working conditions
6. Repeating the same tasks
7. Inefficient learning

​​​​​​​Time wasted on a project due to following reasons -

1. Incomplete specifications - It is very important to list down the scope of the project,the timeline required to complete the project, the outcome of the project, detailed analysis of the problems arising and their solutions. If the basic specifications are inaccurate or incomplete, it will waste time of the team members.
2. Ineffective Communication - Effective communication plays a key role in attainment of project goals. Ineffective communication leads to confusion among the team members, repetition of work, missing deadlines, all of which are synonymous to wastage of time.
3. Workflow chaos - One should adopt right tools necessary to complete the project. If right software or skills is not used it will lead to confusion, data misinterpretation or inconsistency.
4. Meetings - Meetings are important for planning and updating the team about a projects' status but if they don't have any specific purpose they can waste time.
5. Over working - It can lead to exhaustion and stress which in turn leads to being less productive in the long run.
6. Multi tasking - Recent studies show that multi tasking is actually counter productive. Try finishing the work at hand first then switch to next task instead of juggling various tasks at the same time.
7. Distractions - Various distractions like too many unnecessary mails, social media, notifications on cell phones etc. distracts us from the task at hand. To avoid these, it's best to set some limitations at your workplace like to turn off notifications on the cell phones.
8. Disorganization - Work space clutter or messy desks results in wasting time looking for missing documents, organizing and reorganizing the same stuff again and again.

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