6 Easy Time Management Tips For Project Managers

In the project management process, time management is a crucial step in order to successfully accomplish a successful project output. Being able to accurately manage time means a successful output and the accomplishment of meeting the projected budget and timeframe to finish a particular task.

Project managers need to learn how to manage time more efficiently and optimally in order to reach their target goals for a particular project. Here are some tips on how to manage time accurately in order to achieve a successful and orderly project time management process.

1. List the tasks and assign a specific duration of time to accomplish each

This is important in order to help you from accomplishing something as you start working on a project. Once you determine all the tasks that need to be done, you need to allocate a specific timeframe when to finish each of them.

Consider the available resources for each task. Give a reasonable time to accomplish difficult tasks with limited sources and give shorter time duration to finish easier tasks. It’s important to stick to your schedule in order to accurately manage your project and meet deadlines.

2. Sequence your activity

Sequencing will help you identify tasks that you can actually perform or do at the same time. Some tasks may be overlapping with each other and you can accomplish them together at the same time.

This will help you optimize your time, which will give you results by accomplishing more than one task at a shorter period of time. Moreover, by defining the sequence of each task to perform you will be able to do your project in an orderly manner with a better flow of accomplishing work at a target timeframe.

3. Use time management tools

In order to manage time more accurately, using a time management tool is a good option. It makes your job a lot easier by managing the time required in accomplishing a task – using spreadsheets and time logs. It’s a good recording process to help you evaluate how much time was spent and the time left for delivering your project or accomplishing a particular task.

It also helps you update your progress by automatically recording each task accomplished with less effort. Most of these tools use a timesheet to record the time spent and the remaining time left to do a task.

4. Know your resources

This is crucial especially when estimating the time duration to expect in performing a task. Guessing is not a good option in this aspect. Your project may end up disastrous because you underestimated the time needed to perform and do a certain task due of lack of resources. Use your expert judgment, research for information and organize a list on how and where to obtain the resources you need.

5. Focus on delivering the project on time

Always look for any opportunities, risks and issues that would help you manage your time in the best way possible. Anticipating risks and issues are among the important things to consider in any project management process.

Your goal is to deliver the project on time, hence you need to plan on how to bail out from any risks or issues that would hinder you to meet your projected outcome and how to possibly avoid them. Take every opportunity that may come as a possible resource that will speed up your project management process.

6. The 80/20 principle

Most project managers know the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule implying that you can accomplish 80% of the job by performing 20% of the tasks. It simply gives the idea that in most of your tasks only 20% are very important that you need to accomplish in order to produce result. You can focus on those activities that are relevant and crucial when performing a task and in effect it will help you accomplish 80% of the projected output expected from the project.