How to Stay Organized at Work

Stay Organized at Work

How to Organize Your Work and Manage Your Projects Better

Whether you have years of experience or tackling your first project, there’s a lot to manage when you’re responsible for keeping everything organized. You have to be accountable to your clients and managers, manage budgets, manage teams, and set aside limited time to meet your most challenging goals.

You are always protecting yourself from the dangers of scope creep, interpersonal conflict, and poor documentation. Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet to all these project management challenges, but one factor can make a big difference.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Every minute he spends in an organization earns him an hour.” I can’t know the math behind this claim, but the principle is sound. Being organized saves you time and hassle in the long run.

How to Stay Organized at Work and Organize Your Projects

Below are three ways project managers can stay organized at work and manage their projects and tasks to be more productive.

Start using Project Management Software

According to one study, only 16% of companies have good project management software. However, another Capterra study found that teams who adopted project management software named it the most effective tool for effective team communication.

Many teams still use spreadsheets for project management, and their functionality is compromised. For example, spreadsheets don’t help with project time tracking and tasks. You can’t even customize your project management methods. And project collaboration in spreadsheets is excruciating pain.

By contrast, with the right project management software, you can do all this in real-time on multiple devices from anywhere in the world.

Also read: What Refrigerator Size Do I Need?

Create a Project Plan

The first step in staying organized is organization. While it may be tempting to move on and take time to sort things out, proper planning is essential. Invest the necessary time in good project planning to build a successful, organized project.

According to the Project Management Institute, a project plan is “a document that describes how a project will remain executed, monitored, controlled and completed.” A complete project plan provides a good project roadmap for the entire project.

Outline the purpose and scope of the project,

• Budget
• Project Timeline
• Roles and Responsibilities of the Project Manager
• Project Goals and Objectives
• Project Deliverables and
• Official Reference Point for the Project Timeline functions as

3. Create a Project Timeline

There is a lot of overlap between the project plan and the project schedule. However, a project schedule is an essential part of planning and includes information from budgets, goals, and results in addition to the schedule.

Use all the information gathered during the project plan development to identify all activities required to complete the project. For complex projects, it helps to organize these tasks in a work breakdown structure (WBS), a project management diagram that visualizes projects, tasks, and their subtasks.

Once all activities are listed, determine the project dependencies between them (prerequisites for other steps) and rank them accordingly. At this point, you can estimate time and resource commitments for each activity to ensure budgets and schedules are reasonable.

Once you have a project schedule and plan in place, you need a project management strategy and project management tools. Share this with your team to keep everyone on track throughout the project.

Conclusion:

The best plans can remain ruined by poor execution, but the right project tracking software and project management best practices can keep your team organized across projects.

Also read: Work the motivation: 3 ways to keep your team inspired