Here we can take an example, If someone is building a house for their family, everyone talks about milestones, because nobody is familiar with the specific tasks: “The floors will be finished on Monday”, “The roof will be completed on Dec 20th “. We intuitively talk about milestones, not tasks, because we do not know how to build a house, and our friends ask us about the construction in terms of milestones: “When are you going to finish the roof?”, “When are you going to move in?”, etc

The house is the main deliverable, you are the project manager and your friends are the stakeholders. Sound familiar?

Here ProofHub gives you this feature of milestone which you can use in project management and can easily manage your projects. In ProofHub you can use milestones up to large extent. You can place several milestones in your schedule at planning time, estimate their completion date and compare it with the actual completion date. With the help of milestones you can check the status of project that if it is going according to schedule or running behind the schedule, and manage expectations of those that are involved in the project.

Using ProofHub is a joy for most managers. The programmers have oriented their effort in designing the software in such a way that small details turn into big leaps. For instance, the interface of ProofHub is so user friendly; one could respond back to posts through his/her email. An email notification of each & every post is sent instantaneously and users can just view the comments and reply via email. This was done because we know that for any matter, a person will always check his/her emails periodically throughout the day. Project management is no longer an algebraic equation!

This guide gives a general picture of what the responsibilities of a project manager are. Some encompass the character which he is to possess, while some take into account skills developed along the course of his profession. Ideally, a project manager’s responsibilities falls under four categories as mentioned below.

Personal Characteristics

There are some key personality traits that a project manager has to exhibit, which defines part of his responsibilities.

• Adaptable and flexible
• Leads and initiates
• Confident and persuasive
• Fluency and clarity with communication between the team and with stakeholders(effective communicator)
• Integrator
• Disciplined and well organized
• Possesses skills in planning and control
• Identifies problems with ease / skill
• Problem solver
• Effective in time management

Behavioral skills

A project manager is responsible for his team and team performance. Hence he has a behavioral commitment in light of his responsibilities. This can be summed up by the acronym LEAR.

• Listen: He has to give ample amount of attention to his team, by being an attentive listener.
• Explore: Information that is gathered from the team should be further researched and assessed. This is where his responsibility towards the team and project come into plat; when he acts on information obtained.
• Acknowledge: Give credit to whom credit is due. This can be done only by the project manager towards his team.
• Respond: When there are issues raised within the team, the project manager should initiate a response or action, in view of his position as head of the team and the leadership qualities he possesses. He should also be able to prepare and conduct meetings with ease.

Business Management skills

A project manager is part of an organization, and in essence a manager too. Therefore he has a certain obligation to the organization in view of his position.

• Possess a strong understanding of the business and business operations
• Possess adequate knowledge of project management
• Ability to translate business requirements into projects
• Ability to convert projects into business products or services
• Have the ability to teach, train and develop project team during the course of a project in the interest of the organization.

Technical skills

Apart from having a strong personality, being a good team builder and a manager, it is necessary that a project manager has strong technical skills that wrap up his responsibilities.

• He should be qualified to make technical judgment and decisions
• He should have a clear understanding of the scope of the project and what it involves
• He should be able to distinguish the needs of the different parameters one from another (cost, time, resources, manpower) and be able to prioritize tasks based on these.
• He should be able to conduct effective risk management, change control, project execution and close-out
• He should have a proper knowledge about project management tools and their functionality

1. Poor Planning: When project managers believe that time is better spent doing something rather than planning then it becomes the main reason of failure of any project. Do you involve your project team in planning? Do they have skills to make proper plans? Or you always ask them to implement the solution. These are the some questions that need to be answered first.

1. Unclear Goals and objectives: unclear goals and improper objectives also causes project management failure, sometimes project managers do start the working on project without having proper goal, this happens when they are in hurry to complete the project and they think defining clear requirements takes long time and lots of communication.

1. Unrealistic resource and time estimates: This is common mistake by managers they fails to judge proper time according to the resource, which causes failure of any project. Some times they think doubling the number of team members can help to complete the project in less time, but actually this is not true, doubling the number of team members produces non linear results.

1. Failure to communication: Communication is very necessary part of project management, many projects fails due to lack of communication. Miscommunication creates lot of problems and moves the project to back foot.

But ProofHub can save your projects form failure, just use ProofHub and you can feel the difference and know how it can save your project from failure.

In the past few weeks, we got a nice share of motivation from Twitter. We appreciate the existing users’ loyalty and welcome the new customers on board!

ejellendille‎: ProofHub helps to manage projects in easy and fast way: Scheduling is one of the important task in project management

kristifrank‎: ProofHub makes task management effective #entrepreneur

sharma_vishal‎: RT @proofhub: ProofHub is a flexible web-based project management tool for business-environments.

TheTechGang‎: #PM Pete: ProofHub announces the release of its latest Web Project Management Software

BYEAClub‎: Rationalize Your Business with ProofHub

shamsherbhullar‎: RT @proofhub: ProofHub Provides all Features, a Company Really Needs for Project Management

anandagar‎: RT @proofhub: Project Management Software For IT Industry

nyx87‎: ProofHub as Collaboration Software

AppAppeal‎: New Review ProofHub

Nordic‎: Trying proofhub.com as PM web software. Looks promising right now

Sherdellah‎: Fellow graphic designers: I need your help. For PM software, what do you think of Basecamp, Teamworkpm, Proofhub, DeskAway or ClientSpot?

shacow‎: Just trying out @proofhub, first impressions are good

demerybird‎: @multimedian we use www.box.net as it’s free, but pay services incl. Basecamphq, proofhub, clockingit, collaboratecloud and teambox all .com

manojranaweera‎: simple, organised & professional way to collaborate & manage projects … #ProofHub#ProjectManagement made easy

shamsherbhullar‎: @Sherdellah: I recommend Proofhub as PM software

msprojectviewer‎: RT @proofhub: Importance Of Casper Mode i.e. Hide Your Original Identity From The Third Person

If you want to be the first to know our hot news, follow us @proofhub on Twitter! And don’t hesitate to tweet about ProofHub to the world

Within this group, the most frustrating are those that ignore direct requests for information.

• When its time to pick team then non communicators is generally the last people picked.
• A better communication skill is the area of improvement most often recommended for non-communicators.
• Project manager can fix the limit of non communicator’s participation in project.

But when it can’t be avoided here are a few tips to managing a non-communicator on a project.

Find the communication medium that works best - Some people respond to phone calls, others to emails. Some respond to instant message and some prefer talking one on one. Find the medium that works best for that person and stick to it.

Experiment with Non-Traditional Ways of Communicating – All the above mentioned media are generally used for communication. But some people don’t work that way, then find an alternative way that you can use for communication for better project management.

For example, I’ve worked with non-communicators who are best at giving information as it directly relates to the completion status of a task. Instead of asking how things are going, I’ve found it more valuable to assign a task in project management software and let them indicate its status. The options I set in the project management software are simple: done or not-done. To maximize the value of information from this technique start with the most detailed level of a task you can find.

Its very tough question because every project has its unique characteristics, even you managed a lot of projects before but this type question rises most of time during project management.

In fact, it is critical to successfully scheduling work, managing people and achieving goals.

So what’s the best way to answer this question?

First, understand that a due date is a best guess of how things will turn out.  It should be based on the most accurate information available like:

• Past estimates of the amount of work tasks took
• Past estimates of the calendar day’s tasks took
• Comparisons between those estimates and the actual data from past projects
• Familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of the project team and
• The current resources available for the project.

But when you show the schedule to your client, frame it as basis for the communication.

Second, carefully understand the constraints of project; every project has almost similar constraints as given below.

• Time
• Money
• Scope
• Quality

Explain to your client that each of those constraints directly impacts the others.

Last and most important point is use of project management software, with the use of project management software you can communicate with client easily, you can discuss about project there, you can set milestones and to do lists. It also helps to track time so you and your client can know each and everything of project.

Proper project staffing is very important. When you hire team for your projects then you should keep in mind about their knowledge and skills, the time spend in training and managing can cause lose for your business.

Inexperienced Project Managers

Without a good project manager it’s tough to handle projects. Hire PM with both soft and technical expertise to handle IT and business staff. Also keep in mind one thing more while hiring, PM should have knowledge to handle project management software, so he/she can easily handle projects easily.

Project Schedules are incomplete

Project team members forget the due dates of items, which may very well lead to a failure to meet the project deadline. Document a detailed Scope of Work with a number of hours and due dates for each activity. Project management software greatly assists in creating schedules and tracking work progress.

Lack of live data about the status of projects

We are human beings and it’s very tough to remember and each and everything but some times it causes big problem while delivering a project, so the best solution is use of project management software.  With the help of project management software you can track and store each and every report, file, pdfs, conversations, mails and many more.

With the help of this type of software, project managers can clearly identify the issues and reporting their presence. Project management software helps to track each and every issue regarding projects. So project manager are always aware of actually where is the issue.

In many organizations there is more than one manager to handle projects, at that time; there is issue of tracking the projects. To make this easier issue management software can help through out the company. It helps to make standardization of every task that is involved in different departments.

Any issue tracking or management software can not remove issues from the business, but it can help to track each and every so you can handle it easily.

When you assess the current state of your projects, do you see any of these signs?

• Critical issues keep opening up, but they’re not getting resolved.
• Project scope is constantly changing.
• The project is consistently behind its plan, despite efforts to get it back on schedule.
• Competing deliverables are distracting your attention.

If all of the above signs appear, it may be time to cut your losses and cut the project–or at least radically restructure it. You know better than anyone that throwing good money after the bad will not save the project because it doesn’t address the root cause of the project’s woes.

To determine a course of action, ask yourself the following questions about the project:

• What can be salvaged?
• What can be delivered with the time and budget that are left?
• Do you have the right leadership in place to complete the project successfully?
• Is the plan for the initiative sound and realistic?
• Am I and my management team doing everything we can to support the initiative?
• Can we use any Project Management Software to manage and plan out projects?

Yes the main important part about projects is how we can manage projects easily. If you can manage projects easily then you deliver it on time easily. For this you can use project management software, it will help to manage any kind of projects. You can manage time sheets, budget, milestones, scheduling etc. So you can utilize your man power efficiently because you can track individual’s performance for the projects.

Hence project management software will overcome your burden and help to increase your profit.