What is Project Management? Tips, Tools and Templates to Help You Manage a Project.
Project management can help you keep track of your projects, without the task becoming a whole other job. But as a project manager, you’re juggling a lot in your day-to-day and the hours can quickly disappear. That’s why it’s important to get the right approach, so you can set up and manage new projects in a flash.
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What you’ll learn:
- What is Project Management?
- The Different Types of Project Management.
- Key Project Management Steps.
- The Benefits of Using a Project Management Plan.
- Key Project Management Tools.
- Frequently Asked Questions.
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- What?
- Types
- Steps
- Benefits
- Tools
What is Project Management?
Project management involves planning, organising, and overseeing tasks and resources to help a team complete certain objectives within the set scope and timeline of a project.
From launching a product to running a marketing campaign, it sees that objectives are met, expectations are aligned, and work is completed as it should be.
It often involves using dedicated project management tools or templates designed to streamline work, improve team collaboration, and cut down on manual admin. These tools can structure even the most complex projects through techniques like Gantt charts and real-time tracking.
The right approach to project management will help you plan, save time, and generally make your everyday tasks more efficient. By using project management plans or software tools, you can:
- Utilise pre-built workflows: Save time and increase consistency with templates that are tailored to your industry.
- Prioritise tasks: Highlight and rank any essential activities to keep your team on track.
- Aid team collaboration: Centralise communication and file sharing across the project or team to improve visibility.
- Track your project: Monitor deadlines, budgets, and all deliverables in one place.
The Different Types of Project Management.
Business projects come in all shapes and sizes and so do the tools and templates that teams can use to manage them. From high-level planning to specific task tracking, these project management types show how a solid management framework supports progress.
Integrated Marketing Campaign.
Marketing teams rely on project management plans to coordinate campaigns across multiple channels, and ensure the correct stakeholders are aligned to create and action their goals. This might include sales objectives, campaign progress, or other KPIs.
It’s a useful way to focus on a project and check which areas are succeeding, and which need support across multiple channels and goals.
Project Budgeting.
Budgeting can be tricky, but it’s also one of the most essential aspects of any project. Project management can help you set budgets, keep track of spending, and forecast any additional costs in a handy, in-depth sheet or software tool. Use document templates to build structured budgets or update reports in real time with Adobe Acrobat’s PDF editor.
OKR Tracking.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a performance metric that, over time, can become difficult to track.
An OKR tracking template is an easy-to-use system that helps you keep tabs on team objectives, results, and goals in a manageable way. It can keep focus points centralised and help you and your team clearly understand your OKRs – ideal for businesses big and small.
Ticketing and Helpdesk.
IT teams use project management tools for issue tracking, escalation, and resolution. This is helpful for collecting end-user information on issues, prioritising fixes, and keeping track of an issue’s status. It can also be an amazing source of data to use for a self-service knowledge base in the future.
Event Management.
An event management plan is a framework to help you plan pre-event and evaluate post-event, giving you much needed data. It allows you to assign tasks, predict hours required, and give a better idea of what you need to make your event a success.
Project Planning and Execution.
If you’re looking for a general, comprehensive, top-down view of your project’s performance, scope, and deliverables, this may be the ideal project management plan. It can help get a project off the ground and keep track of execution. It’s also a great way to set and track goals, and then deliver results or progress to those who need to see it.
Construction.
For construction teams, having a pre-defined approach to construction project management can help you visualise costs, timescales, and materials, and keep track of finished work, or additional jobs.
Key Project Management Steps.
Before launching your project, your project management approach and tools have to be fit for purpose. After all, you don’t want to be switching things up and transcribing data mid-project. The right structure can save hours of admin and prevent expensive last-minute changes. Follow these core project management steps to stay on track:
Objective tracking.
Start by clearly identifying your project goals and deliverables. These objectives should be measurable, realistic, and in line with stakeholder expectations.
Budget allocation.
Estimate costs, set spending limits, and allocate budget by each phase of your project. Use Adobe Acrobat to edit and share budget breakdowns securely across your teams.
Multiple project view.
If you’re handling multiple, intertwined projects, then project tracking can help team collaboration and give you an overview of multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously.
Task prioritisation.
List all your tasks and assign them by their level of urgency and importance. Project management templates like Kanban boards help you visualise workflows and adapt your priorities.
Tool integration.
Automation and analytics tools can greatly boost workflow. Integrate scheduling, communication, and file-sharing to cut down on duplicates and improve the accuracy of your reports.
Timelines.
Visualise your project milestones using tools like Gantt charts. Clear timelines help all stakeholders stay aligned and allow you to spot and flag risks early.
The Benefits of Using a Project Management Plan.
A structured project management plan brings order and improves productivity, whether it’s a simple deliverable or a multi-layered project. Having the right framework in place can boost your success rate.
Here’s how a solid project plan helps:
Saves time.
Reuse tried-and-tested frameworks that match your team's workflow so you can avoid starting from scratch every time.
Assists task management.
Assign tasks, reassign, and track progress at a glance with clear responsibilities and deadlines.
Outlines key steps.
Use a customised project management template to easily check your pace and performance with built-in tracking features.
Aids with project scope and resources.
Get a realistic view of your project’s scope and resource needs, and adjust accordingly with live data.
Presents an easy review process.
With everything recorded in one place, it’s easy to summarise the progress, learnings, and success metrics of your project.
Key Project Management Tools.
Effective project management relies on the right tools to stay organised, increase efficiency, and improve communication across your team. Here are three important types of project management examples and their real-world applications:
Task and workflow management tools.
These tools help visualise and assign project work. Visual tools like Gantt charts for long-term tracking or Kanban boards for agile workflows help teams to clarify their priorities and timelines.
Use case: A creative team might use a Kanban board to manage feedback and production tasks across multiple campaigns at the same time.
Collaboration and communication tools.
Clear communication is key to avoiding hold-ups in your project and tools like shared workspaces, real-time collaboration and commenting, and integrated chat functions help teams stay aligned, even when they work remotely.
Use case: A product team can share annotated PDFs onAdobe Acrobat to collect feedback and approve mock-ups across various departments.
Time and resource management tools.
These tools support smart planning and help reduce team burnout or overspending. Use them to track billable hours, assign resources across teams, and forecast availability of team members.
Use case: An event agency would use budget tracking dashboards and time logs to stay within scope while planning large-scale corporate events.
Download your free Project Management Plan.
Download your free, customisable project management template and get started on your next project today. Save time and boost your workflow with free templates from Adobe.
Frequently Asked Questions.
What is the main purpose of project management?
The main purpose of project management is to help you meet specific goals within a set time and budget. It involves using planning tools, techniques, and templates to guide tasks, communication, and resource allocation across teams.
What are the 5 steps in project management?
The five main project management steps are initiation (defining the project), planning (outlining tasks, timelines, and budgets), execution (assigning and managing work), monitoring (tracking performance and adapting), and closure (finalising tasks and reporting outcomes).
What tools help with project management?
Popular project management tools include Gantt charts, Kanban boards, time trackers, collaboration platforms, and document sharing systems. Adobe has a range of solutions to support planning and communication, including PDF editors,merge tools, anddocument storage systems.
Related Acrobat content.
Adobe Acrobat gives you everything you need to build, manage, and share project plans securely and professionally with your teams and stakeholders. Here are a few tools to help streamline your next project.
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