How to improve project time management?
Whether working remotely or in the office, do you manage your time and make the most of it? We explain how to add more value to project time management by improving your daily productivity.
Time is a limited resource, and sometimes the 24 hours in a day seem insufficient. This is especially true in the workplace, particularly when working from home with children around. A solution to this lack of time is to apply keys to optimize its management and establish a productive work routine, even when working from home.
Who hasn’t heard phrases like: “I’ve been busy all day and still have a mountain of work” or “It’s impossible to get everything done”? This happens because, without realizing it, we waste a significant portion of our workday. If we can better manage our time and maximize our productive work hours, we will contribute to improving project management and increasing our work performance.
But why can’t we achieve this? Everything is solvable by improving self-management of our time, considering the factors that can influence and help us.
Factors in project time management
Internal and external difficulties
Mastering time can be challenging. It depends on both personal factors and external factors. Studies show that bad life habits start to manifest around the age of 13 and by the age of 16, it’s often too late to correct them. These bad habits negatively impact how we use and manage our time.
The main internal factors are:
- Not getting enough sleep the night before
- Poor organization and planning of tasks
- A sedentary lifestyle
- Procrastination
- Distractions
- Inability to finish what has been started
However, the individual is not solely responsible for their poor time management. The companies where they work also have an impact, which can be either positive or negative. HR experts recognize that the following external causes negatively affect employees’ time control.
External causes that harm employees’ time control
- Lack of incentives or variable plans
- No professional development plans
- Lack of leadership from the organization
- Lack of goal and objective setting
- Overly strict time policies
How does time affect project management?
In certain types of companies, depending on their activity, it is crucial to measure how work time is allocated across different projects. Good examples include advertising agencies, law firms, consulting firms, architecture offices, etc. For them, project management based on time is necessary, not only for billing purposes but also for subsequent evaluation.
If an organization functions well, it is because its project management is optimal. The sum of successful projects influences the company’s overall results, and proper time management plays a significant role in the success of projects.
How to improve time management to successfully complete projects?
Having a project time management tool helps us, among other things, automatically and objectively know the time dedicated to each of our projects and understand the relationship between the effort invested and the reward obtained. This way, we can detect the real situation of the project at any time, check if it is profitable, and see if the organization’s main project is the one we spend the most time on.
Project time management tools
- Being able to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
- Assigning projects to different employees or workgroups.
- Comparing the actual time spent on the project with the initially estimated time and adjusting deviations.
- Objectively and automatically tracking the time dedicated to each project. This reduces human subjectivity when allocating time to projects using time reporting tools. It also reduces the time spent filling out this information.
- Having a global view to analyze workloads and identify if too many hours are being spent on a project that doesn’t need them.
- Detecting if the corporate strategy aligns with execution.
Once the project time management strategy is defined, we can:
- Identify deviations between initial estimates and final results.
- Investigate the reasons for these deviations.
- Propose the necessary means to correct them effectively.
Time is one of the most determining factors in our lives. It is one of the crucial aspects of our existence. Perhaps that’s why it is so difficult to master. Because it is so vast, managing it can sometimes feel like trying to hold a handful of sand.
We feel that time slips through our fingers, and it seems impossible to stop it, but that is not the case. If we know the factors involved in managing our time, the next step is to analyze them in-depth and decide what measures to take.
Time is one of the best assets we have in life. Investing and using it wisely will bring us much closer to achieving our goals. Don’t forget it!
