The first time managing a big project is exciting.
It can also be a little overwhelming,
but in this video,
I'm going to give you some top tips that are going to help you
manage your first big project successfully.
And stick around to the end
'cause I'm going to tell you
how to get your hands on a free guide
on ensuring your projects don't fail.
Hi.
If you're new here, welcome.
My name is Adriana Girdler,
and you have landed on the best
practical project management channel
out there in YouTube world.
Again, my personal opinion,
but I hope you agree.
Now, on that note,
if you're interested on how to get through
your first big project, (claps)
let's get to it.
Bring your A game and your A team.
Big projects bring out a lot of complexity
more so than smaller projects.
So you really are going to have to make sure
that you are on the ball
and you are constantly on top of things.
You have the complexity of the project itself.
You have a lot more team members probably,
you have tons of more contingencies, additional risks.
There's a lot that you now have to think about.
So with your smaller projects,
not that you didn't do a good job,
you just had less balls in the air and juggling.
And with the bigger project,
there's definitely a lot more,
even probably more eyes on it from above.
So you really have to ensure you bring your A game
and you also want to make sure your team are the A team.
You want to make sure
that they have everything that they need.
They understand what's going to have happen.
You're constant communication with them,
really, really developing a solid team
so that you have your A game and you have your A team,
and together, they are a powerful combo.
Plan and prepare to adjust.
All projects, you have to do planning,
but with larger projects,
there's a little bit more planning that you have to do
and a lot more adjusting.
With bigger projects,
as I said before,
you have more eyes on it.
There's more that's going to come to you about changing
stuff. So you really wanna be prepared.
You want to be planned out,
do a lot more thinking around timelines,
really break things down into the different sections
that you probably have within your project
because it's a lot more complex.
You're probably not delivering just one thing.
You're probably delivering multiple things
and you're probably delivering multiple things
amongst multiple groups.
So there's a lot more of what you would be doing
on a single project,
probably multiplied by two or three
because you have to do additional things
in order to make sure that it is tight,
'cause that's what's going to make sure your success
on this big project.
Utilize collaboration tools.
Now, that you're on your first time big project,
you're probably dealing with a lot of people,
probably even outside of your office,
maybe even outside of your time zone,
maybe even outside of your country that you're living in.
Bigger projects usually pull on a lot more resources,
and it usually pulls on resource
in a lot of different areas.
So collaboration is going to be really important.
This is not something
where you can just pick up the phone quickly
and talk to someone or drop by their office
because you are all in the same building.
You now got to think differently.
So there's amazing collaboration tools out there
that you can use
so that you can be chatting with people instantaneously.
You also want to be thinking about a central point
to house all of your documents.
So that again, everywhere from wherever they are,
they can access all the same documents.
And even more importantly,
my favorite collaboration tool
that's something that I have control over
as a project manager is my WBS Action Plan.
Now, whoa, what is that are you saying?
Well, if you go and look under the...
Not under, if you go to the search bar in YouTube,
go Adriana Girdler WBS.
I'll explain all about it,
but it's a very specific way of capturing all your task
and putting it into a central document.
I actually use Excel.
Most people have access to that.
And that's why it's an amazing collaboration tool
'cause it's not only about tracking tasks,
but also communicating too,
'cause that is going to be the key
that you need to do with collaborations
communicating with everyone
everywhere in different time zones,
because you got this big project.
Now, if you're liking this video so far,
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allowing us, me to give you more videos.
Break it down into smaller chunks.
Okay, what do I mean by that?
Your activities need to be broken down in smaller chunks.
Your timelines need to be broken down in smaller chunks,
'cause if you look at everything in your big project,
the complexity is probably going to be huge
and slightly overwhelming.
And who knows?
You may have a big project that's two, three years of work
because that's usually what big projects tend to be.
So if you chunk it out,
it's going to help you immensely
to ensure that you can focus in
on what you need to focus in on.
Now as a project manager,
when you chunk things out,
you can then sort of piecemeal it to your team,
but then you can also kind of keep ahead of the game
and see what's coming down the pike
so that you can feed it back into your team
as things are wrapping up
in that particular section of the project.
So that is something as project managers,
it helps us takes really complex activities
and making them more manageable.
So definitely something you need to start looking at doing.
Have an accountability partner
and/or a mentor or both, why not?
So what's an accountability partner?
It's someone who you have complete trust in,
probably someone, ideally it would be nice
if they were in your project
because they know what's happening.
An accountability partner is just that:
someone to help you be accountable,
maybe prod you if you forgot to do something
or give you feedback
to make sure that you're doing the best job that you can do.
Because as a project manager,
we need to rise to the challenge
of ensuring that we have everything buttoned down
and sometimes we're human.
Sometimes we don't necessarily feel like doing everything,
crossing the T's, doting the eyes,
and that accountability partner can just help,
and provide us,
"Okay, that's right.
This is why I'm here doing it."
And the mentor is just that:
someone who you can go to and go look at,
"Here's what I'm experiencing.
Any suggestions, any ideas?"
So that you can do an amazing job on your first big project.
Okay, now that you have the tips
on how to manage your first big project,
you have to listen to this,
this right here.
These are the common mistakes project managers make.
If you are running a big project,
you need to get this.
Like it is a must.
I can't even tell you how critical this is going to be.
How can you get it?
It's for you, free under this video in the link below,
Check it out.
I promise you it's going to help.