As a Project Manager, it is your responsibility to ensure your team works together in a cohesive manner to produce a high quality piece of work. With such a short time to produce deliverables for the client, efficiency is key. Below are some key things that should be considered when managing a team for a client project.
Stay Organised
Before even speaking to your client it's a good idea to organise your shared workspace with the relevant folders so your team can easily locate the resources they need to complete their tasks. As much as possible, prepare ahead of time.
Consistently take notes and document them accordingly throughout the project. This includes any ideas for sketches, questions to ask the client, and recommendations for the future.
Once you scope out what you want to achieve create a list of the key tasks that the team need to complete. Afterwards, set some deadlines for these tasks to ensure all parts of the project are completed before the deadline.
Always communicate
Take the time to ask your client questions to ensure you fully understand what they want and take the time to ask your team if they understand the plan. When decisions are being made be clear to your team on what approach is to be taken. If any key changes are made to the project this must be communicated with both your team and the client. Frequent client check ins are helpful in not only building rapport but also ensuring you stay on the right track with your project.
When everyone is working hard on their individual tasks, it is very easy to forget to check what someone else is doing. As the project manager, you need to ensure your team members are communicating what they are doing. If two people complete the same task twice that can waste a lot of time. The best way to reduce the chances of this happening are to simply check in with your team members to find out what task they are currently doing.
Be agile
When trying to stay organised it's common to fall into the habit of trying to fully complete one task before moving onto the next. This is known as the waterfall approach to project management and looks something like the flowchart below.
Certain tasks such as data discovery require access to the data before it can be fully explored. However, there is always something to do before the data can be accessed. For example, if user stories are refined and the data is taking a while to come through then consider sketching with some mock data so you have an idea on what charts you might make and how they look on a dashboard.