Your Project Management Checklist [Template]
When you’re a project manager, you face many challenges ahead. Not only do you have to make sure that every project’s process runs smoothly, but you also need to hype the team and negotiate with the stakeholders.
This means that, while in charge of this position, you need to be involved in everything.
Your project and team need your guidance and decision-making to achieve the required goal with amazing success.
Managing projects is not always smooth sailing due to the many factors that impact the projects greatly.
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Throughout this article, you’ll discover everything behind the concept of the project management checklist.
You’ll also get tips to make your checklist, a template to guide you, and some frequently asked questions about this topic.
What is a project management checklist?
A project management checklist is a document used to track a project that includes all the tasks, deadlines, resources, status, and project goals.
The mission project management checklist ensures that you don’t forget any step or leave anything behind.
This enables you to stay concentrated and aware of everything. It’s also a great way to not waste time and resources because you can add items to the list or add your own.
Of course, to work, every checklist must be very clear, concise, and straightforward, not only for your eyes but also for your team that needs guidance from the project manager. Still, it doesn’t mean that every checklist is infallible. It needs occasional evaluations for the sake of the project itself.
So, if you want a little help creating a useful project management checklist, keep reading our blog.
Read also: The project management reports
Why is it important to have a project management checklist?
Through the project management checklist, you’ll be able to finally keep track of all the tasks, deadlines, meetings, resources, and goals.
There are also many reasons why you should engage in this advantageous technique:
Aware of every responsibility
A checklist will keep you focused on every action that relates to the project, your team, and the stakeholders.
You’ll get to keep up with all the people involved and the assignments.
Clear view of the big picture
With a checklist, you can finally see what needs your attention first and what you can delegate to your team.
It also gives you the urgency of these tasks and how you can rank them.
Learn how the 4 D’s of time management can increase the efficiency of your projects.
Minimizes risks
A checklist is a great tool for every project risk management plan. Through the active help of the checklist, you can think ten steps ahead of the finishing project. And since you gave it significant thought, you’ll greatly reduce the risks of any given project.
Read our guide and learn everything about project risk management: what is, types of risk, and how to manage them.
Efficiency in managing resource
Since you have everything aligned and prepared through your checklist, all of the tasks are prepared and delegated efficiently, so everything runs smoothly towards the duration and conclusion of the project.
Do you want to know what are the differences between efficiency and productivity?
How to create a project management checklist
Being a project manager takes a lot of energy and time, but a checklist is a perfect tool to help you centralize all the tasks and actions needed for every given project.
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Below are the ten fundamentals for every successful project:
- Project research – To invest in any project, you must also invest in research. It’s important to stay familiar with every term, fact, and number;
- Understand your stakeholders – You must understand your stakeholders’ interests and tastes, so you can smoothly run your project;
- Recognize your role – In the context of a project, you must know your role and what you can do with it;
- Envision your project and establish goals – Envision your goal, work hard towards its achievement, and bring along your team. Also, set achievable goals that are in sync with your resources, and discuss them with your stakeholders;
- Create a project plan – To achieve success with your project, you should have a document with the project’s goals, objectives, vision, and deadlines. It also defines all the activities and tasks that must be pursued;
TIP: To help you with this, you can use one of the best productivity planners. If you don’t know what is and how to use a planner, you might be interested in our blog.
- Define your budget – Another project manager’s responsibility. It would help you greatly if you have an estimated budget needed for its completion. This is the priority element to take care of to avoid discrepancies, although it stands as a big challenge for a project manager. You should also determine which costs and direct and indirect since it will also help you in calculations;
- Resource assignment – You must reflect on the tasks ahead and allocate them to the available resources that present the skill set for each task. There’s also equipment, production material, and software that needs to be distributed among the entire team;
- Create a time management plan – To keep up with every task and deadline, it’s relevant that you create a time management plan that suits everyone. Of course it also stands as a support system to control all of what’s going on and keep everything on track. TIP: It’s also a good idea to define project management milestones to ensure you’re on the right way;
- Project management communication plan – A project that involves a lot of people needs an improved system of communication. This element is key to the development and success of any project, no matter the resources or the team size;
- Risk management plan – Sometimes, unprecedented events take place that you can’t foresee, which can be catastrophic for a project. A risk management plan ensures that every failure can be predicted and accounted for. It can reduce the impact of possible risk through its identification and probability calculation.
Did you know that risk management is a critical skill for a PM? Find out the key project management skills you need in our post.
Tips for creating a project management checklist
Although a checklist appears easy enough to do, it faces challenges when it involves a big project.
Despite some obvious obstacles, there are some tips that you’ll find useful to establish while being a project manager:
- Clear and concise communication towards everyone involved;
- Set clear and achievable goals;
- Evaluate and choose the right tools to monitor the project’s progress;
- Work with a dependable and flexible team that shares your vision;
- Hype your team and keep them motivated.
Project management checklist template
| Name des Projekts | Projektleiter |
| Start date | End date |
| Task complete | Task description | Assigned to | Start | Due | Status | Priority | Budget | Notes |
| Landing page | Ben S. | 01/12 | 15/01 | Awaiting validation | High | $500 | N/A | |
Following this template, you’re able to see that there are many elements implied in the project management checklist. Of course, it’s your choice if you want to stick to a template or if you want to do it on your own.
Every project has its specific character; you may need to add or take some things off this checklist.
The important message is that you’ll benefit from this technique and succeed in your project more efficiently.
In this example, it’s good to start a document with the name of the project and the project manager, along with the start and end date of the project.
In this example, you can see a typical task, where you define if it’s completed or not, its description, and who was assigned. Then you complete the start and due date, along with the status, priority, budget, and possible notes.
From then on, you’ll have everything centralized on one document where you can monitor the process and keep up with all the different tasks.
Schlussfolgerung
It’s upon the consideration of every aspect concerning the project management checklist that we’re able to realize its importance to every project.
Every direct or indirect aspect impacts the project’s success, even if it’s your team, the tasks required, or even your role as a project manager.
As a recap of this article, it’s important to recognize what part you play and what context you’re in. But also, you need to guide and hype your team to share the same vision and, subsequently, achieve the goals you designed in your plan.
FAQs
Is project management necessary?
Yes, it is. Project management is necessary and, at the moment, imperative for a fruitful project. With the guidance of the project manager, the team and project itself are on track, working on the common goal.
You’ll be able to save time and money, enhance the working process, improve quick decision-making, and consequently, reach success on project completion.
What is project monitoring in project management?
As a new project begins, it also does project monitoring after the initiation, planning, and execution.
This monitoring process entails the project manager tracking the project’s metrics, progress, and following tasks.
The goal is to ensure that every deadline is met and that everything is running up to speed to complete this project in time.
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