Critical thinking for project managers is all about creative thinking without boundaries to challenge the assumptions for completing the projects on time with estimated profit. The successful project managers are the creative thinkers with special ability to lead the project team for the common goal; and, the goal is to contribute to organization’s growth by delivering 100% customer satisfaction with each project completion. Critical thinking involves logical reasoning steered by different reports; the collected information helps you decide fast on the basis of opinions and formatted database. The following 7 smart hacks will help you manage the projects successfully with strategic critical thinking:
1. Have A Strategic Approach From Start To Finish:
The progressive project managers endeavour to follow a “paradigm” of 5 major stages - initiation, planning, execution, monitor-control, and finishing. The task is not to complete the project successfully but it involves ensuring the estimated profitability also without any compromise with quality or customer satisfaction.
2. Be The Master To Manage In Diverse Areas:
As a competent project lead manager, you need to apply critical thinking skill in diverse areas like defining, integration, scheduling, quality control, HR, procurement, risk management, cost control and stakeholder management etc.
3. Use Only Tested Processes For Doing Project Estimate:
To ensure the success of any size project, having an accurate estimate is the starting point. The estimate should be based on the time-tested processes, encompassing all the risk factors. The experienced project managers often use different techniques to cross-check the project cost:
4. Enforce Rigid Timesheet Entry & Approval Processes:
Introduction of the culture of timesheet entry & approval improves billing accuracy that helps the project manager to minimize the budget overruns by optimized resource management.
5. Define The Payment Process For Excess Work/Services:
You should follow a well-defined and communicated process to pay for additional services or purchases.
6. Facilitate Yourself For Direct Access To Any Information:
Checking status and different activities frequently is a part of effective project management. The quick access to desired information keeps the project on the right track.
7. Fix Project Status Review Meeting At Particular Day & Time:
Reviewing the different reports periodically about project profitability, opportunity, utilization and AR aging etc helps you focus better on all the critical factors that contribute to the financial success of the project.
As the competition in every business sector is getting intense, strategic critical thinking is getting more importance in cost-efficient project management. But not every project manager has the much-needed expertise in critical thinking. Critical thinking is a skill that needs to be developed and refined; and, there can’t be any better way than joining the particular PMP certification training course in the line of your role in project management.
Shubhranshu Agarwal is a technical writer with special interest in business management and project management subjects. Over the 15 years of freelance content writing, he has written a lot to help the industries, businesses and project managers to achieve the sustainable growth by implementing strategic critical management methodologies.
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