Project management is complex as one has to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. Be it managing the clients, hiring the right team members, planning and executing the tasks and projects so that they can be delivered as per timelines, allocating the budget, and a lot more. The fact is that you cannot complete your projects on time if you do not keep a tight grip on each milestone right from the beginning. This is where creating and managing a project pipeline is helpful. It means splitting the project lifecycle into various phases and this process can be made easier by using a project resource scheduling tool.
A pipeline is a tool in project management that allows project managers to track the status of all their ongoing projects in one window. This overview provides clarity to easily categorize projects into high and low impact and prioritize them accordingly. It also becomes easy to monitor the progress and find any challenges in the workflow. You can also view the projects that are on track, the ones going to be completed soon, and the ones that may be delayed and need more time. Also, a pipeline helps in creating and monitoring a cycle of multiple project ideas, their execution, development, review, approval, and completion—all managed on one tool.
Not only can you reduce redundant tasks, but you can also ensure the timely completion of deliverables if you have a project pipeline in place. So, let's see some of the key reasons why organizations need to focus on the pipeline in project management.
To complete projects on time, it is important to constantly monitor your projects at every stage. When you do pipeline management, you easily gauge the phases completed by a project and which are the ones yet to be completed.
At times, project management becomes so complex that the managers can feel lost in their schedules and deliverables. They also tend to not have a holistic vision of the organizational goals. Having a project pipeline provides a bird's eye view of various projects in a way that the end goal is clearly established and stays in focus.
Taking stock of things like what your resources are working on and what is the status of those tasks helps to understand how the project budget is being used. So, once you decide the budget, the resource manager can hire and allocate resources accordingly. For this, a project resource scheduling tool will come in handy and will ease the process for you.
A pipeline for project management enables you to determine if you are focusing on your priorities or not. You can also identify if there are any challenges or loopholes which are deterring you from sticking to the plan. You can spot if there are any scope creeps or human resource challenges that are causing a delay in deliverables. A project resource management software helps in setting priorities and then focusing on them.
Here are some of the key benefits to use the pipeline for efficient project management:
A pipeline displays all the projects on one screen and thus, project planning becomes much simpler. You do not need to check schedules for every task or project to plan the next one as you have the timeline clearly displayed next to it.
Project managers can track how each of their projects is progressing without having to go into it in detail. A project pipeline can display every project's status and progress towards its completion and this allows the project managers to amend anything if needed.
As you can find the areas where a project may be lagging, you can review that in detail and resolve it accordingly. You can also make use of the pipeline's overview to determine any loopholes or challenges that are likely to come up.
When you share a pipeline with the team members, management, and other shareholders like clients, everyone can come on the same page. This also helps everyone to understand their role in the bigger picture and how they contribute to the overall scheme of things.
A pipeline also enables to do away with a long chain of emails and communication as it provides answers to all project-related questions anyone would have. Things like deadlines, the status of tasks, and milestones etc. are clearly depicted in a pipeline, which helps in easing the project management process.
Ideation is the starting point of project pipeline management where new ideas for projects are generated. However, this stage is different from the phase where project requests are officially brought to a governance board. The advantage of this step is that the best ideas are gathered from the organization, and then a sufficient number of project proposals are generated to choose top quality projects. In this way, all employees are also encouraged to submit their ideas.
The best ideas land up to this stage and are then collated and presented to the management and main stakeholders for approval. After the idea is decided and the team is all set to start work on it, the project managers create a presentation to showcase to the clients or stakeholders. Here, various aspects like the project in scope and out of scope, budget, and expected outcome quality are discussed. At this stage, if stakeholders suggest any amendments to the project, you need to incorporate the same in your plan and then share the revised proposal with them.
This is the phase where you determine who will do what. For example, who is going to design the interface of the website, who will provide final content, who will be responsible for design, and who will be handling the reviews and approval, etc. Then, you need to assign timelines for all the tasks to make sure that everything is completed on time. A project resource scheduling tool is very helpful in resource and project planning as it streamlines the process to a large extent.
This is where all the development happens. Various team members work to complete their tasks. The project is tested and reviewed at multiple milestones to check the functionalities and determine if there are any loopholes. At this phase, using a pipeline project management helps to provide a complete view of the progress that has been made till now.
Your website project is completed, tested and then it is ready to go live. At this phase, you can share it with your stakeholders, client, and business partners for their approval and feedback.
Using a project resource scheduling tool like eResource Scheduler makes it easy to create a pipeline and streamline your project management process. This tool's brilliant features enable you to automate the project pipeline that can help you monitor the progress of various projects through intuitive visuals. Enbraun's flagship tool called eResource Scheduler is a boon for multi-project planning, execution, and delivery. Project managers can easily create feasible plans and timelines that help improve coordination and optimize resource utilization and productivity. eResource Scheduler's scalable design enables you to modify the configuration such that you can handle your resource planning and scheduling requirement with ease. The Gantt chart functionality of this project resource scheduling tool provides an in-depth view of resource availability, schedules, and resource utilization. So, check this software yourself by booking a free trial Now!
