What are broader project management challenges?
Project management principles apply to projects of all shapes and sizes, but the challenges faced by project managers are universal. In a detailed paper published at the Project Management Institute, David Wilemon, Director of Innovation Management Program at Syracuse University, describes the challenges he faced helping to manage NASA’s Moon Landing Program. Wilemon notes that he and his team faced typical project management challenges, including:
Gathering support for projects and milestones
Managing conflicting agendas, priorities and stakeholders
Conflicting schedules, procedures, budgets and technologies
Complicated project control systems
Maintaining team morale
If these challenges sound familiar, they should. Most project managers face them to some degree. That’s because offline solutions like pen and paper or in-person conversations make it difficult to manage work effectively. Information gets lost or misunderstood, creating a lack of clarity around responsibilities and deadlines.
Thankfully, project management resources that are available today have come a long way since NASA launched the Apollo Program in the 1960s.
Knowing what you want is one thing, but making it happen is quite another. Learn how to plan for success in our project resource planning guide.
What is project management software?
Project management software is designed to help you effectively manage your team’s work. It functions as a centralized domain to confidently plan and organize projects, tasks and group discussions. However, many project management tools can be complex, which means your team will struggle to use them.
MeisterTask is a straightforward work management platform that makes managing team projects easy. With MeisterTask, you can:
Assign team tasks. Assign tasks to each team member, set very clear expectations, and make each team member the owner of their assigned tasks.
Add more context to your tasks. Add task descriptions and assign custom tags, attachments and checklists that further describe how each task impacts the larger project.
Schedule realistic, manageable deadlines. Set realistic deadlines for each task and build a detailed project schedule. This way, you can use MeisterTask as a single source of truth to accurately track each team member’s scheduled workload.
Track the time spent on each project. Check how long each task takes with MeisterTask’s built-in time tracking tool. Use this information to assign the appropriate resources based on each team member’s bandwidth.
Create subtasks for more complex tasks. Use subtasks to break down bigger tasks into manageable steps. Add an individual assignee and deadline to each subtask, so your team knows exactly what to work on and when.
Get real-time notification updates. Stay in the loop with notifications and address open questions from team members as they arise.
Tracking task status updates is a critical component of project management. Follow these simple team task tracking tips and keep your project on track.
Visualize your project with a Gantt-style timeline
What makes MeisterTask stand out as among the best software for project management is that each project has a built-in Gantt tracker. You can use the Gantt chart view to create a visual blueprint of your entire project timeline.
All tasks are mapped to specific calendar dates, giving all stakeholders a clear view of what deliverables to expect, and when. This also helps you, as the project manager, easily identify priorities and assign resources so that each project milestone is achieved as planned.
This video provides a simple walkthrough of how to use MeisterTask’s Gantt tracker project timeline.
10-easy-to-use project management templates
MeisterTask’s project management templates make the process of digitizing project management as simple and efficient as possible. You don’t need to be a tech guru to use these templates. Teams can onboard and get started easily, regardless of their tech experience.
Here are 10 easy-to-use recommended project management templates that will help you transform your project management process.
Project planning template
Your project planning template is your blueprint to set clear project objectives, organize your resources and prevent scope creep. You can forecast project milestones and make note of any roadblocks or other challenges that may disrupt deliverables.
How to structure your project planning template
Since this is a planning template, it should be structured so that you plan for each stage of the project lifecycle. You can create sections on your template project board and organize those sections into project stages — planning, execution, monitoring, etc.
When to use your project planning template
Let’s say you’ve been tasked with managing a new promotional campaign. You can use your project planning template to coordinate with key stakeholders and align on the campaign objectives. Assign task responsibilities, map out the project scope, build a responsible budget and set realistic milestones for deliverables.
The outcome: simple project planning and easy-to-manage workflows
In the State of Agile Report, 55% of agile project managers list high levels of cross-collaboration and communication as best practices for success. With your digitized project planning template, it’s much easier to coordinate large projects across multiple departments. Stakeholders are more aligned, teams are better informed and project management is easier and more efficient.
Project charter template
Traditionally, project charters are created using Word documents that may be converted into formal PDF files. But there’s a high risk these files could be lost, misplaced or misinterpreted. Thankfully, you can use your project charter template to create a standard, central domain for your project charter.
How to structure your project charter template
If your company requests a charter to officially kick off a project, your project charter template makes this process more efficient. It streamlines the process of aligning stakeholders, creating clarity, setting objectives and reducing risks to the project’s success.
When to use your project charter template
Any attempt to spend public money will likely require an approved project charter. You can use your project charter template to speed up the approval process with greater clarity, creating stakeholder alignment. You can also use the template to note any early risks that could derail the project charter.
The outcome: greater project clarity and team unity
A solid project charter equips your team for success, and a project charter template makes it much easier to establish those guidelines. Ultimately, your template will help you set your project for smoother execution and better outcomes.
Goal setting template
Every project has specific goals and objectives. Some of those goals are very broad, making it difficult to build a project management plan to achieve those objectives. That’s why you have your goal setting template — to break down broader goals into smaller, actionable tasks that you can assign to specific team members.
How to structure your goal setting template
Your goal setting template allows you to create different tiers of goals. For example, a strategic goal might be a tangible business result, whereas an operational goal might be to improve customer engagement. Use your template to create sections on your template, assign performance metrics for each goal and evaluate progress.
When to use your goal setting template
Let’s say you have a similar business model to sim cargo, providing transshipment cargo services across a wide region. Using your goal setting template, you can structure onboarding guides so each new customer gets the same welcome package. The template also centralizes all communications about the project, leading to more efficient workflows and faster customer response times.
Learn more about sim cargo’s success with MeisterTask and consider how your business can achieve similar outcomes.
The outcome: achievable goals, manageable workflows
With MeisterTask’s goal setting template, you have a simple, ready-to-use task tracking system. This ensures that all project tasks contribute to the larger business goals.
Project management template
A project management template organizes all your team’s tasks and helps you keep track of status updates. It’s an easy-to-use resource that helps you achieve project goals faster — and help your business grow more effectively.
How to structure your project management template
Your project management template provides a ready-made resource to manage all project tasks. Organize your template so that tasks are categorized by each stage of the project lifecycle — including backlogs, to-dos, in progress, under review, and completed. This will help you track assigned tasks and reassign resources where work is falling behind.
When to use your project management template
Let’s say you work at a manufacturing plant, and you’ve been tasked with procuring, receiving and installing a new piece of machinery. Use your project management template to oversee the full project from the beginning of the procurement to the installation, quality control and training procedures. You can monitor all project progress using your template and ensure the job is done up to code.
The outcome: satisfied stakeholders, greater business success
Well-managed projects achieve their intended outcomes. By achieving your planned goals, you have more credibility when you seek buy-in for your next project. You can even become the go-to project manager for all future projects.
Project budget template
Your project budget template makes it easy to set realistic cost estimates and control spending. It helps you manage resources, oversee work schedules and complete tasks following scheduled timelines.
How to structure your project budget template
Create sections on your template that list how budget is allocated for each task, organized by budget request, logged expenses, under-budget, over-budget, and needs review. This will help you make appropriate changes if certain tasks become too expensive, so you can keep the larger project on budget.
When to use your project budget template
Public municipal departments are often slow to adapt to digital project management workflows. Use your template to define the digital transition goals and identify the proper tools to support the transition. You can also coordinate how you’ll manage outside contractors to complete the work.
The outcome: more feasible, prudent project budgets
Your project budget template makes life as a project manager much easier. By having a structured project board to control project expenses, you can make the right strategic decisions that ultimately help the project.
Agile board template
Your agile board template creates a visual project sprint to help your team become more agile and flexible. You can organize tasks on your template into different stages and help each team member set priorities in service of the larger project. It makes workflows more efficient and more scalable.
How to structure your agile board template
Use the sections of your template to map out the full project sprint. Include tasks that are backlogged, in the current sprint schedule, under review and ready to deploy. As the project manager, you can view the full team sprint and make agile adjustments as new roadblocks or achievements occur. Having a detailed agile board makes your team more productive!
When to use your agile board template
Let’s say you work for a large insurance company. There are mountains of paperwork that must be filed, edited, reviewed and signed off on to protect customer interests. You can simplify the process of approving and implementing insurance policies. This helps establish efficient workflow protocols to help your team become more flexible and efficient.
The outcome: faster decisions and greater flexibility
Agile project management concepts ultimately help your team members make more efficient use of their time. As new information becomes available, workers have the flexibility to change their priorities and still hit the appropriate deadlines. With your agile board template, you can unite your entire workforce around agile best practices.
Click to learn more about agile project management concepts and how to implement them.
Risk management template
With your risk management template, you can identify, evaluate and mitigate risks that impact your project or the wider organization. Even small risks can seriously disrupt business operations. A well-thought-out risk management strategy minimizes those impacts.
How to structure your risk management template
Structure your template with sections that organize risks by their potential impact, their existing impact and whether they’ve been resolved. This gives you a real-time risk assessment so you can make more strategic decisions.
When to use your risk management template
Risks to your project can arise at any time throughout the project. That means you should use your risk management template to manage risks before the project begins, while it’s underway and post-project during stakeholder reviews.
The outcome: more strategic decision-making and fewer project risks
Preparation helps you prepare for any project risks. If you’re more prepared, your team is more prepared and capable of adapting to change. With your risk management template, you can be more strategic and make better project management decisions.
Project timeline template
MeisterTask’s project timeline template is one of your most valuable resources as a project manager. You can easily visualize major project milestones, identify resource gaps and set your project up for greater success. Best of all is that the built-in Gantt tracker gives you a visual overview of the entire project timeline — from beginning to end!
How to structure your project timeline template
Treat the project board on your template as a visual representation of your project timeline. Create sections that map out each stage of the project lifecycle, from planning to completion. You can assign tasks to each stage and move them throughout the timeline as they get done. This helps you make more effective decisions with resources and provide detailed project updates to other stakeholders.
When to use your project timeline template
Let’s say you’re managing a project with many tasks that are dependent on each other. Work on certain tasks can’t begin until previous tasks are complete. As the project manager, your job is to create a work schedule that defines priorities and properly assign project tasks. Your template also makes it easier to build an interconnected project timeline.
The outcome: a full picture of the complete project timeline
Using the built-in Gantt tracker, every stakeholder understands what tasks must be completed and the dates that those deadlines are required. The result is a more structured, efficient project that hits the right milestones!
Event planning template
Your event planning template makes it easier to organize all available resources to manage an event. You can coordinate how to structure your event, control expenses and deliver a memorable attendee experience.
How to structure your event planning template
Use the template to list all the necessary tasks to manage your event. For example, registrations and booth set up belong in the to-do section of your template. The marketing and promotional campaigns you’ll run, plus the budget you plan to spend, should be listed under the review section. Use logic as you review the template, and you’ll build an efficient event management plan!
When to use your event planning template
The purpose of your event planning template is to take some guesswork out of the process. You’ll reduce your stress levels and ensure the event runs as smoothly as possible by planning out all your necessary tasks — before, during and after the event. The template helps you organize goals, budgets, venues, floor space and coordinate with guest speakers.
The outcome: memorable experiences and positive brand building
In the end, an event is a great opportunity to promote your brand and make potential customers aware of your business. By using your event planning template, you can create a winning recipe for a memorable event that increases your reach and generates great returns!
Discover how to build a successful event strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Sprint planning template
Sprint planning is used by agile project managers to set priorities. A sprint planning template simplifies this process by helping you set clear sprint goals and assign appropriate tasks.
How to structure your sprint planning template
The goal of sprint planning is to outline what your team can achieve in a fixed amount of time. Your sprint planning template visually outlines what tasks must be done during a sprint. By building out the project board, you can assign the appropriate resources to make each task more manageable.
When to use your sprint planning template
Let’s say you work for a major banking institution and you’re approaching a bi-annual compliance deadline. Use your sprint planning template to list all tasks related to the compliance audit, including security update implementation plans. You can list all compliance tasks, create checklists, maintain accountability and centralize all communications. This ensures that compliance is properly maintained at all times.
The outcome: greater productivity and manageable outcomes
Using the template to build your sprint, you establish clear working priorities that drive efficiencies and create greater team alignment. In the end, a detailed sprint plan is in the best interests of your business.
MeisterTask templates: more structure, less stress
To recap, your goal as a project manager is to unite your team and complete projects in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Project management has many moving parts, and you’ve seen many examples in detail during this guide. That’s why you should use any resources that can simplify your workload. Less work equals less stress, which makes the project more fulfilling for everyone.
MeisterTask’s templates help you get your projects up-and-running quickly. But they also help you manage your projects and make the most efficient use of your available resources. They’re ready-to-use documents that help you strategize, oversee and improve project management. Put them to good use today!
