Professional Project Management Skills | Google Project Management Certificate

[Music] now let's define what a project manager is and describe how they add value to their teams and organizations let's start with the definition project managers shepard projects from start to finish and serve as guides for their team using their impeccable organizational and interpersonal skills every step of the way as you learned earlier project managers usually follow a process that involves planning and organizing managing tasks budgeting and controlling costs so that the project can be completed within the approved time frame we'll dig deeper into these topics throughout this program what you need to know right

now is that project managers play a crucial role in their organizations project managers add value to their teams and organizations in key ways that include prioritization delegation and effective communication so let's break these down first we'll discuss prioritization project managers add value to their teams and organizations through effective prioritization of tasks required to complete a project they're experts at helping team members identify and break down large tasks into smaller steps there will be times when a project manager may not know which task to prioritize to determine which ones are the most critical to the success

of the project they'll connect with their teams and with stakeholders to gather information and make a plan stakeholders are people who are interested in and affected by the project's completion and success like the leader of an organization you've probably used prioritization to complete work in the past in any kind of project personal or professional there are tasks with different levels of priority for example let's imagine that you've decided to rent a house and plan to repaint the rooms you've picked out your paint and you're eager to get started while it may be tempting to start

painting right away you'll need to prioritize tasks like laying out drop cloths to protect the floors and furniture applying blue tape to the room's edges and much more those preliminary steps are critical and need to come before painting other related steps like choosing new face plates for your light switches can come later in the process or be switched out of the project entirely if you run out of time or money when you choose to take care of these preliminary steps before wedging open the paint can you're prioritizing the tasks or steps of your project you're

also increasing the likelihood that you'll be satisfied with your newly painted rooms this process is similar for professional projects when you effectively prioritize important tasks you set up your team and yourself for a better project outcome now let's discuss delegation project managers use delegation to add value to their teams and organizations by matching tasks to individuals who can best complete the work let's return to our house painting example for a second here painting multiple rooms can be a time consuming project so it's possible that you might enlist a few friends to help you get it

done maybe one friend has professional painting experience now with that in mind you might ask her to handle the more challenging aspects of the project like painting the ceiling or the detailed molding you might also schedule her to paint the molding before another friend paints the walls so by delegating this task to the person with the right skills to complete the work and ordering the tasks appropriately you're applying knowledge of your team's strengths to the planning of your project that makes sense right finally let's talk about effective communication project managers deliver value through effective communication

both with their team and with key stakeholders this refers to being transparent which means being upfront with plans and ideas and making information readily available project managers keep in regular contact with their team about the progress of the work and help identify areas where a teammate may need support in our house painting example this might involve checking in with your friends periodically to ask if they have enough paint or supplies left to complete their tasks checking in regularly means you'll know if you need to buy more paint before the can is empty which ensures that

the project stays on track in addition to keeping up with teammates project managers keep in regular contact with people outside of the team like company leaders who are invested in the project outcomes for example you might reach out to your landlord to get permission to paint and to share the days you'll be working on this project though your landlord isn't directly involved in the project's execution the outcomes will affect her property and so it's important to keep her informed without your project management skills you might run out of paint halfway through the project your walls

might get painted without drop cloths to protect the floors and your landlord could be caught off guard about your plans so it's a good thing you're here to keep the project running smoothly and efficiently great now you should be able to define what a project manager is and explain how they use prioritization delegation and effective communication to deliver value to their organizations coming up you'll hear about the career path of a real life project manager at google their journey to me is fascinating and we can't wait to share it with you you learn that project

management is the application of knowledge skills tools and techniques to meet the project requirements and achieve the desired outcome so how does that actually happen well that's where you come in project managers usually follow a process that involves planning and organizing managing tasks budgeting and controlling costs and other factors so that the project can be completed within the approved budget and time frame let's break these down into examples of responsibilities that you might find in a job listing for a project management role we'll start with planning and organizing one responsibility that falls under the umbrella

of planning and organizing is making use of productivity tools and creating processes during the planning and execution of a project you might need to use certain tools and develop processes to improve information sharing across the team you may also need to create plans timelines schedules and other forms of documentation to track project completion and you'll usually need to maintain those documents throughout the entirety of the project the next task is budgeting and controlling costs and other factors as the project is underway changes to the plan and budget are bound to come up believe me this

will require you to monitor and manage the budget track issues and risks as they arise and manage quality by mitigating those issues and risks one way to do this is by removing unforeseen barriers that come up now by barriers we mean things that can get in the way of project progress for example if your teammates lack the resources needed to complete a task you might identify that issue or barrier upfront escalate the issue to a stakeholder and work to secure the resource so your team can move forward another huge piece of the project manager's role

is managing tasks a project task is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a set period of time by you your team or your stakeholders keeping track of tasks is a great way to help manage the team's workload and ensure that things are getting done keeping track of tasks is also a great tool for demonstrating progress to people outside the immediate team like your stakeholders back when i was a program manager in student development here at google one of our goals was to create pathways for students who identify with communities that are underrepresented in

the technology industry a large part of my day-to-day responsibilities involved working with two separate engineering teams to create our technical curriculum to manage the tasks associated with this project i created separate project trackers for each team that outlined the vision for the curriculum these trackers kept both teams in the loop about the timeline for delivery the categories and subcategories for work and the team members assigned to each task i also made sure to update our stakeholders every step of the way by actively managing tasks throughout the project life cycle i was able to keep tabs

on everyone's work and efficiently inform stakeholders which allowed us to achieve our project goal with minimal issues [Music] let's discuss the role of the project manager and how that role relates to other roles within the project team it's easier to hear the term manager and immediately think of your boss but a project manager is not often the direct manager of the people working on a project team here we're discussing the project manager as someone who manages the tasks of a project but what does that really mean right well although you might have a few teammates

working with you on a project you're probably not their day-to-day boss with the help of your team you can get a lot more done together everyone on your team will have their own set of roles and responsibilities and you'll come together to ensure that everyone is able to do their part to advance the project each person will be an expert on their portion of the project but no one will be an expert on every aspect of the project and honestly neither will you for instance the graphic designer will focus on graphic design but probably won't

be an expert on copywriting similarly you'll be an expert on project management but may not be an expert on marketing here's another way to think about it imagine that you're organizing a camping trip you might be the person in charge of planning the trip but that doesn't mean you have to be a camping expert maybe you've never been camping before but your partner grew up spending every summer by the campfire in that case you might assign them the task of picking out the right number and style of tents for your group so in this example

you are planning the trip by giving your partner the job of finding the right number of tents and the right size tents to make sure everyone's covered you aren't doing the research or the task yourself but you're making sure that things are getting done it's similar in the workplace as the project manager you won't be an expert in every project role and that's okay as we said your job isn't to be the expert on everything instead you're responsible for guiding your team and making sure that they have the support that they need in order to

complete the project so how does a project manager go about doing that let's discuss using a few more examples of the required responsibilities you might find in a job listing first you'll need to hold all team members accountable for their assigned tasks managing tasks will help you hold your team members accountable by giving them ownership over specific pieces of the project second you'll need to ensure that issues and risks are tracked and visible and be able to establish escalation paths now by escalation paths i mean that you should know how you'll communicate risks to the

right people at the right time third you'll need to understand and help teammates adopt the right workflows and project management styles as the project manager you'll likely have the best idea of which style is best for the work it's your job to ensure that the team adheres to that style and other systems in place and fourth you'll need to collaborate with other teams at the organization to meet the requirements based on project scope schedule and budget in other words a project may affect not only your team but other teams at an organization as well say

the marketing or the finance team so you'll need to work with those teams to ensure that everyone is happy with the project outcomes you'll learn more about working with other stakeholders in a later course catch all that let's recap you've learned that a project manager isn't always the direct manager of each member of the project team rather they're responsible for guiding those people and ensuring they have the support they need to complete the project well there are lots of different skills a project manager can bring to their role there are four specific skill sets that

we think can help a project manager be successful those are enabling decision making communicating and escalating flexibility and strong organizational skills first let's talk about enabling decision making the ability to enable decision making on the team or gathering decisions from the appropriate leader is crucial to keep projects on task and achieve their goals lots of the day-to-day decisions within the project will likely fall to you and your teammates to discuss and agree on you'll ensure that projects stay on schedule by gathering information from teammates and using those insights to help the team make informed decisions

you'll also make sure that those decisions are communicated to the necessary co-workers whether that's the immediate team or company leaders for example you might provide relevant data or feedback to help your teammates make an informed decision between choice a and choice b the second skill is communicating and escalating as a project manager you'll use your communication skills in just about everything you do this might look like documenting plans sending emails about the status of the project or holding a meeting to escalate risks or issues to stakeholders the third skill is flexibility as a project manager

knowing how to be flexible when changes are needed is key plans definitively will change even with careful upfront planning for example maybe the goals of your company change or maybe a member of your team unexpectedly takes a new position at another company a good project manager knows that unpredictable moments like these are almost always guaranteed a quote we love here at google is the only constant is change and that's true by staying cool under pressure you'll be able to adjust while helping your team stay calm too and finally a successful project manager needs strong organizational

skills as you learned earlier the role of a project manager requires using a lot of different processes to keep the project on track having strong organizational skills means having the ability to organize these processes and the core elements of a project to ensure nothing gets lost or overlooked which trust me can and does happen to prevent this you might decide to track daily tasks in a spreadsheet or send frequent status updates or reminders there are many ways to stay organized and hone your organizational skills and we'll talk more about them throughout the program to recap

decision making communicating and escalating flexibility and strong organizational skills are four core skill sets that are essential to successful project management you can continue to build on these skills by becoming familiar with industry knowledge that applies to most project management roles knowledge of helpful tools and templates and familiarity with popular project management styles like waterfall and agile can help you organize and document the project throughout its life cycle we'll learn about these throughout this program hopefully you feel better equipped to explain the core skills a project manager should bring to the role these skills really

help enforce team morale and accountability for the tasks of a project we'll discuss this coming up [Music] earlier you learned about the role of the project manager and the core skills you'll need to be successful in that role you've also learned more about your role within the project team now let's discuss a few key skills that you'll use to build relationships with your teammates and stakeholders using your interpersonal skills is key to building relationships with the people involved in your project by developing these relationships you'll learn about the needs and concerns of the team this

will help you determine the priorities of the project and motivate your team throughout the process possessing strong interpersonal skills is a huge part of good leadership even if you've never held a formal leadership position having these skills will help you when you need to guide a team this is called influencing without authority which refers to a project manager's ability to guide teammates to complete their assigned work without acting as their direct managers there's a few key interpersonal skills that you can use to accomplish this and guide the project outcomes even without the authority of being

your teammate's boss these skills include communication negotiation conflict mediation and understanding motivations so let's break these down first up is a key skill we've mentioned a few times now communication in the context of leading a team communication can include checking in with teammates to understand how they're progressing on a task and providing clear feedback on the quality of a teammate's work next is negotiation negotiation might include working with a teammate to compromise on a new deadline when they tell you that they won't be able to complete their work on time now trust me i know

this can be frustrating but you'll need to use your negotiation skills often with your teammates and stakeholders to balance their needs and what is best for the project another important skill is conflict mediation as we mentioned project plans can change and issues will arise this can sometimes lead to tension and conflict within the team so conflict mediation is a great skill to practice and develop to ensure the project does not suffer as a result this might involve setting up a meeting with two teammates who are struggling to agree upon the best way to handle a

shared task and finally there's understanding motivations this means getting to know your teammates and figuring out what pushes them to do their best work understanding motivations might also include learning how your teammates prefer to receive feedback and how they like to receive recognition for doing a great job you would use that individualized information to motivate and encourage each person on your team so to recap communication negotiation conflict mediation and understanding motivations are all interpersonal skills that will help you influence without authority during job interviews for project management positions you might be asked to discuss a

time when you influenced without authority and it's possible that you've already noticed ways that you've used these skills in your personal life without even realizing it for example let's say you have a co-worker who's constantly late to every meeting and i mean every meeting while you can't force them to arrive on time it's likely that you've thought about ways to motivate them to want to be on time in doing so you might have also wondered how to change the way you communicate with your co-worker to influence them to be on time maybe you've tried asking

them to arrive 15 minutes earlier than the rest of the group or maybe you've told them how this behavior impacts the rest of the team [Music] both of these strategies are examples of influencing without authority and they serve to encourage specific behavior influencing without authority is one of the most critical and one of the most challenging aspects of project management as you've just learned you'll need to leverage your interpersonal skills in order to do it effectively congratulations on finishing this video in the google project management certificate access the full learning experience including job search help

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