What is project management? Methodologies, tools, & tips

What is project management?

Project management guides a project from start to finish. With a structured approach, teams can achieve specific goals within a defined time, budget, and resource constraints. Whether you're launching a new product, organizing an event, or implementing a company-wide initiative, effective project management drives success. 

The core phases of project management include: 

• Planning: In the first stage, you'll define project scope, objectives, and steps to achieve them. This stage involves creating a detailed roadmap, planning resources, and identifying potential risks. 
• Executing: This is where you put the plan into action by coordinating people and resources, managing stakeholder expectations, and overseeing the completion of tasks. 
• Monitoring: Monitoring involves tracking progress, measuring performance against key indicators, and adjusting as needed to keep the project on track. 
• Closing: This is the formal ending of the project. In this stage, you'll evaluate the project's success, document lessons learned, and release resources. 

5 project management methodologies

Here are some of the most popular project management methodologies, each based on one of the three main approaches.

1. Agile project management

2. Waterfall project management

Waterfall project management is a classic predictive methodology. With this method, you break your project into different phases. When one phase ends, the next one begins — there’s no overlap between them. 

3. Scrum

4. Lean project management

The 5 stages of project management

Imagine that you’re starting a project from the very beginning. Project management doesn’t come into play only when you start checking off tasks — you need to lay the groundwork first.

With that in mind, the Project Management Institute (PMI) established five distinct project management phases.

1. Project Initiation

Think the first step of the project management process is planning? Not quite. Before you can map out a strategy for your project, you need to get stakeholder buy-in with project initiation. Create a project charter to outline the business objective of your project for approval. You can also use a project poster, as it’s a more digestible format that’s faster and easier to read. In this stage, you should answer questions like:

• What’s the business case for this project? 
• Is this project feasible?
• Should we pursue this project?

To put it simply, at this stage, you’re trying to decide if this project is worth tackling before you invest too much elbow grease. 

A great way to help facilitate this discussion is a premortem, a thought exercise in which you imagine what could go wrong and decide how to prevent it.

2. Project Planning

If you decide to move forward, you’ll head into the project planning stage. This is where you’ll develop a detailed project plan that your entire team will follow––and thank you for! Planning is essential for avoiding scope creep. Questions to answer in this stage include:

• What is the goal of this project?
• What are the key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• What is the scope?
• What is the budget?
• What are the risks?
• What team members are involved?
• What tasks are involved?
• What milestones need to be met? 

This step ensures you and your team have shared expectations before you get started. If you think you’re getting too caught up in the minutiae, you aren’t. Strategic planning frameworks can help, too!

3. Project Execution

Grab your coffee and get your power cable because it’s go-time. Stage 3 is where you and your team will roll up your sleeves and start conquering project tasks with your project plan as your guide. In the project execution stage, you’ll need to: 

• Allocate necessary resources
• Ensure assignees carry out their tasks
• Host status meetings
• Set up tracking systems

The bulk of the work happens in this stage, and it’s also where you’ll start to see your project really coming together. See? All that planning was worth it.

4. Project monitoring and reporting

Just because you have a project plan doesn’t mean things will run smoothly on their own. It’s like setting a budget for yourself — having the budget doesn’t do anything if you don’t keep a close eye on how you’re managing your money. 

That’s why you must monitor project progress to ensure things stay on track. You should evaluate your project against the KPIs you established in the planning stage.

What should you do if your project feels like it’s strayed from the path or fallen prey to scope creep? Take a moment to reevaluate. You can decide if you need to realign things or if your original plan needs to shift. That’s the great thing about monitoring — you have regular checkpoints to correct the course.

5. Project Closure

The closing stage is about wrapping up loose ends. This includes:

• Hosting a postmortem or retrospective to evaluate the project
• Preparing a final project report
• Collecting and storing necessary project documentation somewhere safe. A collaborative documentation space like Confluence is great for this.

This not only gives your team the chance to officially end the project, but it also makes it easier to refer back to it when necessary.

Key skills every project manager needs

Project managers make sure everyone is on the same page, and initiatives are completed on time. They keep tasks on track, allocate and manage resources, and act as a central point of communication for stakeholders. Here are a few skills every project manager needs to be successful in their role: 

• Leadership: Effective leadership inspires team members, sets clear direction, and motivates everyone to achieve project goals. You can build leadership skills through Atlassian’s Team Playbook, which offers exercises for building trust and alignment within teams. 
• Communication: Strong communication ensures all stakeholders are informed, aligned, and engaged throughout the project lifecycle. Essentially, with a good project manager, no one feels out of the loop. Project managers can communicate clearly using Confluence for documentation and Jira for task updates. 
• Time management: Efficient time management keeps projects on schedule and helps balance multiple priorities. Use Jira’s time tracking features and Gantt chart template to manage tasks and deadlines.
• Problem-solving: Quick and effective problem-solving helps overcome obstacles and keep projects moving forward. Use Atlassian’s 5 Whys template in Confluence to analyze and solve complex problems. 
• Technical proficiency: Understanding relevant technologies helps make better decisions and communicate with technical team members. Stay updated with Atlassian’s product tutorials and webinars to enhance your technical skills in project management software. 
• Adaptability: Flexibility helps project managers and teams understand and execute changing project requirements and manage unexpected challenges. Practice agile methodologies using Jira’s Scrum and Kanban boards to improve adaptability in project management. 
• Budgeting and cost control: Managing project finances ensures that the project stays within budget constraints. Use Jira’s reporting features to track project costs and avoid going over budget.

Tools used in project management

Key members of a project team

Every project must begin by identifying roles and responsibilities. Knowing your role upfront sets everyone up for success in staying on track to meet project deadlines. Potential project roles include:

• Project manager: A person who oversees the entire project and is responsible for the project’s success.
• Project sponsor: Senior manager who champions the project and works closely with the project manager.
• Team member: People who actively work on the project tasks.
• Supplier: People who provide goods or services for a project.
• Stakeholder: People who have an interest in the project. These can be broken into:
  • Primary stakeholders: People who actually do the work and are actively involved in the project.
  • Secondary stakeholders: People who might come to meetings and play a small part but aren’t key decision-makers in the project.
• Interested stakeholders: People who are in the loop on the project but don’t play an active part or have a lot of influence.
• Client: The person or team who receives the final project if it’s a client-facing project rather than an internal one. 

Good project management is about balancing structure with adaptability. These practices will help you stay organized while remaining nimble enough to tackle whatever comes your way:

• Kick things off right: Start with a project kickoff meeting. Set goals, timelines, and roles to get everyone on the same page. It's your chance to clear up confusion and build excitement.
• Map out your dependencies: Tasks and resources are often interconnected. Use tools like Gantt charts to visualize these links and avoid bottlenecks.
• Find your critical path: Identify the longest chain of must-do tasks. This will help you determine where you have wiggle room and where you need to stick to the schedule.
• Be realistic with timelines: We all tend to underestimate how long things take. Look at past projects for guidance, and don't be afraid to pad your schedule a bit.
• Leverage project management software: Tools like Jira keep everything in one place. No more digging through endless email threads to find what you need.
• Clarify roles and responsibilities: Make sure everyone knows what they're supposed to do. It prevents toe-stepping and helps people play to their strengths.
• Make it a team effort: Don't plan in isolation. Your team has valuable insights, so involve them in the process. It'll lead to better plans and boost buy-in.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate: Regular status updates keep everyone in the loop. Be transparent about progress and setbacks.
• Stay flexible: Requirements can change. Be prepared to adjust your plans while keeping your end goal in sight.

Use Jira to your advantage. Jira boards can help implement many of these practices. They offer real-time updates, promote collaboration, and keep everyone aligned so teams can efficiently plan, track, and manage work.

Initiation

Start your project off right with these templates

• Competitive analysis: Scope out the competition. 
• SWOT analysis: Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 
• Brainstorming: Get those creative juices flowing with a structured brainstorming session.

Planning

Set the stage for success with these project planning templates:

• Project plan: Create your roadmap for the entire project. 
• Project kickoff: Start things off on the right foot with a well-organized kickoff.

Execution

Keep your project moving with these execution-phase templates: 

• Kanban board: Visualize your workflow and manage tasks. 
• Task tracking: Keep tabs on who’s doing what and when. 
• Scrum board: Agile teams use this template to manage sprints. 
• Work breakdown structure: Break down complex projects into more manageable tasks. 
• Gantt chart: Map out your project timeline visually.
• Project roadmap: Plot your long-term project strategy. 
• Meeting notes: Keep your team meetings productive and well-documented.

Monitoring

Use the project status template to keep stakeholders in the loop with regular updates and stay on top of your project's success

Closure

Wrap up your project effectively with these templates: 

• Retrospective: Reflect on what went well and what could be improved. 
• 5 Whys Analysis: Discover the root causes of issues you encountered.

Jira offers these templates and more, helping teams improve productivity and streamline project management processes. Want to explore more? Check out Atlassian’s full range of free project management templates.