Project management for higher education offers its own unique challenges. The goal of education, especially higher education, is to provide students with a roadmap to success. But without a clear way to manage work, projects, and the endless amount of online communication, the focus can often be taken away from students.
It’s time for the education industry to focus on project management for educators to easily manage both internal and external projects while still keeping the focus on student work and growth. To make it easy for you, we have collected some of the best strategies to implement in project management for educators.
Set smart goals
At the outset, you need to know the goals for your university or school management project. It has to be as clearly defined as possible. To effectively do that, it’s good to figure out your biggest challenges and then identify possible solutions.
For example, if you’re finding it difficult to create the right level of awareness, that needs a specific objective and functional tactics. Those steps would be different from that of another objective such as fundraising.
An effective way to achieve your objectives is by setting SMART goals at the beginning stage of each project. Here, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Now you have a better idea of your goal, the resources you need to attain it, whether it’s doable, and a timeline for your project.
Gather and share data
Getting accurate data will significantly improve the odds of success in project management for educators. It’s important to note that you need the data as you begin the project and not when you’re in the middle of it or when you’re closer to completing it.
The data that you gather will help you define the scope of the project, the resources it would take, and a viable timeline for its completion. It would take you some time to collect data but it will save you time, money, and effort.
Once you have the data, you should integrate that into your project management software. Now there will be greater clarity on tasks, deadlines, and the individuals responsible for them.
Heycollab allows you to easily share links, files, and documents within the app. This gives easy access to all stakeholders of the project. You can duplicate boards and tasks if you have multiple teams working on similar projects. This saves time and optimizes resource allocation.
Get the right resources.
Project management for educators, like for any other sector, depends on the resources you deploy. One of the biggest factors that will determine the success or failure of any project is the codification of the process with clearly defined deliverables, timeframe, and aligned resources.
The resources you need will depend on the stage of the project. But it’s good to define them early on. When you have to reach out for help midway through the process, it will delay the project, increase costs, and force you to miss deadlines.
If you’re rolling out a project in the higher education industry, begin by identifying the services that your project management would require and ensure that they’re focused on your needs. These would typically include the methodology you would be using for project management, the training, and the mentoring program.
Assign Roles to Stakeholders
Identifying stakeholders and allocating roles and responsibilities is a key part of project management in any sector. What’s unique about project management for educators is that instead of a small group, you have to manage a large and diverse group with both internal and external participants.
If you can identify key stakeholders responsible for each stage of the project, you will save both time and effort. The roles they get should be in alignment with their abilities and experience.
Project management in higher education will be seamless when stakeholders are given responsibilities for specific tasks. With that ownership, they can manage their teams and outcomes without having to slow down other teams.
Prioritize collaboration
Those in charge of project management for educators should focus on collaboration between all stakeholders. In higher education, there could be a vast group of participants in any project, so it’s important to ensure that there’s a structured process for people to access data, get real-time information, have their queries answered, and receive timely feedback.
Heycollab offers a variety of features and tools within the app that allows for easy collaboration. You can provide direct feedback, comment, and communicate on specific projects or create boards for group projects and specific teams all within the app.
In short
Due to the nature of the sector, there could be perceived hierarchies in project management for educators. Individuals with different skill sets have to be accommodated and given ownership of their parts of the process to ensure that everyone has the information they need. That’s where the right project management platform will be of immense help.
————-
Heycollab is a project management tool built for teams like yours. With a free 14-day trial you can try out all the cool features. To get started visit https://heycollab.com/