Brett Bartle Teaches Project Management Skills for Beginners

West Athens, California, 2022-Mar-08 — /EPR Network/ — When you’re starting out as a project manager, it can be difficult to know how to manage all the different skills that go into the job effectively. With so many things to learn, it can feel like you’ll never master the art of project management and end up on the dreaded shortlist your company has for those who lose their jobs due to budget cuts or restructuring.

If you want to succeed as a project manager, however, you have to learn what skills your role requires and develop those skills as best you can over time.

Brett Bartle, an expert in project management discusses the skills you’ll need to be successful as a project manager. Brett Bartle breaks down the seven most important project management skills, including good communication skills, organizing skills, and adaptability skills. See how Brett Bartle uses his knowledge and experience to help you become the best project manager you can be!

Use a Calendar

Nothing will mess up your personal or professional life faster than failing to keep track of your commitments. And while you can use Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal, and other calendar services to manage events and tasks—it’s easy to miss deadlines when those calendars are scattered across multiple systems.

Brett Bartle recommends using a paper calendar as your go-to tool for managing meetings and other important milestones. Just write it down on paper with a pen, he says. I have yet to see an online system that beats that. After all, a hardcopy planner is easily portable so you can take it with you everywhere (including overseas) and all of your dates will be in one place.

Get Organized

Your projects will fail if you don’t know what work you need to do, where it goes and how to keep track of it. That’s why you have to get organized. A good way to do that is with a project management tool like Trello or Wrike.

Both tools let you manage your projects from concept all the way through completion, and both are free. To make sure your team stays organized, start off by setting up a project board in either tool and make it private so that only people who need access can see what you’re working on.

Set Realistic Goals

Start with small, realistic goals, and celebrate every single win. Even if you are working on a large project, break it down into smaller components and only focus on accomplishing what you can do on that day.

By focusing on each incremental step forward instead of looking at everything at once, your goal will eventually become closer than you think.

Set Goals that are Easy to Achieve: Don’t give yourself more pressure than necessary. If your goal is too lofty or ambitious it could get discouraging, so don’t make them unreachable by starting off too big! Your long-term dreams can be accomplished by breaking them down into manageable steps.

Smaller achievements add up over time to create much bigger successes. Don’t Forget About Detail: Once you have established your end goal, work backward to identify all of the important milestones along the way.

If a certain task needs to happen before another one can occur then put it in order right away? It is easier (and less stressful) to try and prevent something from slipping through when it should be happening rather than taking action after something has already been missed

Write Things Down

The first thing you’ll want to do is get a pen and a piece of paper. It seems so obvious, but it’s easy to get so focused on your work that you forget to write things down. Writing them down will save you time in not having to ask yourself what you need to do next?

And can help keep you organized as well. Make sure to leave plenty of space around each task and include any notes or dates that are relevant as well, such. This way if you’re interrupted or distracted, it’s easy for you to pick up where you left off later when time allows.

(You also might have more success getting through tasks by starting with small ones before moving on to larger ones.) Plus, studies show that putting it into writing helps put ideas into concrete terms and helps with recall—which is key here! You’ve taken the first step:

Now list out your remaining tasks. (Writing them will make you feel like you’re accomplishing something—even though at first all you’ll be doing is typing what’s already in your head!) After that, just cross out each task as you accomplish it.

A written checklist may seem boring compared to an app or even just crossing things off physically as they’re completed, but remember how Brett Bartle said there are ways an old-school approach can improve efficiency?

Learn How to Schedule and Prioritize

You’ll soon be managing multiple projects, all with different timelines and due dates. A number of people fail because they start out by jumping into projects without scheduling or prioritizing their time, so take a few minutes to create a schedule.

This will help you manage your daily routine and prevent tasks from getting mixed up or forgotten in a jumble of other work. Furthermore, proper scheduling can also help you avoid being overwhelmed by too many tasks at once. Make sure to schedule your breaks! Without them, you risk burning out before even hitting your stride in your new position.

Communicate Clearly

It’s easy to rush through projects and when you do, it’s likely that some of your colleagues will misunderstand your instructions. Writing down your project requirements is important, but so is clearly defining them in person.

Clear communication will help you as a PM as well as everyone on your team from getting frustrated and potentially quitting if they don’t understand what’s expected of them.

When people are engaged and have a clear understanding of their tasks and responsibilities, work gets done faster!