As many of you know, May 1 was May Day, also known as “Labour Day” or “International Workers’ Day” around the world. Wikipedia defines this holiday as “a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement.”

May Day is a great opportunity for reminding ourselves about hard work, and the value of the people who provide it. Every member of a team is valuable and, more often than not, contributes an important part to the whole. Projects could not be completed without the team members who each perform their tasks to the best of their ability.

In fact, one of the best practices for project managers who need to manage multiple resources is to give these team members a voice. It might be tempting to just create project plans and demand that team members get it done, but that is a pretty unrealistic expectation that will set you up for project failure, especially if your organization does not always estimate projects accurately.

The alternative is to get input from team members on how long it will take them to complete certain tasks. A developer who has performed hundreds or thousands of similar tasks will be able to tell you right away how long it will take him/her to write that new piece of code while you, as a project manager, might have no clue.

It is also important to let team members communicate with you while the project is in progress. Small issues or holdups become big very quickly when unheeded. For this reason, project managers who implement project and resource management solutions should ensure that their team members will have the ability to request more time for their tasks when necessary.

When the people who are actually doing the project work have a voice, everybody wins. It is one of the best ways to drive projects to success every time.

- April Boland, Journyx Communications Coordinator