how to optimize project management communication

Successful project managers understand the importance of exceptional planning and communications—unfortunately many efforts fall too short. For every $1 billion dollars invested into US businesses in 2016, it’s estimated that $122 million dollars were lost due to failed project management practices. It’s a statistic that has seen a 12% increase over the past year according to the Project Management Institute, indicating traditional project management techniques are not nearly as effective as they once were. Michael Mitchel, a retired Aviation Mechanic for the US Navy, serves as both the Commander and Board of Trustees member for Colorado’s VFW Post 1. Part of Michael’s responsibility as Post Commander/executive Director is to manage community events as they develop throughout the calendar year. This involves coordinating projects with nine additional leadership members along with both staff and volunteers from the surrounding area. With responsibilities including project development, setting up fundraising events throughout the community, and seeing the event all the way through to the day-of, it’s common for Michael’s team to have multiple projects in motion at once. “We have a variety of additional projects and events that we have to plan in addition to the regular yoga and career development meetings we hold throughout the month. Given that our post is of great historical significance—with a very large membership base of around 1,000 veterans from across the Us—we find ourselves putting on more events than your typical VFW. For instance, every year we host the Founder’s Banquet, which tends to have a global reach due to the historical nature of the post itself. Just last year, Astronaut Scott Kelly was sworn into VFW Post 1 from the International Space Station during the dinner service. So as you can imagine, there was a lot of project management that went on behind the scenes to make sure it came together smoothly and in conjunction with the other events that we had planned for the year.” Up until just recently, Michael echoed a similar pain with project management, as the entirety of the VFW’S project management was handled directly in the notepad of his cellphone. Entire projects, events, and deadlines were arranged in a list format only to be accessed via an email attachment that was resent throughout the leadership team after every individual update. Emails went unnoticed, projects were left unmarked, and the status of projects was often left in the dark. It was clear that for a team of ten individuals—each of which were responsible for multiple jobs in addition to overseeing the project management cycle—the complexity involved with the coordination of events had to be reworked. After scouring though hundreds of project management alternatives, Michael decided that no other tool offered the same amount of visibility and ease of use as the Magnatag® 52-week Project Tasking Whiteboard. “I really wanted something that was visual. I’m a very visual person and to be able to have something that I can track multiple projects on while still being easily accessible and readable at a glance was a huge plus for me. Right now we have so many events that are already in the planning stages: there’s a WWI art installation for 2018 which is still a few years out, but in the more immediate future, we received a generous gift from a local company to replace the roof on our building; that’s something we’re focusing on as we speak. These are two projects that are essentially years apart, but due to the way projects are coordinated, they see a bit of overlap. So add the accessibility of scale alongside the fact that Magnatag® is a veteran-owned company that manufactures everything here in the US, and the decision was a no-brainer for us.”