There’s one important lesson you have to learn when you become a project manager: your own performance is no longer in the focus.

Now, your major responsibility is to engage the team and encourage their performance.

It’s important to understand all dependencies when planning a project.

While dependencies can be within a project (schedule dependencies), we are going to explore the practice of managing those dependencies that impact the project but are external to the project work “Inter-Project Dependencies”.

It’s essential to have a good handle on these activities as there is often little opportunity to control and influence them.

Businesses are losing up to $50,000 a year in billable revenue from the inaccurate tracking of hours, according to Harvard Business review.

This statistic likely comes as a surprise for organizations, given over half of respondents indicated that their employer uses timesheets to bill clients (for face-to-face consulting hours or on-site project work, for example). But timesheet accuracy is not translating to internal working hours—in the same study, almost 40% of respondents admitted they do not track employee hours as effectively as they would like. This lack of accuracy and efficiency makes project estimates harder to calculate.

Timesheets are the obvious answer for businesses looking to keep track of working hours. But the manual nature of the process makes it more difficult than it needs to be.

The sense of belonging to a team increases an individual's commitment to working towards a common goal in synergy with others.

Social belonging was recognized by Abraham Maslow as a critical human need, following physiological and safety needs in his hierarchy. This need and the need for esteem or recognition, combine in project teams to become important to optimizing team performance.

If you want a really good project outcome, close down your PM apps and tools for a few days, and just reflect on the nature of the new project you’ve just been handed!

As with most things, successful projects start with well-considered preparation. Here are a few suggestions as to how you can give your project the best chance of success before you open any apps.