Project Management ABC: B for Best Practice
Optimizing Project Execution Based on Past Experience
Project management methods are based on empirical experience. This means that projects have been carried out in various ways in the past, allowing for a wealth of experience to be gathered. This experience shows what has worked well and what has not worked as well. The sum of all positive experiences from projects is called best practice.
In project management, “best practices” refers to all the lessons learned from past projects. In future projects, the elements that worked well are reused, while everything else is revised and optimized.
A best-practice solution, therefore, is not necessarily the best possible solution, but simply the one that has proven to be the best solution in past projects. That is why the best-practice approach is occasionally subject to criticism.
Well-known project management standards such as Prince2, PMBOK, and ICB are based on best-practice approaches. However, many companies develop their own company-specific best-practice solutions that enable them to manage projects as effectively as possible.
Benefits of Best Practices
- Practical recommendations that can be implemented quickly and have been proven effective
- Flexible adaptation to different situations and tasks, as needed
Disadvantages of Best Practices
- Individual best practice solutions within a project may not necessarily be compatible or work together seamlessly
- Best practices should not be adopted rigidly, but rather reviewed, adapted to the specific tasks, the company, and the team, and continuously optimized
The application of best practice solutions helps to implement projects quickly, but is no guarantee for their successful implementation.
Using myPARM
The myPARM project management software includes predefined standard processes based on well-known project management methods such as PRINCE2, PMI, DIN, Hermes, and Scrum. However, you can also design your own processes or customize standard processes to fit your individual workflow. In addition, myPARM includes numerous preconfigured best-practice solutions tailored to specific industries. This allows you to launch projects quickly and easily and manage them efficiently and in a structured manner—all according to your specific needs.
In addition, project-specific lessons learned can be documented in myPARM and analyzed across projects. These analyses can then be used as a basis for identifying project- or company-specific best-practice solutions.
Find out more about the myPARM project and portfolio management software:
Would you like to get to know myPARM in a demo? Then make an appointment with us right away!