Cross-location project work - 7 steps

As an experienced project manager, you may be faced with the particular challenge of coordinating teams in different departments while taking into account the unique aspects of each individual project. This complexity requires not only organisational skills, but also the ability to respond flexibly to different requirements.

Flexibility and agility are key aspects of cross-departmental project work. This 7-step guide provides you with a detailed roadmap to overcome these challenges and achieve maximum efficiency and first-class results. Whether your team is working together on site or remotely across different departments, we will guide you through proven methods and approaches to ensure the success of your project work across locations.

What is project work?

The German Institute for Standardisation e.V. has published DIN 69901 The definition of the term project is presented as follows:

"A project is an undertaking that is essentially characterised by the uniqueness of the conditions as a whole, e.g: Target specification, time, financial, personnel or other conditions, delimitations in relation to other specifications and project-specific organisation."

The project work therefore represents a unique challenge and can nevertheless be based on proven elements and successful processes from previous projects. Regardless of the areas, such as production or marketing, the project work begins as soon as the customer and service provider have reached agreement on implementation criteria, legal framework conditions and scheduling.

In companies that are primarily concerned with the implementation of projects, considerable financial resources are tied up in project work. This runs parallel to project management, which divides the individual steps of project work into easily manageable work packages. The phases of project work include planning, preparation, implementation, application and - if desired or appropriate - evaluation.

Ideally, your core project team will consist largely of internal staff who carry out the work steps in accordance with the agreed specifications. As the project manager, you initiate, monitor, control and finalise the project work. Continuous coordination with the work plan ensures that the project work is constantly adapted. If you have your project team together in one place, it is quite easy to co-ordinate via the short official channels. But what if your project team consists of employees in different departments or locations? Then the project work will be a little more complex. Stay flexible - Cross-departmental project work can be easily managed in 7 steps.

Guide - 7 steps for cross-departmental project work

As an experienced project manager, you are probably familiar with the following scenario: You have started a project, a detailed project plan The project plan has been created, stakeholder approval has been obtained and now it's time for implementation. The execution or implementation phase is the most challenging project phase, especially in our hybrid, remote world. This is where communication with your project team can easily stall, bottlenecks can occur and deadlines can be missed.

But it doesn't have to be that way! Our guide shows you how you can successfully carry out your cross-departmental project work in seven steps to optimise the efficiency and results of your projects.

Step 1: Manage expectations

To successfully steer your project through the implementation phase, it is crucial to keep your stakeholders' expectations in mind throughout the project. This requires a clear outline of the project scope, budget and resource capacity, coupled with ongoing efforts to reinforce these on a regular basis. Agree with your stakeholders early on how often you will communicate, how quickly you can respond to change requests and what kind of changes should be considered or rejected.

During this phase, you can use data from past and current projects to support your ideas with your stakeholders. Modern project management solutions such as ZEP can also help you to control and manage your workflows and processes effectively.

Step 2: Manage resource capacity

Capacity bottlenecks can hinder the smooth realisation of your project. It is therefore of great importance to continuously adapt the workload of a project to your available resources. To achieve this, it is essential that you always have a Clear view of resource capacity have. Software solutions such as ZEP also offer you support in this area. With ZEP, you can create realistic time and resource plans, assign tasks according to the skills of your team members and ensure the necessary transparency and simple prioritisation through detailed project reports.

Derive predictions for future projects from existing information. This enables you to counteract potential capacity bottlenecks at an early stage and organise implementation more efficiently.

Step 3: Set priorities

The Prioritisation and identification of dependencies are crucial success factors for your project. As a project manager, it is therefore advisable for you to create a carefully prioritised task list in order to assign the most important tasks specifically to the relevant people, departments and teams. The identification of dependencies plays a key role here, as it determines the order of completion. An example of this would be the approval of a company presentation for sales, which requires the approval of your stakeholders before your sales team can work on it.

With ZEP, you can assign your project work and all tasks to be completed to the respective teams and departments. This gives you a more comprehensive overview and helps you to identify weak points more quickly. Because: You can only control what you can see.

Step 4: Plan a time buffer

Even the best laid plans can come with unforeseen challenges. Creating realistic milestones is crucial to ensure your project doesn't stall. Always factor in potential delays, be it due to unexpected sick leave from key team members or late deliveries from suppliers. A strategic use of time buffers helps to avoid delays.

The Introduction of agile working methods can also contribute to realistic planning. By dividing projects into individual sprints, you get a better idea of how long certain tasks will take and can adjust your schedules accordingly. By using the ZEP module planned hours Define hours and services in advance for professional and detailed planning of your projects. You can choose between fixed or dynamic planning figures to manage your projects according to your needs - bottom-up or top-down. By using a centralised project schedule, you can always keep an eye on the progress of your projects and make any necessary adjustments to stay on track.

Step 5: Team autonomy

It may seem challenging for you as a project manager, but by granting Autonomy for your team membersThe ability to make independent decisions about their working methods can have a significant positive impact on the quality and speed of work. A key component of this autonomy is to support your teams in their individual working methods - be it traditional project management, lean-agile approaches or a hybrid mix of both.

Regardless of the working method, you should visualise processes and results, including deadlines, priorities, budgets and other relevant project figures. This gives your team in different departments the opportunity to adapt their approach and quickly exchange information about obstacles or problems. After all, in teams at different locations, the focus is not only on working together, but also on the autonomous development of each team member. Work and project time tracking software such as ZEP promotes the autonomy of your project team by enabling them to critically scrutinise and independently optimise their working methods. This self-determined approach not only strengthens individual performance, but also contributes significantly to the promotion of a transparent and cooperative team culture across different departments.

Step 6: Track progress

Effective project management requires that you are committed to supporting your teams in different locations and/or departments in their tasks. You can achieve this by keeping an eye on the status of your projects with the help of dashboards or reports, which can be most important KPIs and Reflect OKRs.

Less is often more. Only ask for the information you need to understand the status of your projects at a glance. The aim is to understand where potential bottlenecks can occur - and where not.

Step 7: Plan change

The fear of unexpected changes is widespread among project managers. Unfortunately, however, deviations are an unavoidable part of every project. When relapses, delays and potential bottlenecks occur, maintaining an agile mindset and way of working will help. Adjust your project plans to keep your projects on track. There's nothing worse than a stagnant, rigid project plan. Establish an evaluation process for change requests at your locations at an early stage in order to quickly determine the best alternative for implementation in your projects.

Cross-location project management with ZEP

As a project manager, you appreciate clear structures, don't you? With the ZEP Module Departments, Branches & Locations you have an additional level of structuring at your fingertips. In this way, you always have a detailed overview of all projects in all teams and locations, even in larger companies with a wide range of projects.

Another advantage of the ZEP module is that you can use individual department heads as Recipient for holiday/absence requests can be stored. This allows you to avoid the diversions via your headquarters and gives individual locations and departments more room for manoeuvre. The head of department acts as an additional level for structuring the management team and can be seen as an admin within a part of the company. This brings the necessary flexibility and agility to your cross-departmental project work.

If you value internal cost allocation between departments or want to carry out department-specific analyses of times, costs and internal expenses - you're in good company, because that's why ZEP is so popular with many project-oriented companies.

Have you taken our seven tips to heart, but simply have too many projects at the same time? Everything on the topic You can read about multi-project management at your leisure here.