The Project Manager's Quick Guide to Getting Things Done

(MoneyWatch) 

We will now interrupt this grim and ugly recession to offer thanks for great project managers. They are the pros — part diplomat, part cheerleader, part polymath, and 100 percent efficiency junkie — who get complicated projects done to spec, on time, and on budget. We need them even more in this economy, when specs are more demanding, time is shorter, and budgets are leaner than ever.

But there's one more truth about this recession: To paraphrase FDR speaking during an earlier economic rough patch, we're all project managers now. The best PMs are masters at managing expectations and keeping teams motivated while simultaneously maneuvering around unexpected crises and hitting hard deadlines. In other words, they do what you're asked to do every day. They just have the job title. And the training.

You could get that training, too, but you probably don't have time for a full-fledged course. (You have projects to manage!) So we offer our Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Getting Things Done, which boils the art of project management down into four easy-to-manage steps. We've also lined up some of the world's best project managers — from General Motors, Nokia, Method, and Facebook — and asked them for the one tip they think could most help ad hoc PMs like you get better at the task. And if that isn't inspiration enough, we've asked three PMs to tell us in detail how they managed to keep major projects on track at the Colorado State Patrol, London's Heathrow Airport, and Synovus in the face of unexpected setbacks.

More on BNET

• Lessons From the World's Best Project Managers



• The Quick-and-Dirty Guide to Getting Things Done


• How Three Project Managers Stayed on Track