5 Real Project Management Examples for Your Team

Whether it’s a home or a business project, simple or complex by nature, the secret sauce to delivering successful projects is starting strong with the right strategy and execution plan.

You can do this (and do it well) with a go-getter mindset, proper project management approaches, and the right tools.

In this article, you’ll learn about the building blocks of project management, including the key success factors and phases, as well as how project management tools can keep them together. Then, we’ll show you how it all works in practice with five real project management examples! 👌

This Article Contains:

⏰ 60-Second Summary

The project management life cycle consists of four phases: initiating, planning, executing, and closing
Key success factors include SMART goals, scope management, risk planning, clear roles, effective communication, and project visibility
Project management software like ClickUp helps teams stay on track with customizable views, automation, task statuses, and more
Real-world examples demonstrate project management principles in marketing, SEO, customer enablement, education, and product launches
ClickUp’s features support various project management methodologies and facilitate collaboration, risk management, and efficient workflows

Try ClickUp for Project Management

The 4 Phases of the Project Management Life Cycle

Managing projects from start to finish can come with long and complex processes. So, to help make everyone’s job easier, the concept of the project life cycle was introduced.

The project life cycle, or project management process, consists of four phases: initiating, planning, executing, and closing. It’s a structured path your projects go through to help move them from conception to completion and ensure project objectives are delivered in each phase.

Let’s take a look at what the project manager is responsible for in each phase:

1. The initiation phase

Get everyone onboard. The project manager defines the organization, client, or customer’s goal, identifies key stakeholders, the project team, and the scope of work of the project, and determines measurable objectives for the team.

2. The planning phase

Strategically prepare and map out the project. The project manager is responsible for creating a detailed project plan and outlining the project schedule that includes the major project milestones and describes what tasks or deliverables make up each milestone. This is important because the project plan provides a strategy and project checklist to help properly manage resources, budget, and timeline along the project life cycle.

3. The execution phase

It’s go time. In this phase, the project manager’s main job is to oversee the team’s efforts and ensure everyone understands what’s expected of them, what tasks need to be done, and how and when to complete those tasks to ensure everything is done within the project schedule.

4. The closing phase

Time to wrap up the project. The project manager must identify that their team has completed all of the requested outcomes, then present the final product to the stakeholders to sign off and officially close the project.

📌 Key takeaway:

By following the project life cycle, you’re ensuring that you are:

Capturing the expectations of your customer
Setting your project up for success with a plan
Executing project tasks and addressing any issues or project risks that arise
Closing out your project to capture any lessons learned and improve the next projects

Project management methodologies to choose from 💪🏻

Waterfall: A linear, sequential process where each phase (e.g., planning, design, implementation, testing, deployment) must be completed before moving to the next
Agile: An iterative approach where teams work in short cycles (sprints), frequently delivering small increments and adapting based on feedback
Scrum: Uses defined roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Development Team), time-boxed sprints (typically 2-4 weeks), and daily stand-ups to maintain progress
Kanban: Uses a visual board with columns (To Do, In Progress, Done) to track tasks and limit work in progress (WIP)
Lean: Focuses on delivering value with minimal waste by optimizing workflows and improving efficiency
Six Sigma: Uses data-driven decision-making and statistical analysis to reduce defects and inefficiencies (DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control)
PRINCE2: A structured method with defined roles, stages, and a focus on governance and risk management
Critical path method (CPM): Identifies the longest sequence of dependent tasks to determine the shortest time to complete the project

Want to gain a strategic advantage? Learn how to use AI for project management. 👇🏼

Key Factors for Successful Project Management

Critical factors for successful project management can vary from one project to another, but here are a few factors that should remain constant no matter the type of project or what industry you’re in:

Set SMART goals
Understand the project scope and prevent scope creep
Identify project risks and create a risk management plan
Clearly defined roles and responsibilities
Effective team communication
Maintain a high level of project visibility

How project management software gives teams flexibility

With so many factors that can impact project success, using project management software can help to keep everyone and everything on track and ahead of curveballs.

A good project management app can take so much of the burden of managing projects off your shoulders by providing teams with the tools they need to get a high-level overview of their work, streamline business processes, create efficient workflows, communicate more effectively, and make collaboration seamless and more enjoyable.

ClickUp, for one, helps project managers and teams plan, manage, track projects, and collaborate with each other—all in one place. Its fully customizable platform gives teams the flexibility and the advanced tools they need to create the most efficient workflow that best suits their project needs and preferences.

With project tasks, documentation, and communication all in one connected platform powered by AI, ClickUp is the everything app for project managers.

And because the platform is fully customizable, teams in ClickUp are fully equipped to handle any type of project and support any type of project management methodology, including the most common approaches such as Waterfall, Agile (Scrum and Kanban), Lean, Six Sigma, and more.

Key ClickUp features for effective project management include:

Customizable views: View your projects your way; choose from 15+ views, including Gantt Chart, Timeline, and Workload view
Custom automation: Save time, keep your processes consistent, and streamline your workflow
Custom task statuses: Add and assign different stages to your tasks to improve project visibility
Custom Fields: Add more context to your tasks and display important information
Contextual communication: Chat integrated with tasks and documents, so everybody knows what’s happening
Goals: Stay on track to hit your SMART goals with clear timelines, measurable targets, and automatic progress tracking
Project milestones: Easily set milestones to help you stay on top of important deadlines and track your team’s progress against major checkpoints
Dependencies: Add “blocking” or “waiting on” dependencies between tasks to set a clear order of operations so your team always knows what to work on first
Task checklist: Create a to-do list within each task to ensure all steps are completed before moving the task forward
Dashboards: Build a mission control center for each project, team member, and more to ensure every project stakeholder has the information they need to control any project risk and keep the project delivery within its timeline
Global time tracking: Track time spent on tasks, set estimates, add notes, and view reports of your time from anywhere
Collaboration: Work with the team on documents and whiteboards in real time
Assigned comments: Create and assign action items directly within a comment
Mobile app: Keep your projects accessible wherever you go with the ClickUp mobile app
Integration: Connect ClickUp to over 1,000 of your favorite work tools to streamline your workflow

View the Full List of ClickUp Features

Now, let’s take a look at a few real-life project management examples and learn how other industry experts have successfully delivered projects using the right methodology and tools!

📮ClickUp Insight: 92% of workers use inconsistent methods to track action items, which results in missed decisions and delayed execution.

Whether you’re sending follow-up notes or using spreadsheets, the process is often scattered and inefficient. ClickUp’s Task Management Solution ensures seamless conversion of conversations into tasks—so your team can act fast and stay aligned.

Try ClickUp For Free

5 Project Management Examples and Tips for Successful Project Delivery

1. Marketing project example: Creating a cross-functional workflow

Jakub Grajcar, a Marketing Manager at STX Next, leads a team of content and social media specialists, spearheads the Marketing department’s lead generation and brand recognition strategy and works with multiple departments to deliver projects. A typical day for the team includes executing upwards of five content deliverables, with Jakub often reviewing 10+ different projects at a time.

The problem?

Working with our Product Design department was a chaotic process. Our teams struggled with communication because we lacked project visbility—we often didn’t have clear information about whether tasks were still under review or needed more work.
We absolutely needed a system that would allow me and the Head of Product Design to get an overview of the entire process and come to grips with all the work in progress and upcoming tasks.

Jakub Grajcar, Marketing Manager at STX Next

The goal?
To help improve global collaboration across departments, and content marketing processes, speed up project completion and delivery, and keep the teams aligned on goals, project timelines, and so on by creating a cross-functional workflow and standardizing processes in ClickUp.

Here’s how Jakub and his team carried out this initiative:

Initiation phase

Identify the project: To create Marketing Sprints templates and team Dashboards
Define the desired outcome: Manage multiple projects, streamline partner outreach, and speed up the content production process

Planning phase

Project management methodology: Agile

Execution phase

Task checklist:

Set up a Hierarchy in ClickUp
- Create Folders for each department and set up Lists within each Folder
- Within each List, create tasks and subtasks to breakdown the work even further
- Save tasks as a template that can be reused as many times as needed
Set up Custom Task Statuses to give each stage of the project a designated name
Add Custom Fields to each List to display and keep key information easily accessible
Added custom automation to automatically trigger an action and push the project to the next step
Save the Folder as a template to be reused for the next Sprint and to keep processes consistent
Build a custom Dashboard with real-time reporting to display key data and improve task visibility

Closing phase

At the end of the project, Jakub and the teams within STX Next tested the new Marketing Sprints template and Dashboard to ensure the process was smooth for everyone involved in the project and all of the custom automation in ClickUp was set up properly.

This custom template is built to help marketing pros plan better, execute easier, and ship faster.

📌 Use this Marketing Sprint Folder template to help with project planning, keep project activities visible and organized, and streamline your processes. Hit the ground running with pre-set Board and List views, task estimation capabilities, and customizable automation!

Download Jakub’s Marketing Sprints Folder Template

2. SEO project example: Scaling content production

Adele Payant, ClickUp’s SEO Specialist, is responsible for researching opportunities and creating content briefs for the writers to use as a guide when drafting articles for the blog page. And to write compelling content briefs, she has to perform keyword research, competitive analysis, and other important related tasks, and ensure the content brief is detailed and easy to follow for the writers.

The problem?

The biggest challenge in our SEO blog workflow was focusing on scaling our content production without impacting the quality of each blog.

The goal?

To create a clear and repeatable system to help our SEO team ramp up the volume of briefs without compromising the quality of the brief and reduce unnecessary back-and-forth communication.

Here’s how Adele executed this project: