What Is Project Management In Higher Education (+ 5 Tips For Executing Higher Ed Projects)

1. Increased project completion.
2. Reduced scope creep.
3. Improved team communication.
4. Enhanced stakeholder satisfaction.

Why Does Project Management Matter In Higher Education? ​​

Project management is important in higher education because it ensures projects are completed on time, maintain quality, and stay within budget. As a result, higher education institutions accomplish their goals efficiently and maintain a positive reputation among students, faculty, staff, vendors, and other key stakeholders.

For example, say a university has to convert ten in-person courses to fully online formats. This project requires collaboration between academic leaders, faculty, IT, and Learning Management System (LMS) vendors. It also requires completing various tasks, like redesigning course syllabi, scaling LMS capabilities and capacity, and training faculty for online instruction. Any miscommunication or mishaps during this process can lead to delayed project execution or the project falling apart completely. This, in turn, could affect everything from students’ perception of the quality of their education to faculty and staff turnover.

How Does Project Management Work In Higher Education?

To understand how project management works in higher education, it helps to know who is involved in a project and what the project management process looks like. First, the key players. These are:

1. Academic leaders (e.g. president, provost, CFO, and CIO)
2. Project team (e.g. project manager, department leads, and Subject Matter Experts)
3. Other stakeholders (e.g. faculty, students, and community partners)

Then, the project management process, or project life cycle, itself. This cycle is broken down into four phases:

1. Initiate
   The project manager defines the institution’s goals and project scope, identifies key stakeholders, assigns team roles, and determines Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
2. Plan
   The project manager crafts a detailed project plan that maps out key project milestones and identifies the deliverables associated with each milestone.
3. Execute
   The project manager keeps track of team members’ progress and ensures all tasks are completed on time.
4. Close
   The project manager confirms that all tasks are complete, presents the product to stakeholders, and closes the project.

Let’s consider what the project life cycle might look like for a university’s marketing and communications team. The team receives work requests from 5000 staff members across the university and has challenges with both productivity and cross-division communication. Lily is the team’s associate marketing manager and has been selected as the project manager for this initiative.

1. Initiate
   Lily identifies the university’s goal of increasing productivity and centralizing communication, decides to implement a work management solution, and determines that the KPIs will be average request turnaround time, on-time completion rate, and cross-division communication score.
2. Plan
   Lily creates a detailed project plan lasting from January to March 2026, with key deliverables being the implementation of a work management system with a clear, user-friendly dashboard for tracking KPIs and the development of standardized workflows to improve cross-division communication.
3. Execute
   Lily tracks her team’s progress, monitors KPIs, resolves challenges, and ensures tasks are completed according to the project schedule.
4. Close
   The project team completes all tasks within the set timeframe. Lily presents the results to the marketing and communications director, who decides that the team will continue using the work management solution after seeing dramatic improvements in productivity, collaboration, and communication KPIs.

What Are The Challenges Of Project Management In Higher Education?

Various challenges can occur for teams handling higher education projects. These include:

1. Unclear goals
   A survey found that a lack of clear goals is the most common reason for project failure. Without clear goals, project teams won’t know which resources to invest in, how to measure success, or which stakeholders to involve.
2. Scope creep
   Scope creep is another consequence of unclear objectives. If project managers don’t define project goals and deliverables early, they will increase their chances of wasting resources, missing deadlines, and disappointing stakeholders.
3. Budget restraints
   If project managers don’t budget properly, they risk cost overruns, project delays, and project failure.
4. Poor communication
   Project managers must collaborate with multiple team members and stakeholders to successfully complete a project. Miscommunication between these groups can lead to confusion, mishaps, and other setbacks.

Project teams can overcome these barriers to project completion with proper planning. What does proper planning look like? My tips in the next section offer some insight.

5 Tips For Effective Project Management In Higher Education

Struggling with project management? Here’s what your team can do to make sure higher ed projects are completed successfully and delivered on time.

1) Set Clear Goals And Expectations

Define project objectives early in the process to prevent challenges from arising later on. Also, clarify:

1. What the project will and won’t cover.
2. Deliverables.
3. Project timeline.
4. Metrics for measuring success.
5. Strategies for managing and completing the project.

This will keep the project on track and ensure everyone has a clear understanding of what must be accomplished and when. Here’s what clear objectives and expectations for a university’s LMS implementation project might look like:

1. Timeline
   March to July 2026
2. Objectives
   Replace legacy LMS with a modern, cloud-based platform that improves course delivery, integrates with existing student information systems, and enhances the learning experience for students.
3. Scope
   The project includes platform selection, data migration from the old LMS, integration with the university’s student information system, pilot testing before full rollout, and a plan for faculty training. Out of scope: app development or plug-in creation.
4. Deliverables
   Fully configured LMS, migrated course content and student data, pilot testing, and faculty LMS training plan.
5. Key metrics
   Course migration (100% before start of fall semester), training completion (100% before start of fall semester)

2) Identify And Engage Key Stakeholders

Stakeholders have a vested interest in a project’s success, so identifying and involving them throughout the process is crucial. The level of stakeholder involvement and oversight will vary by project. But in general, stakeholders should understand and approve of project objectives. They should also be updated on the project’s progress.

Let’s return to the LMS implementation project for an example of possible stakeholders. Here, the stakeholders include:

1. University leaders.
2. Department chairs and professors.
3. IT and academic support teams.
4. Students.
5. LMS vendor.

3) Define Roles And Responsibilities

Project members and stakeholders should understand what their role is and how it connects to the overall project. This level of clarity and accountability will prevent confusion and ensure a smooth process from beginning to end.

A simple way to clarify roles and who will report to whom is to use an organization chart. For instance, the University of Washington’s organization chart for maintenance and construction projects looks like this:

1. Maintenance and Construction Executive Director

a. Assistant to the Director

b. Etc

c. Etc

d. Zone Maintenance Deputy Director

i. Northeast Zone Manager

ii. Etc

iii. Etc

iv. Etc

e. Campus Maintenance Director

i. Outside Zone Manager

ii. Etc

iii. Etc

iv. Etc

f. Facilities Construction Assistant Director

i. Operations Manager

ii. Etc

g. Materials Management Assistant Director

i. Moving & Surplus Manager

ii. Etc

h. Workforce Management & Customer Care Team Assistant Director

4) Break Down Projects Into Tasks and Track Progress

When you break down a project into specific tasks, you transform an abstract goal into a concrete list of action items. Start by converting the project’s scope into work packages, or deliverables and groups of related tasks. Then, break down those packages into project activities.

From there, you’ll want to sequence project activities. Then, track the status of individual tasks while keeping in mind the project deadline. You can automate this entire process with project management software, which—according to a Monday report—drives organizational efficiencies for 82% of companies.

5) Communicate Consistently

Project success requires team collaboration. And for collaboration to happen, project teams must ensure clear, open communication between all team members and stakeholders.

To ensure strong team communication, project managers can invest in project management solutions that have robust communication features. This way, team members can coordinate different tasks without multiple emails and meetings across disparate systems.

How Work Management Software Streamlines Higher Ed Projects: Austin Community College Case Study

According to a case study, the Office of the Provost at Austin Community College (ACC) manages multiple initiatives, from overseeing academics and student affairs to driving enrollment and graduation rates. And all with the goal of ensuring equitable access to education and improving student outcomes.

However, the team faced several challenges in achieving these goals. Namely, disconnected systems, inconsistent processes, and limited transparency into workflows. That is, until the team adopted a work management platform. With the platform, the team was able to:

1. Organize projects by student outcome and strategic pillars to maximize student impact.
2. Track progress and facilitate timely interventions through real-time goal reporting.

The result? ACC streamlined workflows and cut down on manual processes, giving the project team more time to focus on improving student outcomes. The team was also able to continuously track progress toward its goal of a 70% student completion rate by 2030.

These results support what Dr. Monique Umphrey—the college’s provost and executive vice president—had to say about the work management platform. “[The platform] helps us improve alignment, transparency, and communication across the college,” she said. “By tracking OKRs and key metrics, I can maintain a clear, high-level view of all programs, which helps us address issues proactively and make timely, informed decisions to support our institutional goals.”

Clarity And Collaboration Are Central To Project Success

Project success comes down to proper planning and collaboration. Without clearly defined objectives, roles, and tasks as well as team members who are prepared to tackle them, a project is destined to fail. This is especially the case in higher education, where hundreds of staff are often working across dozens of departments and multiple campuses. If these stakeholders aren’t united in service of a common and clear goal, then projects are delayed—if not discontinued altogether. And what are the larger effects of this?

1. Student, faculty, and stakeholder dissatisfaction
2. Reputational damage
3. Hesitance to conduct similar projects

Prevent these outcomes by maintaining clarity and collaboration throughout the project life cycle. As result, your institution will see higher project success rates, better student outcomes, and stronger stakeholder satisfaction.