The world has already moved online; has your job moved with it? Gone are the days of managing work using pen and paper, whiteboards and dry erase markers, sticky notes and the four walls of your cubicle. And saving Microsoft Word documents and spreadsheets in a folder on your computer has become a thing of the past.

Today’s most effective digital project managers have moved their teams and processes online. Using online project management, collaboration software, and cloud file storage systems, work is getting done efficiently and with better results.

Here’s how digital project management is improving with the help of the cloud.

Top 10 Signs You're a Project Manager

1. Becoming tired of having a social life beyond work.
2. Spending hours planning and re-planning a Friday night out.
3. Thinking Rommel would have been more effective if he'd used a Gantt chart.
4. Using so much jargon customers think you're speaking a foreign language.
5. Organising your life into milestones.
6. Setting time-based tasks for your family at weekends.
7. Buying a personal copy of Microsoft Project for use at home.
8. Giving regular status reports to your other half while doing the decorating.
9. Creating a Gantt chart to plan your holidays.
10. Referring to food at dinner parties as "deliverables.

This project management model is useful for any project, but ideal when project management isn’t your day job!

When you’re a busy manager, and managing projects as well, often what’s needed is a clear but simple process to follow. The 4D project management model provides such a process. The model is outlined below.

The project may be something you’ve been given to manage, with little say in its definition. Or it may be something you have generated yourself.

Either way, to complete a successful project, and thus be a happy project manager, beginning with proper planning time is critical. The importance of ensuring that outcomes are meaningful and worthwhile before you start cannot be overemphasized.