The 5 Golden Rules of Project Management

Rule1: Make Risk Management Part of Your Project Rule2: Identify Risks Early in Your Project Rule3: Communicate About Risks Rule4: Consider Both Threats and Opportunities Rule5: Clarify Ownership Issues

Rule1: Time Management is Critical To deliver your project on time, you need to manage time carefully.
To do this, make sure every task is listed in a Project Plan and that they are scheduled to occur precisely when they need to.
Every week, update your plan with the time spent completing tasks and identify whether each task is ahead or behind schedule.
Track the % complete of each task and if it's behind schedule, then get it back on track by assigning more resource or reducing the scope of the task.
Don't let tasks slip.
Be vigilant.
Rule2: Track Costs and Manage Finances Every element of your project incurs a cost.
You need to identify all of the planned costs upfront and get them approved by your manager.
Then record every expense as it occurs - including people, equipment and materials.
Check that your actual expenditure does not exceed your planned expenditure.
And if it does, then you need to cut back.
If you're running over budget, tell your Project Sponsor early.
Rule3: Ensure Quality Targets are Set You need to specify upfront exactly what it is that the project will deliver (i.e.
the "deliverables").
Then set targets for the quality of these deliverables.
Get your quality targets agreed by your customer.
Then every week, review the quality of each deliverable produced by the project.
If it's not up to standard, fix it immediately.
Never wait until the end of the project before fixing up quality issues.
Rule4: Control Scope at the Micro Level Your scope is defined as "the set of deliverables that need to be produced by the project".
So make sure that you know what your scope is, try not to let anyone change it.
Check every week that your team is working on "just" the set of deliverables agreed, and nothing more.
Check that every deliverable being produced exactly matches the specification you've defined for it.
Note: An increase in the scope of your project will make it harder to deliver.
Rule5: Resolve Issues Early If issues arise during the project, then resolve them early.
Pounce on every issue before it delays your project.
Record it formally and then track it until it's resolved.
Unresolved issues lead to delays which lead to project failure.
Stay safe – resolve issues early.

I agree with Mr. Ahmed salmeh in his answer above.

The Five (5) Golden rules of Project management are: Do not change Project Scope in the middle unless you have compelling reasons and Sponsor approves it.
Manage and control all changes through procedure.
Work out a good Schedule and Planned Cost of the Project covering the complete scope and get the base line approved.
Resource planning should be covered in the Schedule.
Work out a good, professional Project Quality Plan and follow it relegiously.
Focus on long lead material items procurement plan and do not allow any supplier to jeopardize your schedule.
Prepare your Risk Management Plan and keep it a live document until the end of the project.
Manage your issues on day to day basis. 

Managing a project can be the most fun you’ve had with your clothes on! I can’t think of a career path that pretty much means that you are constantly working at the forefront of change.
However, anything that’s fun does have its dangers so it’s important to stay safe.
Here are my five golden rules to project management that have I’ve picked up over many years.
Rule1: Get inside the head of your sponsor.
Many underestimate the role of the sponsor in a project.
Manage your sponsor well and you’ll reap the benefits.
Sponsors aren’t there just to agree the initial brief with you.
It’s your job to ensure they have an active role in the project from start to finish.
Remember, very often in a fast moving business they will be key to ensuring the project goals are still viable.
Sponsors should be working with senior stakeholders to sell the benefits of the change your project will bring and letting you know about how changes in the organisation may impact.
So my advice is to meet with sponsors at least once a fortnight to make sure they understand where the project is at, but you also understand how the business is feeling about the change.
Rule2: Agree how and when you will communicate and stick to it.
Some people believe that it’s impossible to over-communicate.
I completely disagree! If you’re knocking out e-mails and reports on a daily basis, most people will be trying to work out how to get your e-mails directly into the spam folder by day3.
So at the outset, agree your communications plan and stick to it.
Some people key to your project may not want to be bothered unless there’s a change to the plan.
So be it.
No one will thank you for flooding their inbox! Rule3: Revisit your plans constantly.
A common mistake people make when managing a project is to create a plan and set it in stone.
This is like agreeing at the age of7 what all your birthday presents will be until you’re18! Planning for a project is not a one off event.
This should be an activity you and your team work through on a regular basis.
Planning can be a bit dry at the best of times so my advice is to try and make it fun and involve as many of the team as you can so they all feel part of the process.
Rule4: When a task is estimated to take longer than your gut feel would expect, get a second opinion.
As your experience as a project manager grows, you’ll begin to develop a very natural instinct to guestimate the length of time a task should take.
So when you get a view that a task is going to take longer than you think is reasonable (or shorter), don’t be too quick to accept, be sure to get a second opinion.
Rule5: Log your decisions.
If you’ve agreed a way of doing something that is pretty fundamental to the project be sure to record when you did this.
Typical projects last several months and you can bet your bottom dollar that whatever you all agreed as a sensible approach in month2 may not be remembered so well in month6! So my advice here is to set up a very simple template so you are able to record key decisions very quickly.
Also include when they were made and who made them.
Keep this log in a shared area so that anyone can look at them.