Common Challenges in Project Management
Common Challenges in Project Management
A project manager is supposed to be a leader, not only for the project, but also for the team. Managing projects is no less than running a small city. You must take care of the projects, resources, deadlines, manage the budget, ensure proper communication, foresee potential risks and what not.?Having the ability to plan manage resources, and meet deadlines, one must possess the ability to foresee the challenges that may hamper the progress of the overall project.
As a part of today’s article, I have written about the typical challenges a project manager can expect to meet while a project is in motion.
Challenge #1: Keeping Teams on The Same Page
Keeping your team on the same page will make things happen interactively. Each team member will know exactly what’s going on, what they need to do, and what each of them is working towards. As the results make the team members align with the organizational goals and objectives.
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Challenge #2: Unrealistic Deadlines
As we live in a world, where competition is getting aggressive, and targets are set either unrealistic or unachievable rather than driven by calculated business requirements. From then, what begins is a desperate attempt where the team tries to fit the requirements in the already drawn boundaries.?
Challenge #3: Insufficient Team Skills
A team is as good as its team members. If team members are not keen on or are not trained enough to perform assigned tasks, it can put the development in a risky spot. But most of the time, the team members are assigned on their availability, not for their expertise for many projects. If team members are not competent or trained enough to meet the challenges and perform assigned tasks it can put the development of the project in a risky spot. In order to mitigate the risk, need to understand the team member's requirements for the environment, focuses, desires and freedom, and monitor through the project life cycle.
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Challenge #4: Miscommunication Cause Conflicts
Communication skills are the project manager’s greatest asset. No matter if you are giving instructions, asking questions, or seeking information, there’s always a challenge to provide clear and open communication.
There’s a reason why project managers emphasize a lot on effective communication. Because, most often, successful communication translates into successful projects as 57 percent of projects fail due to breakdown in communications. You need to identify the stakeholders in the pre-project activities, document inputs to the stakeholder list, identify their influence and interest rate and prepare a communication strategy accordingly. The strategy will provide a chance to understand 1) what kind of information need to be communicated? 2) whom to communicate with? 3) how to communicate?
It's mandatory to continue this process and meet stakeholders' expectations through the life cycle of the project.
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Challenge #5: Risk Management
Oftentimes, projects don’t go as planned so risk management is one of the major project management issues that project managers must deal with. Management experts can tell how seasoned a project manager is with his ability to oversee risks that might creep up in a project anytime. These risks can be uncertainty in the financial market, environmental changes, hidden flaws in the project plan or unknown factors that can impact the success of a project.
The mitigation and acceptance of the risks are achieved by organizing regular risk workshops and facilitating the brainstorming session, identification of the project risk tolerance and threshold in order to be able to address unknown risks and keep the project on track.?
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Project management isn’t what it seems to be – it’s much more than that. It’s a skill that takes time, patience, and perseverance. It requires you to constantly analyse setbacks and failures and implement the lessons learned from them. When you focus on each challenge and find ways to deal with them before even starting the project, that’s when you’d be able to helm project management successfully.
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