What Are the Common Problems Faced in Project Management
What Are the Common Problems Faced in Project Management
By Sharon Thomson
A project has to be researched and planned in advance for defining its scope, objectives, budget and other important elements that are vital for a project, before the project implementation actually starts. In the due course of its implementation, a set of problems may crop up from time to time which have to be addressed quickly and effectively. Failure to do so may result in the project getting negatively affected and which may eventually result in project failure.
In the planning and research phase of the project, possible risks have to be analyzed and their solutions worked out in the advance. So that if these types problems do arise, they can be solved quickly and the project cruises smoothly.
Apart from these, many other unexpected problems may arise which were not researched and thought of earlier during the planning phase. These problems have to be identified and documented and skilled team members should be delegated to find solutions for them. The project should be broken into smaller modules so that when such type of problems do occur in a module, they can be tracked and controlled independently and effectively without passing their negativity to other modules.
Another key issue that needs focus is that team members involved in the project should be skillful as well as trained well enough to meet challenges and perform duties and tasks assigned in a project. Their training should be optimum and should be imparted at a time just before the project implementation starts. Otherwise, the members tend to forget the training lessons; in case the training has been imparted too early before the start of a project. It would serve no useful purpose and will be a drain on time and money.
Another problem that can affect a project drastically is the lack of motivation and interest in the team members towards the project tasks and activities. The team members, in spite of being competent and skillful, are low in morale or lack interest in their tasks and activities. It is the duty of the project manager and supervisors to attend to these people and motivate them favorably towards the project. Rewards can be promised for them and they can be lauded when they are able to successfully perform their assigned tasks.
One key problem, a project may face is that the tasks performed were of poor quality. So additional time and labor is spent on them to redo them again. If this keeps happening time and again in the project, this will result in project getting delayed, overshooting of budget and loss of focus.
Lack of proper communication can be another bottleneck hindering a project. Team members may not be adequately trained to use a Project Management System. They are not able to express the challenges and problems they face within time while performing their activities. This can be a problem.
A project though undertaken by an organization works for the benefit of a sponsor in most of the cases. If the sponsor is not enthusiastic about the project or has lost interest in the project or has withdrawn from the project, then this may derail the project. It is of utmost importance to maintain good communication with the sponsor and to provide him with weekly and monthly reports about the project’s progress even if he does not ask for it.
Lack of proper budgeting and lack of clarity in defining and documenting goals, objectives and responsibilities can be another major problem. You do not know what you have to follow and stick to.
A Project Management System enables a project manager to maintain an easy and spontaneous communication amongst various team managers and makes it easy for him to identify and track problems and take corrective action accordingly. He’ll be able to organize and coordinate a project in a better and balanced way
Sharon Thomson is a Business manager of ProofHub,a SAAS based project management software that helps to manage, discuss and communicate with your team members and clients from anywhere and anytime. This online collaboration tool offers a centralized place providing features like to-do’s, milestones, timesheets, discussions, file sharing, online proofing, casper mode and inbuilt browser chat. ProofHub is the only project management software that provides In-built browser chat feature, Casper-Mode (Hidden Mode) and Proofing Tool.