Often, it is said to learn from the mistakes rather than repeating them. For the project manager, it is very much vital to learn the things in a quick-witted way. Even though while handling a big and complex project, the experienced and good project managers also commit mistakes. It results in crossing the estimated budget, longer time for project completion and poor project management planning. In this blog, we are going to share some common project management mistakes that can be easily avoided by keeping some precautions.
Here, we are sharing some of the common mistakes that business executives and managers have shared with us. All these mistakes are frequently made by project managers, but they should be highly avoided.
1. Lacking objective
The project usually fails because of lack of skills, not proper planning and cleared goals. For making the project turned into a success, long-term planning with a broad-minded ability is needed. Always think like of an entrepreneur before starting the project. For example, you can ask does the project is being completed enough to showcase it to clients? Will it prove beneficial to the client requirements? What extra functionality features can be added to make it look more worthwhile. If you are able to give the answers to all of these questions, then definitely you have a good project management planning. If the answer to any one of these questions is no, then it can be considered that there are too many loopholes which are yet to be tracked.
2. Setting unrealistic deadlines
By creating deadlines that are not achievable will put the employees in excessive pressure and creates stress for completing the work before deadline. It might lead to resignation letters of employees or staff members would take a wrong path to achieve unrealistic goals. In both the cases, the loss is of employer only. Thus, it is highly important to consider employees as team-members and ask them how much time did they will require to complete the project. After taking confirmation from team-members, make it sure the work in the right direction and have sufficient resources to complete the project with perfection.
3. Inexperience project manager
The project manager has multiple number of work to deal with. Right from developing plans, managing issues, tracking project status and dealing with stakeholders. A project manager responsibilities is to balance all these things. Therefore, a dynamic personality manager is needed that has experience in executing distinct projects. By giving the employees freedom for handling projects, they will be able to manage multiple things at the same time. Therefore, systematized project time management planning should be done by project manager.
4. Way of communication
Communication is one of the most essential things for running a project and making it progress towards completion. In all the projects there is a requirement for doing discussions, taking decisions, alterations and team structuring. By continuously updating the development and progress on project, all the team members will be able to work in full coordination and in an organized way.
5. Not anticipating risks and scopes creep in advance
Changes in the scope of project is very common. But if it is affecting the deadlines and budget then things must be seriously considered. All the blocked roads while heading towards the project must be identified in the starting phase of planning. With a proper planning for resolving the issues, all the things can be promptly processed up.
6. Doing everything yourself
It is very much necessary to distribute the work among team-members equally. Thinking like you alone can handle everything will put you in difficulty. By considering the ideas, suggestions and advice from colleagues, the work can be done with perfection and speedily. On another side, if you don’t like to involve the team-members in any project discussion, then it will be burdensome to make it done all alone.
7. Poor project initiation
Starting the project with the right resources, assets and planning is the most important footstep towards the project. In the very first meeting all the team person job roles, key milestones to achieve and deadlines must be clearly analyzed and discussed. The aim of doing the kickoff meeting should be to make sure that all the aspects regarding the project should be clear and understandable.
Mostly, all the project managers have a checklist of risks undertaken while doing any specified project. By doing proper project planning & management, the highly repeated project management issues can be resolved.
