10 Common Project Management Mistakes To Avoid For Project Success

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Project Management is all about maintaining the correct flow of the project, mitigating all the risks encountered. There are many aspects of project management to be taken care of. A successful project manager is the one who manages tasks, resources, budget, dependencies, and risks to successfully complete the project on time. The project manager should be well versed in the methodologies, business strategy, the objective of the project, and should have,

• Effective Communication Skill
• High-Vision
• Integrity and honesty
• Leadership
• Problem-solving skills
• Ability to motivate a team
• Task delegation
• Decision-making skills
• Negotiation skills
• Risk mitigation skill

Project Manager brings complete clarity on the scope of each function, the sequence of interdependency between functions, expected timeline for each function with a complete resource plan

According to the Pulse of the Profession 2018: Success in Disruptive Times,

The following are the reasons why the project fails:

Project management is quite challenging. The Project Manager must be always aware of the risks in the action taken, and hence should be careful to execute those actions with minimal risks or risks that can be mitigated and eliminated. The chances of taking the wrong step are quite high depending on the complexity of the project.

Here are the common mistakes of project management to avoid:

1. Lack of communication between stakeholders
2. Poor Resouce Management
3. Lack of knowledge on the project objective
4. Poor Prioritization
5. Lack of control on changes
6. Not following project management processes
7. Not using project management softwares and tools
8. Setting unrealistic goals
9. Micromanaging the team
10. Incorrect estimation of Budget and Time

1. Lack of communication between stakeholders

Lack of communication leads to insufficient knowledge of the requirements of the project. It affects the overall performance of the team. Effective communication is required to run the project activities successfully.

The required message to be conveyed should be clear and always have a record. Communication involves,

Encoding= Creating a message

Decoding= Interpreting and understanding the meaning of the message sent.

The primary rule of communication in project management is to inform the respective stakeholder about any change in the requirement.

Varying expectations can affect the overall project quality, cost, and schedule. Poor communication also affects team members.

The project schedule is disturbed when the required message is not reached on time. Poor communication between stakeholders can cause confusion among team members.

Almost 29% of the projects fail due to poor communication.

Project managers with effective communication skills convey the project goal, motivate the team and resolve the conflicts.

2. Poor Resource Management

The resources can be anything that is required to deliver the project on time. Resources can be people, equipment, skillset, space, tools, finances and time.

Poor project resource management can cause,

• Unsatisfactory deliverables
• Unexpected setbacks
• Increase in re-work
• Increase in cost

Identifying the wrong resources in terms of their skill set can result in poor quality, rework, and increase the overall cost of the project.

Effective resource management is carried out using the following technique:

Resource Allocation: Depending on their availability and skills, the resources are allocated to perform the project activities.

Resource Scheduling: The estimation of the resource required to complete the project activities within the specified timeframe.

Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing: Resource leveling and resource smoothing take care of limited resources. It generally avoids over-allocation and under-allocation.

Resource Forecasting: The process of predicting future resource requirements ahead of time is resource forecasting.

3. Lack of knowledge on the project objective or goal

Unclear project objectives can cause project failure. The project objective and goal should be defined at the initiation stage to avoid miscommunication and wrong understanding of the project.

In order to define the project objective clearly,  DUMB method is used

Doable

Understandable

Manageable

Beneficial

By using a DUMB method, the project manager can set clear goals and define the project objective.

4. Poor Prioritization

Aligning the project activities and resources according to the project strategy is called project prioritization. Poor prioritization of the project activities can lead to,

• Project failure
• Delay in closing the project
• Unsatisfactory customer response
• Missed business goals

Effective project prioritization focuses on whole project delivery and can be carried out by using the following processes:

Value definition: The strategic value of the organization is defined by addressing the strategic goals to all the key stakeholders.

Weight your criteria: The process of turning all the business values and strategies to weighted criteria. All business goals are not equally important. The value of each business goal is measured.

Evaluate and score your project: The list of all the project activities are put together and evaluated according to weighted criteria.

Make the final prioritized list: According to the score of each project, the list is prepared.

5. Lack of Control on changes

Change control is a critical aspect of project management. Changes can occur anytime throughout the project life cycle. Changes become inevitable despite capturing everything in the scope but the changes must be controlled to avoid scope creep. Changes in the scope of the project can lead to project failure. Poor change management will result in

• The project might be put on hold
• Project delays
• Rework
• The project might fail to deliver
• Impact on customers
• Decline in morale
• Increase in expenses

The ADKAR model is used for effective change control.

Awareness: spreading awareness of change

Desire: Building desire to accept the change and support it

Knowledge: Training team members to gain complete knowledge of the change to be implemented.

Ability: Check the ability through evaluations and feedbacks

Reinforcement: Monitor the employees implementing the changes.

6. Not following project management processes

Poor project management causes project failure. The set of guidelines are to be followed. Project management is a complex process. Creating the work schedule in the initiation stage and assigning the tasks according to the schedule and monitoring will lead to successful projects. Processes are there to help the project run smoothly. Skipping the process can be the reason for rework.

7. Not using project management softwares and tools

In this digitalized era, not utilizing the softwares and tools is the common mistake in project management. There are many tools and softwares which help project managers to accelerate the project with minimum time. It helps in planning and executing and monitoring the project. Working manually and doing everything on your own takes a lot of time and chances of making mistakes are more. There are many project management tools available to fulfill the fundamental requirement. There are project management tools for the following functions:

Planning and Scheduling: The tools are available to plan tasks, subtasks, folders, templates, and workflows.

Tools for planning: Teamweek, 10,000 Ft plans

Collaboration: there are many other tools available other than emails.

Documentation: File management tools are available to manage the documents and records.

Evaluation: Tracking and evaluating is much simpler with tools.

8. Setting unrealistic goals

Setting unrealistic goals will increase work pressure in the team members. The unrealistic deadlines lead to poor quality of deliverables. Due to work pressure, the employee will target to finish the goal rather than producing a quality result.

The deadline for the project should be decided considering all the aspects such as

budget, time, resources availability, customers, stakeholders, suppliers.

9. Micromanaging the team

Micromanaging is one of the most critical factors to arise in conflicts. In simple terms, micromanaging is trying to control and monitor everything in the team. Micromanaging holds good in smaller teams as it makes complex operations more reliable. In larger organizations, the manager might lose track of the bigger assignment. Even though it gives a clear picture of the operations involved, over-controlling might affect the productivity of the team members.

The Objective and Key Results (OKR) is a technique used to micromanage without over-controlling. It provides all the useful elements to manage a team.

• OKRs allow the team to focus on their objective which is set every quarter.
• The objectives should be actionable and have a deadline.
• 4 measurable results are defined for each objective.
• The result should be measurable and lead to progress.
• The result should be quite difficult but achievable.

10. Incorrect estimation of Budget and Time

Lack of knowledge on the project at the initiation stage results in uncertainty in the estimates. Insufficient knowledge of the requirements and dependencies causes the wrong estimation of budget and time.

Incorrect estimates are not the direct cause of project failure. Poor estimation practices and Upfront planning are the main causes of incorrect estimation.

All the projects are different in terms of requirements, technology, business context, and constraints.

In order to minimize the errors in estimation and issue faced during execution,

• Ranged estimates are provided using a cone of uncertainty.
• Re-plan and re-estimates are done while tracking the progress of the project.

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