Project management issues and their solution
- 1. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 1 Project Management Issues and Their Solution Identifying project management issues is one thing, and solving them successfully is another. Before we even get to the issues, it is important to have the right checks and balances in place for proper identification, categorization, and prioritization of the issues. Running a project needs significant dexterity in managing and controlling its various moving parts. The project goal, scope, stakeholder expectations, customers, communication, the project team, resources, budget, deadlines all need to be managed simultaneously and should work together. It’s obvious that no project manager would like to spend time struggling with issues and rather get them solved on priority. “No matter how good the team or how efficient the methodology, if we're not solving the right problem, the project fails” -Woody Williams
- 2. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 2 Conflicts and issues are second nature to projects. Something or the other needs fixing all the time. Hence having a granular view of all project activities is crucial to its success. The more you prepare yourself for project management in advance, the easier it’ll be for you to overcome them and put your project back on track. Let’s have a look at 2 of the most common project management issues and the ways to tackle them effortlessly. Scope Creep: Why does it happen? No matter how involved the project manager and other stakeholders are in the initial stages of a project, eventually most projects find gaps and lapses in the scope of work. It is a known fact that one cannot be cautious enough and all possible requirements cannot be gauged in advance. There will always be room for scope changes. Ambiguity leads to a lot of wasteful efforts and customer dissatisfaction. Almost all projects do have quite a few uncertainties when it comes to the project scope. It may be due to: ● The nature of the initiative that is totally new for the client ● The client may not have the required expertise in-house to frame the requirements ● Market conditions and business scenarios also add to the complexity ● Organization priorities ● Change of leadership ● Alignment with organization vision and mission Hence, it becomes even more challenging for the project managers to prevent scope creep and protect the team from the continuous change of requirements or shifting of project goals.
- 3. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 3 How to solve it? But having said that, all measures must be taken to arrive at an understanding w.r.t the project deliverables. There must be a proper record of all major deliverables, the desired quality, and timelines along with all associated tasks that are agreed and signed-off by the stakeholders. A smart way of doing it would be to leave the room or some buffer to accommodate changes at later stages of the project. Have well-defined criteria and guiding principles for managing scope changes. Have the process reviewed and signed-off by internal stakeholders and the client. Make sure that the client is aware of ● how to request for scope changes ● what would be the parameters to accommodate the scope ● what criteria would be applied in terms of resources, schedule, and cost Accordingly, once a request is received, do communicate about the possible impact of the new changes on the existing schedule and deliverables. Not all requests are urgent or mandatory. Do your homework and probe further to check how the new changes will actually benefit the customer’s end goal and are they really necessary at all.
- 4. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 4 Lack of Resources: Why does it happen? Resource Planning is an uphill task. As a project manager, do spend enough efforts to anticipate all possible things that may go wrong. ● Holidays, vacations and employee time-offs ● Conflicting projects within the organization ● Skill and technology expertise based on the project ● Training needs, up skilling ● Availability of resources ● New hires and on boarding ● Attrition ● Onsite/offsite deputation and concerns ● Associated costs and budget One of the key ingredients of your resource plan must be the resource skill matrix. Do a thorough review of the project requirements, the technology, and skills that will be required, what is readily available within the team, how much needs to be outsourced and if there is a known skill gap already. Once you have all the answers and information you need, get going on building your resource plan. How to solve it? Resource Availability, Resource Allocation, and Resource Utilization all go hand in hand! They are all joint at the hip. You skew one of them and your resource plan goes for a toss. Once you have arrived at the right number of resources and hours required, diligently work on your resource allocation from the resource pool.
- 5. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 5 Having the right rapport and influence internally with the resource managers would keep you in good stead when the time comes. Make sure that the right department heads, team leads and resource managers are notified well in advance of the upcoming resource requirements. If you have identified, the need for new hiring or outsourcing then the HR teams must also be well informed. You should have a robust project execution plan in place by the time you have all the resources you need to kick start the project. To start with, host a project kick-off meeting with the team. Invite questions and share their roles and responsibilities in detail and the project goal. Has RACI Matrix drawn and share with the entire project team? Next up, is sharing the work breakdown structure and task assignments. Provide the team with absolute clarity on the outputs and what is expected of them along with well-defined deadlines. Once you progress with project execution strive to maintain optimum resource utilization. Proper resource utilization involves balancing the needs and priorities and identifying the most important task to increase the effective use of limited resources. Resource Utilization is a key metric that must be monitored regularly. Your project’s delivery and profitability depend on it. How do you bring all of it together? Having one central project management tool goes a long way in keeping your projects and teams on track. Top project management tools like Orangescrum provide clear visibility of assignments and utilization of resources across business projects in real-time.
- 6. © 2011-2019 Orangescrum Research Lab, San Jose, California 6 It provides a single view of the team’s engagement which leads to better collaboration and cooperation. The resource availability feature helps allocate tasks efficiently to avoid overloading of resources. You can easily track the overloaded resources and replan task assignment for faster delivery and optimal workloads. Orangescrum helps project team’s work together using the agile and waterfall methodologies. It offers productivity features like time tracking, task management, resource allocation, Gantt chart, and many others that make project management easier and flawless. Let’s have a quick overview of the features of Orangescrum: Task Management: You can view all your tasks, ideas, issues, and feedback in one place. You can track the smallest of tasks with subtasks. You can easily get a view of the group of your tasks like which are new, in progress, resolved, and closed (done). Time Tracking: Now track the total time spent on each task and evaluate your team’s performance with daily and weekly timesheets. With the time log feature, you can mark your billable and non-billable hour(s) in a single click. Now generate accurate invoices for your customers. Gantt chart: Now visualize task progress in a single timeline view and motivate your team with the clarity of project progress. With the use of this feature, it is easy to plan your projects, create tasks, and the task dependencies. Kanban View: Track status of all your tasks in every stage from new to complete and keep everyone on the same page with the Kanban board. Agile Project Management: Now plan, track, and release projects with agility with this outstanding feature. Invoice: With this amazing feature, make your billing and invoicing easier than ever. It fulfills all your daily invoicing needs with accuracy and flexibility. Explore all the features with a free sign up here. Do you still have other problems with your project management? Share your issues. The expert consultants of OrangeScrum would love to help you out :)