I found this article very interesting and informative. It talks about the five major road blocks to successful project management and provides solution. In my entire working career, I have noticed that it is really hard for a project manager to perform well consistently especially when they are working with terrible project management tools. As mentioned in the article, I also think the major problem is that there are so many project management tools and apps available that are more complex and time-consuming than the project itself. These tools are usually designed in such a way that it can be used for any projects and this make is hard to customize them as per our need. The following are the top challenges faced by the project managers with the solutions discussed in the article.
- Too much time is spent for searching project assets and documents: One of the major challenges faced by the project managers is that they spent too much of time in searching emails, reports, deliverables, proposals, lists etc. even when all the information is in the same place. I have seen in many instances that as the projects advances further massive information is collected and even with all the information located at one place it takes so much time to locate the specific file. This can take up major time from the project. Thus, as mentioned in the article, it is important to use the app that allows you to do powerful searches, which in return helps you to save time that would have been otherwise spent for searching information from the massive data collected throughout the project.
- Team is all over the place: The article states that around 30% to 45% of the employees work remotely and it gets really hard keep track of things especially when team members are working on the same tasks. The breakdown in the communication can cause wastage of time and unnecessary stress. I think the major problem here is many project management applications do not have collaborative features and it gets harder to keep track if so many people are working on the same thing. I like the article’s solution of using a web-based tool with a mobile access and strong collaborative features. This way each team member stays in loop and is notified immediately when someone makes post, comment or updates the document.
- Priorities are shifting: As we all know, there can be many changes in the project as it progresses. Some of the common changes are project goals, budget, timeline, changes in the scope and reallocation of resources. The solution to this is to make sure that everyone has a strong visual representation of the most up-to-date project progress and timeliness.
- Individual goals are not clear: With so many members in a team it is always hard to keep track of who is doing what. So it is important to make use of individual to-do lists and work flows so that there is no task redundancy. We used the same approach while working on the project management class. Each team member had their own to-do list, which helped us to stay focused on the task and reduce redundancy.
- Using wrong tools: As mentioned in the article, I have also noticed that many project managers try to use several different applications to complete tasks bit by bit. This can cause a serious waste of time as it takes more time to update the team member through separate application. So the solution to this is to use one platform that allows you to build your own process. There are some applications that have everything in one application such as smart searches, mobile access, collaborative features, and individual to-do lists. These kinds of platforms can definitely help project manager to be more efficient and productive.
Are there any other major road blocks to successful project management that you want to share and are not mentioned in this article?