The following list has detailed some of the most common project management mistakes that people tend to make when conducting projects. We were hoping this list would help identify some of the common areas where bugs and errors normally occur. All of these mistakes can surely be avoided if each of us pays more attention to the important details. Avoiding these common mistakes inevitably increases the success rate of a project.
1. Lack of resources with the right skills to help with the project:
Impact: Misallocation of resources is one of the most critical mistakes made in project management. Getting the right people with the right skills in the right place (job / task) at the right time is essential and necessary. In times of resource constraints, management will try to entice anyone to run and manage any ad hoc project, as long as they have the bandwidth at the time.
– Proposal: Management should back this up by providing the necessary support, such as: hiring consultants, external vendors, hiring contractors, adequate and legitimate resources and sending potential people for useful and effective trainings. People managers and organizations will need to sync people and projects to the best of their ability.
2: Lack of an experienced project manager with the necessary skills for project management
Impact: Projects can easily get out of control without having a good project manager closely monitoring the progress of the project.
– Proposal: An experienced project manager and an accredited program management certificate will definitely add value to drive the success of the project. From experience and exposure, an experienced project leader can easily identify some of the potential areas where gaps generally arise. A good project manager excels at managing people and communicates well with different levels of people throughout the organization.
3. Lack of traceability on the frequent changes made in the project.
Impact: Budget, resources, and schedule will suffer because of this.
Proposal: No scope changes can be added after the cutoff date. After the deadline, any urgent changes / requirements will need to go through the proper process to obtain all necessary approvals before they are reviewed. Only rush request backups with good justifications will be considered. The change request committee will review only prioritized change requests.
4. Problems are ignored
Impact: Problem areas that were ignored or left out won’t go away overnight. Any trivial problem can turn into a serious problem if it is not solved as soon as possible.
Proposal: Problems are inevitable in any project. The best thing to do is run as many tests as possible to stimulate and validate before the actual implementation arrives.
5. There is no proper planning
Impact: planning is essential. The scope and objectives of the project should be clearly defined during the planning phase. Without a proper plan (which both parties have agreed to, such as the project manager and stakeholders), no project can move forward as there is no synergy between team members and there is no firm strategy that the team can firmly hold onto for.
Proposal: One way to develop more potential managers is to equip them with the necessary knowledge by enrolling them in project management courses and providing them with essential knowledge. They will take advantage of these programs how effective and powerful “planning” is and how it should be carried out.
6. They don’t see dependencies between projects.
Impact: 99% of an organization’s projects are interdependent on each other. Project managers should keep this in mind whenever they request new requirements or changes, as these may affect others as well.
Proposal: Project managers must have a high-level comprehensive view of what is happening in the organization. Apart from that, a constant engagement with stakeholders, key business teams will add value in the comprehensive planning of the organization’s projects.
7. Communication problems.
Impact: communication is the key to any project. Good communication is essential for any project, large or small. Everyone has a responsibility to ensure that the messages they communicated are clear and correct among the project teams.
Proposal: a project manager must have great communication skills with the right attitude. However, it is almost impossible to avoid communication problems in a project team, especially in a large project with many participants. Therefore, it is important to create an easy and open atmosphere between team members and the project leader so that communication is two-way.
8. Some key dependencies have been overlooked,
Impact: Key dependencies with their impacts could be:
– Resource Commitment: As testing and development resources will be very limited if proper planning has not been done before projects.
– Preparing the test environment: Many times, people realized that they do not have a test environment or that the test environment is not ready a week or two before the test starts. This will cause terrible problems throughout the project milestone.
