What is Project management?
Project management breakers can jeopardize your investment plan and lead to huge losses. Project management is the sum of all actions and processes used by managers in leading teams towards the successful delivery of a project. This is perhaps one of the most important activities in any project. Almost every person in the world has participated in a project at some point in their life.
Small projects can be executed through a small team and a relatively low budget. Large projects have complexities that require sophisticated systems that can only be delivered through project management companies such as Bechtel and Anser Advisor. These companies are created to ensure your project is completed on time and within budget. You can read about ways of raising funds for your project.
Project management breakers are any activities or processes that work against the seamless delivery of any project.
We discuss the top ten project management breakers that you must avoid.
1)Poor communication –
This is one of the biggest project management breakers. If your team isn’t communicating well together, then nothing will get done properly. And if you’re working with a client, then not being open and sharing information might result in disagreements that could have been avoided. Communication in the project should be seamless. Whether the information is about something to be proud of or a mistake. You should always be open and transparent about what’s happening.
2) Underestimating the project
-Sometimes people underestimate how long a task will take, meaning they end up working weekends or late into the evening. If you set yourself an unrealistic deadline to complete your work, then it’ll all go wrong in the end. You can avoid this by taking your time to give realistic estimates on each part of the project. This way, you won’t feel like you’re rushed when it comes down to crunch time. And if something goes wrong or takes longer than expected, then you will have taken care of it at the planning stage. Underestimation can also relate to costs in a project.
3) General laziness –
It may seem obvious, but lazy developers are some worst! If you’re not willing to put the hours in, then you’re doing more harm than good. Effective project management requires avoiding this by setting yourself (and your team) some project goals and reviewing them regularly. This shows that you care about what you do and will give better results as a result. If the leader is lazy, what do expect from the followers? Laziness is a project management breaker that no one should entertain.
3) Lack of planning –
Lack of planning is another project management breaker to avoid. It may sound obvious, but if you don’t plan out your work before starting anything new, then it won’t be as successful as possible. You should plan for everything, including unlikely events. Plan for resources, leadership team, workers, consultants, suppliers name it! What happens if you were to become suddenly ill and unable to work? How would the team react?
4) Poor leadership –
Project management requires effective leadership. If you don’t have anyone willing to take on the role of a leader, then it will be hard for everyone else to know what’s going on. No one will be in charge, meaning that if something doesn’t get done, then no one is responsible! You can avoid this by holding regular meetings with your team and checking in regularly. This way, everyone knows their roles and responsibilities and has someone to answer to should they fail. This is probably the most critical project management breakers you should avoid.
5) Lack of motivation –
You should give your team a reason to come to work every day. How do you expect results from disgruntled people? People get motivation from the way you treat them. Pay them a fair rate and on a timely basis. Take time to resolve their conflicts fairly. Lead by example and do not have double standards. This is a critical project management breaker you should work around.
6) Being too controlling (or not controlling at all!) –
Sometimes letting people get on with their jobs without being micromanaged can lead to better results. If your workers feel too controlled, then they might ignore you, taking the ‘I don’t need to listen to you’ approach. On the other hand, if there are no controls in place then people will start doing their own thing, which could cause more problems than good. You should take a balanced view and know when to hold back or pull people upon their work. Project managers need to balance this control with outcomes.
7) Having unrealistic project management expectations –
It’s okay to have high aspirations and good targets. But if you set them too high, then your team could become demotivated and unable to complete the tasks at hand. You should always set your expectations realistically. If you expect a project to be finished in two days, then it’s going to look unrealistic and cause disappointment to promise one-day delivery. This will result in the customer thinking that they’ve been scammed or that you’re not good at what you do. You can avoid this by setting yourself realistic targets and keeping them up to date with any changes.
When you over-deliver, always attribute to the provision of an incident that was provided for but did not occur. Like, we didn’t expect the entire team to be available, but luckily they were all available for your project. Managing expectations is the best way to work around project management breakers.
8) Project managers working in silos –
This is when people work in isolation without communicating with each other. Like what happens when one department only talks to their own team and fails to keep the rest of the business up-to-date with everything. You can avoid this project management breaker by keeping others informed of your progress regularly via meetings or reports, which should be distributed regularly throughout the company. Joint meetings where all departments give an update and challenges they are facing helps other teams understand the whole project and how each of their inputs fits into other people’s outputs.
9). Not recognizing when people are stressed or overworked. –
Sometimes you may not realize when your workers are getting stressed or overworked. Project management required that you should take note of this and act upon it. As much as possible, people shouldn’t be carrying out any extra tasks outside their usual duties unless they’re willing to take on the stress and pressure that comes with it. One of the most ignored roles during a projects’ management is the human resource element. Supervisors should be well-trained and made accountable for workers’ welfare and well-being.
10) Taking things personally
It can be easy to take things personally when you’ve been working your socks off and your team still isn’t delivering. You should learn to let things sometimes go or realize that maybe the problem isn’t with you, but rather how you’re delegating tasks to other people. Perhaps they’re missing a vital piece of information? Or possibly the issue is that the workers aren’t trained properly in what’s required from them?
Project management requires the efficient use of all resources available to deliver the project to the client on time and cost-effectively. It does not matter if it is that small project of repairing your garage, these project failures will need your attention.
We hope you will avoid these project breakers in 2022. Please share this information with friends and family if you like this article.
