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Project managers pitfalls

Projects are made up of teams responsible for performing a number of tasks towards its completion. The teams are usually under the lead of a skilled project manager who is responsible for overseeing the successful completion of the whole project. In many work/organizational settings, managers will encounter a number of pitfalls. In project management, pitfalls are factors or a number of things which could negatively affect the successful completion of your project.

Some Points Project Managers Have to Keep in Mind

Here is a list of four project management pitfalls that a project manager should strive to improve or overcome.
  • Poor Communication – Communication is the key driver of most events that take place in the world. A constant talk with each other when working on a task is very necessary and the manager needs to make sure that he receives continuous feedback and updates from colleagues. He/she must avoid presenting himself as a boss with a tough management style. Email is not the advised solution to the communication problem. Instead schedule regular check-ins with team members, and/or consider using a project management tool that allow team members to update status in real time, post comments and questions and track their time.
  • Inadequate resources – lack of resources should not trickle down to the team members by letting them do overtime as this has been proven to have negative effect to the quality of the project deliverables. In fact, consider allowing vacation and other free time away from office, concurrent project demands and schedule meetings, track time and monitor responsibilities that could affect availability to do project work.
  • Poor project planning – failure of a project is usually determined at its beginning especially when you spend too little time to outline the scope and get all the stakeholders to agree on a common vision. Some warning signs for improper project planning include missed milestones, inadequate resources for project completion, continuous change request along the way, and approval difficulties from stakeholders. To solve this, you must ensure that you map out the full life-cycle of a project before it’s initiated or immediately when you realize that the project is suffering.
  • Not dividing the project tasks into smaller ones – when people handle huge tasks at once, it has a negative psychological effect and this could lead to project failure. The solution to this is to divide huge tasks into smaller ones that could be completed within short-time limits.

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