What Are The Common Project Management Mistakes You Need to Avoid?

In project management it can be quite easy to make mistakes. There are a lot of moving parts in terms of tasks and individuals to keep track of and, if you’re in IT, you’ll frequently find that there are a range of technologies that you could be dealing with.

While no two ventures are precisely the same, the aspects that are faced and the impact that these issues have on the project are often quite similar. And even senior project managers may make mistakes when tangled up in a large and complex project, or if they are faced with multiple change requests.

Assigning The Wrong Person To Oversee The Project

A business which employs a project manager who doesn’t have the experience are able to expect the possibility of failure for the project. Although a novice project manager can learn the ropes while on the job, the process of learning the tricks could mean failure. It is best always to hire the most qualified person in order to manage a project.

Doing Everything Yourself (In Addition To Considering Issues And Opportunities)

Project managers need to be wide open to suggestions from their project team. It’s therefore vital for communication lines to be open for members to speak to the project manager as this can assist with the workload of both parties.

A project manager will not be in possession of all the right answers and if a project team finds that their recommendations are not wanted or ignored, this may discourage the sharing of ideas which could have added to the project in a positive way. Nor will they have the bandwidth, and possibly even the right skills, to do everything which is needed in order to run a project effectively.

Hence, in terms of ‘the doing’, learning how to delegate to the correct resource is vital in a project management role to make sure that resource is used effectively and without waste.

Failure To Communicate Properly

Among the project management pitfalls which project managers encounter is the inability to communicate to their members. When misunderstanding happens, everybody points fingers and blame each other.

Failing To Manage Project Scope

A change in project scope can be a common cause of failure. Although it could also be naïve to think that there will be no changes when the project scope has been agreed to during the planning stage. It’s thus vital that there’s a procedure in place in order to handle requests to alter the project scope – with any change request reviewed as well as assessed in order to manage the impact of the change on the budget and schedule. By managing change requests with such a procedure, it helps to avoid scope creep where uncontrolled changes in a project scope occur.

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