9 project management challenges and their solutions that every project manager must know
- 09 June 2022
- 12:18
9 Project Management Challenges and their Solutions
Time.
Budget.
Resources.
Scope.
These are the key elements for project management. A project manager needs to manage these well to ensure project success.
For an IT project, the challenges increase because of the involvement of an additional element – technology. An IT project manager has to manage these elements and the interrelationships between them to improve the outcomes.
The industry provides many tools, techniques, methodologies, and best practices to manage IT projects. But, when the problems come, identifying the source of the issue and the right solution for it is critical. This is where the project manager can use his/her expertise and experience to remove the barriers.
Whether it is the designing phase, development, testing, or installation, barriers may arise any time. So, IT project managers must be aware of the approaching challenges for their projects and prepare themselves to address those. They need to stay ahead of challenges and make their elements strong enough to ensure project success.
In this article, we will discuss the most common challenges found in IT projects. We will also look at the solutions to ensure the success of your project.
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Common challenges for IT projects
No Clear Objective
If you don’t know what to achieve, how will you move ahead? Without goals, objectives, and expectations defined, you will be directionless. That is why clear objectives are necessary to give one direction to the project.
The solution is to prepare a document mentioning the objectives and ways to achieve them. You must develop a full-proof plan including project objectives, scope, list of requirements, the process to achieve the outcomes, and performance measures.
The plan must include details on how project objectives tie up to the strategic goals of the business. Developing a business case would help develop the understanding better. With the business case, project managers and senior management can decide whether to go ahead with the project or not.
It must also include the timelines, budgeting, and allocation of resources. Also, everything must be in writing to refer to when needed. You must share the document with team members that will be working on the project.
Vague requirements
The biggest thing that can go wrong with IT projects is unclear requirements. If you do not define the requirements well, the project team will not know what to achieve. At the end of the project, there will be some outcomes; but either they will not match with requirements or they will fall short of requirements.
You can solve this problem by framing clear, complete, and concise requirements. For this, you must pay full attention to the requirements gathering process that requires meeting with stakeholders. You must discuss with all possible stakeholders of the project and know their expectations from the solution.
Use different methods of requirements elicitation and document them in an organized way. Use visuals and models to represent requirements in a better way for improved understanding. Once you prepare the document, get feedback from every stakeholder to finalize the requirements.
You must ensure that requirements are clear, complete, and measurable. You must not miss any requirement, as that will lead to an incomplete solution in the end. Also, you must not add unnecessary requirements, as that will lead to delays or costs overshoot.
Over or under budgeting
Over or under budgeting can both lead to problems in project management. If you do the budgeting wrong, execution becomes difficult. If it is less, you are not able to take the project ahead; if it is more, you are wasting money on unnecessary expenses.
The best solution for this is to adopt a proper budgeting tool. This tool will help you make correct assumptions and add their costs to the budget. You must have a well-defined budgeting procedure to avoid missing any key factors that contribute to project costs.
You can categorize your project into small milestones and estimate costs for each milestone. Historical budgeting exercises from past projects will enable you to do it correctly. Also, keep provisions for re-baselining the budget when changes occur.
Unrealistic deadlines
While planning the project, an important consideration is when the project will end. You cannot go wrong with this. When you are too optimistic, or unable to estimate, or the management pressures you to finish it fast, you set unrealistic deadlines.
If you do not deliver on time, either your payment is affected or your impression goes down. There might be other projects depending on your IT project completion; they will also be delayed.
So, the project manager must make it a practice to be realistic when setting deadlines. Identify the skills of your team members and their efficiency in completing tasks. Prioritize the tasks diligently and allocate resources based on skills; then, you will be able to complete the project on time.
Also, ask your team members the time they will take to complete each task. They know it better. Account for the time for quality checks, improvements, and approvals.
Make sure to keep some extra time for uncertain events or changes in requirements. And, keep a deadline for each task and monitor the project execution closely to avoid delays.
Lack of necessary skills
Allocating project tasks without knowing the skill set of your employees is a big mistake. It will lead to your project failure or the quality of outcomes will suffer. So, you need to ensure that you allocate tasks to the right people to generate quality outcomes.
Engage people based on their knowledge of the project, experience in similar roles, and skills. Assess the project requirements and analyze the competencies and capabilities required. Now, assess your existing resources to check whether the skill set is available internally or not. Make a ‘make or buy’ decision.
If yes, include these people in the project and assign them relevant tasks. If not, hire the right people with relevant competencies and allocate them matching tasks. Monitor their performance during the project to make sure they are achieving what is expected of them.
A strategy to ensure they perform well is to make them accountable. While assigning them roles and responsibilities, communicate the same to stakeholders and other team members. By conducting regular checks and associating project performance with appraisal, you can ensure accountability.
Poor communication or miscommunication
Communication is important to help teams collaborate well. For IT projects, a collaboration between IT teams and business functions is a key requirement. Such collaboration helps to understand the implication of technology on business and decisions.
Without frequent and smooth communication, confusions happen. This leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. And in the midst of these, it is difficult to collaborate.
Also, the communication of IT teams with vendors and suppliers is critical for project management. This helps you to keep every stakeholder on the same page and deal with different processes. Constant communication helps you avoid disputes despite the differences and to work towards a common goal.
As a solution to this problem, you can define the communication and reporting plan for all. You must define the points of action, which must be communicated with others. As a project manager, you must take the responsibility to share updates and notifications with relevant stakeholders frequently.
You can prepare a communication plan mentioning all possible methods of communication and the person responsible for it. Or, you can have a software tool that will serve as the hub for all updates, discussions, and any correspondence.
Changes and adjustments
Changes, when projects are in the execution stage are a big distraction. There might be changes in scope, requirements, timelines, budget, or priorities. Such changes might lead to modifications in the project plan and even deliverables. This disturbs the entire project and may lead to other problems.
As a project manager, you must factor in potential adjustments to the project in the project plan. You must keep aside some time and budget to manage these changes. You also need to manage your stakeholders and project teams who might not be so acceptable to these adjustments.
While gathering requirements from stakeholders, make this point clear to them. Tell them how last-minute changes will affect all aspects of the project. Also, when new changes are suggested, tell them the impact these changes will have on the project.
Also, since we all know technology is an evolving field, you must be prepared for changes and adapt to them fast. When these changes come, assess them and try to understand the impact on the project. Discuss it with relevant people, redefine the priorities, and communicate the new timelines to the client and stakeholders.
Changes and adjustments
Changes, when projects are in the execution stage are a big distraction. There might be changes in scope, requirements, timelines, budget, or priorities. Such changes might lead to modifications in the project plan and even deliverables. This disturbs the entire project and may lead to other problems.
As a project manager, you must factor in potential adjustments to the project in the project plan. You must keep aside some time and budget to manage these changes. You also need to manage your stakeholders and project teams who might not be so acceptable to these adjustments.
While gathering requirements from stakeholders, make this point clear to them. Tell them how last-minute changes will affect all aspects of the project. Also, when new changes are suggested, tell them the impact these changes will have on the project.
Also, since we all know technology is an evolving field, you must be prepared for changes and adapt to them fast. When these changes come, assess them and try to understand the impact on the project. Discuss it with relevant people, redefine the priorities, and communicate the new timelines to the client and stakeholders.
Team members in remote locations
One of the most common problems of IT projects is having team members in different geographies. This affects the work because people work in different time zones. Also, when the design and development teams are in different locations, teamwork becomes an issue.
Such projects require another level of collaboration to keep everyone aligned at the same time. You need to manage the matching of time, availability of resources, and supervision over required collaboration. It is best to keep a center point – a person who manages all the sharing of information between team members and keeps everyone updated about the project status.
Poor risk management
There can be many types of risks to a project. Operational risks, strategic risks, financial risks, or risks of uncertainty can affect the project lifecycle at any time. In complex IT projects which continue for a longer duration, there is a risk of new technology taking over the existing technology.
Any of these risks may harm your project results. There can be many other variables that go wrong and affect project execution. It is a challenge for which the project team must be ready.
So, you must include risk management in your project planning. Create all possible ‘what if’ scenarios and develop contingency plans for each. You must know all possible risks and ways to avoid or mitigate them.
You must have a Plan B ready in case a particular risk affects the project badly. Timely identification of risks also helps you to mitigate them on time and hence, avoid negative impact on the project. So, develop and adopt the right risk management strategies to control your project execution.
Conclusion
Project managers know the drill of completing a project successfully. They have to manage a lot of things. Multiple tasks. Stakeholder expectations. Uncertain situations. Changes in requirements. Many people with different working styles and skillsets. All of these make project management a daunting task.
But that does not deter them from taking up projects. Instead of getting scared, they prepare for the worst but with the hope for the best. So, for this preparation, you can look at the common challenges that IT project managers face and solutions for them.
In addition, project managers need to have the patience to deal with different types of people. They must be ready to persevere and focus on bringing all the elements together to make the project a success. They must be equipped to face challenges and resolve them with their diligence and experience.
How can we help you?
You can also contact Technovisors for any help in the same. We are experts in handling project management for you and deal with every challenge that we come across. We have the capability of helping you with project planning efficiently so that you do not have to face any such challenges.
Technovisors is a prominent IT consultant in Ahmedabad, India. We have been handling IT projects for many clients across the globe. Our expertise lies in focusing on your key requirements and bringing in the relevant changes for your operational transformation.
FAQs On Project Management Challenges and their Solutions
Yes. When you define goals, you need to define the measures for checking goals’ achievement. This is where defining the success criteria is essential. Once you achieve the outcomes, you can measure them against the performance measures. Based on this, you know whether your project is a success or a failure.
Yes, many project management software is available in the market. With the software, you can prepare a project plan including all elements. It allows you to execute the project as planned. It also gives you clear visibility into what is going on in the project at any given point in time.
But, you should be cautious while buying project management software. Understand what features you want, compare the available software in the market, and then select one. You must check features of collaboration, planning, sharing feedback, organized documentation, and resource management.
About the Author
Pathik Shah
(CISA, FCA, CS, DISA (ICAI), FAFP (ICAI))
Pathik is a multi-disciplinary professional with more than 22 years of experience in compliance, risk management, accounting, system audits, IT consultancy, and digital marketing. He has extensive knowledge of Anti-Money Laundering rules and regulations, and he helps companies comply with legal requirements. Pathik also helps companies generate value from their IT investments.
