Successfully completed projects can have a great impact on the whole company. But the coin has two sides: if a project fails, the company can suffer too. So, it is indispensable that the project manager as well as the project team are aware of this fact, and that both do their best to avoid making grave mistakes. However, that is easier said than done, since — obviously — mistakes are rarely made on purpose.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution

Amongst others, a project is characterized as a novel and unique undertaking. Every project has its specific requirements: It can be organized in a traditional Waterfall Model, in an agile way — or even in a combination of both. It can be a small project with only a few team members, or there can be hundreds of people involved. That means it is impossible to give a one-size-fits-all solution on how to approach a project properly. Although there is no model solution, of course, there are some methods and tools a project manager can use.

Frequently occurring errors that can be easily avoided

In this article, you can read about seven common project management issues. Accordingly, we show you tools that proved to be useful in avoiding or solving these problems.

1. Unmotivated project team

Imagine your project planning is done: the costs are allocated, the time frames are planned properly, the output is defined, and the risks have been analyzed. You would like to start working on the project only to realize that your project team is unmotivated. The team members are always late for work, they seem to be unhappy and they are just coasting along in their work. And now imagine working with the team maintaining this negative attitude over the next few months in order to complete the project. Does this sound like fun? Probably not.

You as a project manager must realize that an unmotivated team leads to poor results. That means that this is not the way to go. Instead, you need to become active in order to motivate the team. A tool which can be helpful to solve this issue is the motivation matrix:

Before you use one of these forms of motivation, you should carefully evaluate which one is the most suitable for which team member and therefore you need to take a closer look at your team and you need to answer the following questions:

• Why is the employee not motivated? What are the reasons for this?
• How can I motivate him in a positive way? Which is his driving force?

If the team member is not intrinsically motivated, he/she needs an external driving force, and this can be anything — tangible or intangible. Extra salary can work for some employees, more responsibility could be a motivation for others. Every person is individual and so are the driving forces.

You are a project manager working together with an unmotivated team? Then write down your team members’ names and think about their driving forces. In some cases, it can be very simple: Express gratitude for their job in an honest way.

2. Hasty decisions during the planning phase

Most projects are executed under time pressure. Thus, it can happen that the planning phase is not done in a conscientious way, as it should be. As a result, it may happen that important tasks are not included in the plan and are therefore not carried out. This can have serious consequences for any project.

To avoid this problem, it makes sense to spend sufficient time in planning the tasks. Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. To ensure proper project planning, it is useful to create a work breakdown structure (WBS). As the name suggests, this tool breaks down the work into smaller phases and tasks (= work packages), which are clusters in a suitable manner:

To make sure that all-important tasks are visualized in this WBS it is absolutely recommended to work out this structure in cooperation with your team: A brainstorming session can be a simple, but effective tool to work with. As soon as all tasks have been identified, they can be clustered as shown in the image.

3. Insufficient analysis of potential risks

Risks are characterized by non-predictability, which does not mean that project managers have to take risks as they come. In order to identify and, if necessary, to limit the risk of certain tasks, it is advisable to carry out a risk analysis.

This tool is used to display risky work packages in a diagram. The identification of risky work packages is also made within your team — you already know this from the creation of the work breakdown structure.

The recommended procedure is as follows:

• Take a look at the WBS, analyze the work packages, and think about which one could be risky and why. Your team members do the same.
• Talk with your team members about your results and about the reasons for, certain work packages to be risky.
• Everyone assigns a probability of occurrence and impact to each work package. Subsequently, the averages are calculated.
• Create this table:

• Afterward, you can design a chart like this, according to your results:

Now that you know which risks can occur, you have five possible ways to deal with them:

• Accept: If the risk is neither probably to occur, nor a big deal if it occurs — just accept it and don’t spend your time and money in thinking of possible limitation solutions.
• Reduce: Risks that are more likely to occur should be observed on a regular basis. This ensures that you are timely informed of whether this risk occurs. The sooner you know that a risk is approaching, the better for your project.
• Mitigate: A risk can only be mitigated if it has already occurred. If this is the case, you should have a plan of how to mitigate this risk prior to its occurrence.
• Transfer: In case the impact is quite high, but the probability of occurrence is low, you should transfer the risk to another organization (e.g. to an insurance company)
• Avoid: If you have identified a risk of this category, try to avoid it, and talk with your customer about it.

4. Poor time management

As mentioned above, time is mostly a rare commodity and — believe it or not — everybody’s day has only 24 hours. Since we cannot increase the time available to us each day, it is even more important that we learn how to spend our time properly. Therefore, you have to think of your tasks that need to be done at the moment and you need to prioritize these tasks. The best is to make use of the Eisenhower Matrix.

Write down all the tasks that are currently on your mind and answer the following two questions for each:

• How important is the task in general?
• How urgent is the task at the moment?

As soon as you have answered these questions you can transfer these to the matrix, which looks like that:

Obviously, the first quadrant is the one you should focus on since the tasks which can be found here are important and urgent. Those tasks which are urgent but not important can be delegated. Important but non-urgent tasks should be carried out by yourself, but later on. So, you can reschedule these tasks. The last category — involving tasks, which are neither important nor urgent — should not waste your time. Dare to say “no” from time to time and do not bother yourself with such tasks — your time is too valuable for that.

If you rank your tasks by importance and urgency, it is important that you are honest with yourself and admit that not every task can be given top priority. Otherwise, all your tasks will end up in the first quadrant and your time pressure will not be resolved.

5. Inadequate involvement of stakeholders

Everybody who is affected by a project or can have an impact on the project is a stakeholder. This can be a group of people, an individual, a whole organization, or even a government. Since stakeholders are more or less involved in a project — in a positive or negative way — they should not be disregarded. If you do not care about your stakeholders, they may become disruptive. Therefore, the importance of a stakeholder analysis, prior to the execution of your project, is obvious.

When conducting a stakeholder analysis, you first have to get an overview of the people and entities involved:

• Who is involved internally?
• Who is involved externally?
• Are there also people/entities who can influence my project in a negative way? Why?

As soon as you got to know your stakeholders, you need to cluster them in four groups and — as usual — visualize your results:

Now that you know your stakeholders, you need to think about the proper involvement.

Stakeholders who are affected by a high level and who have a great influence should be part of the project team or of the steering committee. Those stakeholders who are not really affected by the project but who have a great impact should also be involved but to a lower degree. They could become part of the core project team. Stakeholders having a high influence but who are affected to a low degree should be part of an advisory board and they should be involved in the communication process proactively.

Even if it is tempting not to involve the fourth group in the project, you should not ignore these stakeholders. Inform them when needed — this is not time-consuming, but it prevents these stakeholders from becoming a threat to your project.

6. Underestimating the importance of estimates

When it comes to the subject of estimations, many experienced project managers take the view that this is unnecessary. In coaching sessions, I have often heard these sentences:

• “Why should I provide an estimate? I can also wait until I have the exact data and continue working with these.”
• “Estimating is a waste of time — we are experts and know our data.”
• “Estimating is imprecise and we do not work with inaccurate values.”

Well, what shall I say? Of course, you can wait until you have the exact data — but that would be a waste of time. And since most team members are experts in what they are doing, their estimates are anything but imprecise. But let’s start from scratch:

Estimating is necessary in many cases throughout the project:

• How much time do we need to work on work package XY?
• How great is the impact of the risk work package XY?
• How expensive will task XY be?

Sometimes you are provided with the exact data — but not always. And in such cases, you need to estimate in cooperation with your team. And you know what? The more often you estimate and the more experienced you and your team are, the better your results will be.

Especially when you are working out the phases of your project, estimating is very important: You need to estimate the duration as well as the costs of each phase. The tools which should be used for estimating in this case, are the top-down and the bottom-up method.

When using the top-down method you start “from the top”, i.e. with 100 %. You think of how much percent (of your available time/money) are required for which phase. 100 % cannot be exceeded. In the end, you can calculate the absolute value.

If you prefer to use the bottom-up method, you look at every single phase and ponder:

• How much will this phase cost?
• How much time will this phase consume?

In the end, you add up these values and get your total cost and duration.

7. Misallocation of resources

A project is characterized by its limited resources. Maybe the first limits which come to your mind, are time and money, which is absolutely correct. But if you think further you will find that there are many other limitations: human resources, machines, equipment — just to name a few.

That means, you have to handle and allocate these resources the same way as you allocate the provided money. A team member cannot be at two places at the same time and cannot work on two different topics in parallel. So, you need to make a resource allocation plan.

You can visualize your resources in a simple way, for example by using Excel or you use a resource management tool. If you are working on a small-scale project, an Excel document can be sufficient. You can write down anything which is limited as well as a timeline. Now you can “block” resources which are already allocated.

The larger the project becomes, the more beneficial is the use of resource management software like Float, Can Do, or Silverbucket.

The International Association of Project Managers (IAPM) published the White Paper Resource Management which shows the importance of this tool.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many project management software that can simplify your daily project life. All the above-mentioned tools are perfect for the use in traditional organized projects, but some of the methods can also be applicable in projects within an agile framework, or even in your private life.

Even more, methods can be found in the PM Guide 2.0 and the Agile PM Guide 2.0 of the IAPM.

Which of the tools you will actually use is entirely up to you. It is, as mentioned before, a toolbox and you as project manager decide which tool fits your work. Maybe you already use some of these tools and they already convinced you?

About the author: Linda Ottmann, M.Sc., is a Certified Project Manager (IAPM) and Certified Agile Project Manager (IAPM). As Chief Communications Officer, she represents the IAPM and is responsible for IAPM’s public relations. She ensures that the reputation of the IAPM is built up and maintained. As CCO she is the contact person for the IAPM Network Officials, IAPM partners, certificate holders, and all interested parties.

The image material is subject to the copyright of the International Association of Project Managers.

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