A skilled project manager is an integral part of a business today. With a competent project manager, it becomes easy to implement complex project processes. Today, project manager plays a significant role in many companies and project management is considered as one of the swiftly growing professions.
Various industries including information technology, construction, architecture, petrochemical, and other industries that produce products as well as services make use of project managers. Thereby, people intend to hire a project manager who is highly-qualified; hence, reasons to get project management certification are many.
Who is a Project Manager?
Naturally, the next question popping up in your mind is who is a project manager. In simple words, a project manager is a skilled professional who can manage the overall responsibility of a project to meet its specific goals. So, a project manager initiates, plans, designs, executes, monitors, controls, and completes the project with a skilled team. The job is not simple, so only a person with the combination of skills can meet the demands and challenges on the role.
One of the reasons to get project management certification is that it equips a person with the necessary skills and techniques to become a project manager including ways to resolve conflicts, detect issues, and focus on the successful completion of the project.
A certification course like the PMP certification course can shed light on the high standards required for the project management professionals across the world. It also keeps you updated with the changes in the project management practices and the trends prevalent in the industry. So, you can become a successful project manager who can predict risks, take the right decisions on issues that impact project results, adhere to open communication and make sure the project meets its specified goal.
Equip yourself with the desired skills from Project management certification courses to avoid large errors in project management.
10 Common Mistakes Every Project Manager Should Avoid
As a project manager, you have a great responsibility to work towards saving your organization’s time and money. So, you need to ensure that you complete a project to the satisfaction of the clients. Even a small mistake on your part can cost dearly. It can lead to career-changing decisions as your colleagues can lose faith in getting the work done. One of the benefits of project management certification is that you can save yourself from committing serious mistakes while managing a project.
The next question that can come to your mind is, What can go wrong in a project? The mismanagement of a project due to several factors can lead to project delays, over budget, and the project losing its vision. You need to know more about the common pitfalls that a project manager can face. It will help you avoid the serious mistakes that can trip you up.
1. Setting Goals Upfront
As a project manager, your first and foremost duty is to have the bird’s eye view of the project. Therefore, you need to identify everyone’s goals upfront. A project is a group effort of the different stakeholders, a team, and everyone affected by the project. So, understanding the requirements of everyone ensures the project gets completed successfully.
A project manager who fails to consider the interest and goals of the people involved must brace themselves for the repercussions. It leads to several problems, adjustments, and ultimately results in project failure.
2. Giving Importance to Budget/Scope over Quality
Every project manager focuses on delivering the project within stipulated deadline and under-budget to get in the good books of clients. But, it can lead to delivery of low-quality projects without thinking about the ultimate goal. So, the project managers resort to fulfilling stages one after the other without doing it the right way.
It results in getting bad reviews about the project and questioning about the capability of the manager. Therefore, as a project manager, you need has a project to-do-list that you and your team must follow to achieve a deliverable of high-quality and standards.
A project manager whose team focuses on giving importance to quality can deliver good projects on time.
3. Communication Breakdown
Seamless communication is integral for successful completion of a project. Therefore, communication is the king in project management. Communicating clearly and constantly with your team members and clients can ensure that you are moving in the right direction. With communication breakdown, your project is sure to fall apart.
Unfortunately, as project manager, you have no communication guidelines for projects. To ensure you meet the specifications of a project, you need to keep the team members and clients on the same page. So, you need to follow some pointers:
- You must have regular updates regarding the project status
- Periodic reviews of the deliverables
- Engage the team and inspire them to enhance productivity
- Meet budget and scope expectations,
Therefore, as a project manager, you need to schedule specific dates in advance to ensure everyone is on the same page.
4. Mismanagement of Team Skills
A project manager must utilize all the resources available in an optimized manner for the project success. So, you need to use the skills of your team members effectively to get good results. Many project managers fail in this aspect as they do not understand the skills and abilities of each team member. Therefore, it results in assigning tasks that the team members cannot complete.
It affects the flow of the project negatively. You can utilize the skills of your team by understanding how each member can perform and deliver. You can indulge in team building activities to motivate and know your team members better. So, with proper planning and setting achievable goals, you can avoid mismanagement.
5. Letting Scope Creep out of the Hand
The scope creeps also known as the requirement creep can affect project management negatively. The scope creep is the changes that occur in the continuously growing project. A project manager must understand that the scope is not set in stone, but scope creep can lead to project failure. Therefore, you need to have a foolproof plan to handle the requests.
You must know how the request can impact if implemented the following factors:
- Milestones
- Schedules
- Budget
- Final Deadline
Failures happen due to the project managers spending less time to understand the project scope. So, it results in not knowing what the ultimate goal of the project is, setting impractical deadlines, working on the project without full resources, etc.
6. Resisting Change
Project managers involved in the project management faces daily challenges like a change in direction, missed deadlines, unexpected additional tasks, etc. So, the project manager needs to adapt to the required changes to ensure the smooth flowing of the project. In such cases, the project manager must adapt to the needs of the project. Therefore, it is important to change the approach, use new resources, etc.
The failure or resisting the changes can lead to the project failure. Becoming close-minded, breaking communication with team members, becoming rigid about the processes, or take decisions that can negatively affect the project can result in failure.
7. Avoiding Project Management Tools
The software can never replace the project management skills of people. It is never a substitute for the actual work. But, it can offer great aid in speeding the process and generate documents to support your project team. So, it is crucial as a project manager to include the right project management tools to make the process smooth. With the right integrated project management tools, the information can flow smoothly through your team.
Not using the tools can cause in your project. But, relying on the software alone for the project success can result in project failure. You need to understand that you need to implement the right software to solve your problem. The tools can never identify what your problem is. Therefore, include the tools that aid in project planning, time management, reporting, and team collaboration. It can reduce the cost and make the project a success.
8. Failure to Estimate Team Engagement
A project can complete on time when the people working on the project give their 100% to it. The primary responsibility of a project manager is to identify the level of engagement of the team members in the project. A good project manager never fails to appreciate the hard work of the co-workers and offers proper incentives to boost their morale.
A project is doomed if the manager does not appreciate the efforts of the workers. It can make the team members feel unappreciated leading to less motivation. Ultimately, the project fails.
9. Not Having a Clear Plan for the Project
Projects are the visions turned into reality. Therefore, you need to have a clear plan or expectation of how the project works. It will help you measure the success, compare the vision and reality, etc. Many project managers fail as they do not have a clear idea on the ultimate result of the project. So, it results in the project members not understanding the project.
10. Not Prioritizing your Tasks/Projects
You may lead more than one project at a time. With more than one project running simultaneously, you need to prioritize the tasks or project. Your team members must know the order of the priority to ensure they work on the high visibility project first. Some project managers fail to convey the information about the change of priorities of the task or the order of importance. Therefore, it results in several hassles and headache.
With the increasing challenges in the industry, every business needs to meet its objective precisely. An excellent project manager can balance all the aspects of the specific project and ensure its success. Though each project manager’s role varies with the industry, the core function is to the balance the budget, timeframe, team scope of a project to meet the competition. Therefore, the success and failure of a project depend majorly on the competence of a project manager.
One of the benefits of project management certification is that the project manager becomes competent enough to improve the productivity and morale of the whole team. So, it can result in higher profitability of a business.