Five Common Project Management Challenges

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Five Common Project Management Challenges

By Cynthia K. West, Ph.D., Vice President, Project Insight

My team speaks with project managers, directors of operations, vice presidents of professional services, chief financial offers, and other project team members every day. We hear familiar stories repeatedly and there are some trends, or

commonalities. Here I will outline five of the most common project management challenges.

• Geographically dispersed project teams

• Using the wrong tool for the job

• Over booked or mismanaged resources

• Wasting time looking for project documents or assets

• Spending too much time in status meetings

#1-Geographically dispersed project teams

Many project teams are geographically dispersed. Projects are inherently collaborative efforts. The very nature of projects is such that project teams are usually comprised of multiple team members. Often, project teams incorporate multiple organizations. Team members can not only be employees, but also clients, vendors, sub-contractors, and other third parties.

Sometimes the entire project team belongs to the same company or organization, yet they often work from different offices either within the U.S. or globally. Even if the project team is in the same office, in today’s fast paced economy, information needs to pass as rapidly as possible, making a centralized project management software solution imperative.

As the rise in outsourcing work and offshore development continues, project

managers and executive management need to synchronize their work across multiple time zones. So, when the U.S. based team goes to sleep, and the team in Asia goes to work, they may login to the web-based project management solution to view their project, resource and task status. Companies that manage this asynchronous

process well are excelling compared to their competitors.

Also, clients are demanding more visibility and transparency into their projects’ progress. Client-facing project teams that possess a collaborative software system to interact with their customers are selling this as a competitive advantage and winning business over their competition.

#2-Using the wrong tool for the job

Many companies attempt to manage projects using desktop software applications like Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel. The main challenge with using desktop software to manage projects is that these applications were not designed for

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collaboration among several parties. At worst, the file is shared by emailing the file to all parties on the team. At best, the file may be posted on a network or on an extranet and shared from there.

One typical scenario that arises from using desktop software for project management is file ‘version control.’ For example, a project manager may email a Microsoft Project file to share project information to the team. If the file is updated frequently, then it can often be confusing as to which version of the project is the most recent one. Many times, the project manager will be conversing with an executive about a

project and twenty minutes into the conversation find that they are both viewing two different versions of the project.

Another issue with using desktop applications is that the minute they are emailed to the project team, the project data is outdated. That is, the information is not

available in real-time. Projects are inherently dynamic efforts that change by the hour and sometimes minute.

A project management solution that is 100% web-based solves these issues by allowing project managers and their team members to access project information from any browser in the world, at any time of the day or night. The project

information is centralized in one database and posted in real-time, assuring that all project members and executive management can view the most recent information about the project.

#3-Over booked and mismanaged resources

Project teams often complain that they do not have accurate or up to date

information about their resources and what they are working on. Many project teams have more demand for projects than they have team members to execute the

projects. Many project teams solve this challenge with a combination of meetings and either Excel or Microsoft Project.

For example, some teams meet once a week to determine what each person will work on. This can work, however, it depends on the pace of the work environment. One interactive agency with a very fast pace of work and lots of daily changes to the work schedule lost hours and hours of productivity as team members were only given assignments once a week.

Teams without centralized project management software often talk about using an Excel spreadsheet to manage workloads. Yet many state that it is a cumbersome exercise. Project managers benefit from leveling a single project in Microsoft Project. However, project managers utilizing desktop software may have a challenging time understanding how much work each resource has been allocated to across all projects.

At best, project managers using Microsoft Project’s resource pool can level resources across multiple projects. Yet, many project managers, even PMP certified project managers, find the resource leveling features of Microsoft Project to be dangerous. A commonly stated problem is that the projects’ timelines are extended beyond an acceptable timeframe, so many project managers abandon using the resource leveling functionality.

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A web-based project management software solution has the advantage of storing all projects, all resources and their assignments in one centralized place. Unfortunately, not all web-based software is equal. Many low end solutions and even mid-market project software cannot perform resource allocation properly. So, when you are evaluating systems, be certain to check to see if the solution can perform these functions:

• Display a cross project resource allocation report or grid with all

resources, projects and tasks in the system

• Drill down from the report to view the projects and tasks that are causing

the over allocation

• Show all work or effort a project team member or resource is assigned to

• Account for non-working time at the global level, such as weekends and

company holidays

• Account for resource non-working time, such as vacation time

• Account for part-time employees’ or sub-contractors’ schedules

Many project management software vendors say they perform resource allocation and show graphs of how much work is assigned to each person, but cannot drill down into specific projects and tasks to show what is causing the over allocation. Resource balancing demands visibility into the offending projects and tasks. A project management solution that can account for non-working time such as weekends and company holidays at the system level is imperative; otherwise, project schedules will assign work on Saturdays and Sundays, making the resource allocation report inherently invalid.

Many project teams use part-time employees or sub-contractors. If resource allocation is going to be accurate, again the software must be able to account for a team member’s default work schedule. For example, if someone works twenty hours a week, then the resource allocation grid should turn red after four hours of work per day have been assigned.

Almost all team members take time off. If the solution is unable to block that time off, again the resource allocation grid will be incorrect, making the project manager’s job more difficult.

If resource allocation is an issue, then a decent mid-market or high end solution may be the only options.

#4-Wasting time looking for project documents and assets

All projects have files, documents and assets that pertain to the project and tasks. Project assets can include project scope documents, risk lists, issues lists, files, emails, and deliverables, to name a few. Most project teams are sharing files on networks. The challenge with even the best file storage systems on the internal network is that team members still complain that they cannot find critical

documents. It is simply too easy to forget where those assets and files are, unless they are frequently used.

The other problem with this is that usually third parties or those the project team needs to collaborate with outside one’s four walls (and network) cannot access these files. Many organizations do not permit third parties to VPN into their network for

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security reasons. This means that the project manager must resort to emailing those assets to these outside team members, which again can result in the version control problem stated under #1 above.

Web-based project management software solves these issues by posting all project assets in the centralized repository. The solutions that link documents repositories with the project they pertain to make finding the specific assets easy for the team members. An even more robust solution will permit team members to post assets at the task level, not just the project level.

Another good feature to look for is the ability for the project team to collaborate on these project files and assets by posting communication or threads. The value of this is that the entire project history is captured in the documents repository. As projects are dynamic and ever-changing, if a team member gets assigned to a project mid-steam he or she may read all of the communication on the project and ‘get up to speed’ much faster than before.

Other distinguishing features worth looking for include:

• Document check-in/out

• Document version control

• Document routing and approval processes

• Automatic alerts on documents repositories

• Ability to create any folder structure and/or hierarchy with the project

documents repository

• Ability to set permissions at any level in the folder structure

Document check-out will permit one team member to edit a file at a time. If others attempt to edit the file, the solution will inform them that the file is checked out and the exact date, time and person that has the file checked out. Check-in makes the file editable again.

File version control refers to tracking all iterations of a file or document. A common example is a project scope document that goes through several changes over the course of the project lifecycle. A decent solution will keep track of all of the versions of the file and post who made the changes, and exact date and time of the change. Many project deliverables are documents that require approval. A great feature is a solution that automatically routes the document for approval. So, when one team member has finished approving the deliverable, a notification is sent to the next person in the approval chain.

Alerts and notifications are emails sent to the email client based on certain events or items that occur. A good web-based solution will permit project managers and team members to set up automatic alerts on folders, documents and other items. These reminders will encourage team members to log into the system and work on the specific task or item.

An ability to set up a own folder structure to mirror the business processes and methodologies is key. The flexibility of being able to determine who has access to which folder or folders will also make the software more powerful and usable by the entire team.

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#5-Spending too much time in status meetings

Many project team members complain about spending too much time in meetings to update project status. No solution is ever going to replace the need for human communication and meetings. However, many teams talk about wasting too much time in meetings where everyone goes around the room and updates the project manager on his/her tasks. This is a very traditional way to getting status updates. Another common model for updating project status is the project manager asks each team member individually where their tasks stand. The problem with this model is that the project manager becomes a ‘glorified administrator,’ and spends time updating the Microsoft Project file or Excel file. Instead, project managers could be managing more projects or thinking about higher level project concerns.

A web-based project software solution permits each team member to report back on project tasks and activities throughout their working day instead of relying on status meetings, or asking each individual for an update. The beauty of web-based

solutions is that each team member is empowered to report back on his or her tasks, pushing the responsibility back where it belongs, to the team member.

Getting real-time information instead of relying on status meetings can save project team’s time and money. Executive management may login and get real-time updates on projects, eliminating the time intensive job of gathering and assembling project information.

A decent project management system will roll up all task, project and portfolio information and allow managers to filter for the data they wish. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Cross project dashboard reports

• Project estimates versus actuals in hours, fixed costs or both

• Projected revenues

• Planned values versus earned values

• Projects by client, department, sponsor, project manager, or resource

• Projects by type or portfolio

• Cross project resource allocation

• Projects by contract, date range, or phase

Conclusion

Naturally, there are many more project management challenges than stated here. However, these are the most frequently voiced by teams from a myriad of industries. If you are experiencing one or more of these challenges, then your team may benefit from implementing a project management software system.