The Most Common ProjectManagement Challenges

Gbolahan Shyllon

Communication

Communication is one of the biggest challenges thatproject managers face. It’s the project manager’s responsibility to provideorder by making sure communication is clear andfrequent. It’s also important for project managers to remainopen to team member feedback. Project managers need to make sure they areavailable when their team members need them.

Goals

Unless a project’s goals are clearly defined then theproject has little chance of succeeding. The project manager needs to make sure thatindividual team members understand their specificgoals as well the goals of the overall project. If goals aren’t defined then team members will havelittle direction. As a result, they may requestchanges to the project that will ultimately causemore harm than good—all because they didn’tunderstand the final goal of the project.

Budget

Creating and sticking to a budget is one of the mostdifficult aspects of business. When planning a new project many projectmanagers start with the mindset of: “This is thebudget we have to work with, and we can’t go overit.” However, this type of mindset often leads togoing over budget.Instead, it’s better to estimate how much the entireproject will cost and then ask for that specificbudget.

Schedule

Setting appropriate deadlines is essential to everyproject’s success.However, when setting deadlines you need toconsider how likely your team is to meet thedeadline.If you don’t give your team enough time and theymiss deadline after deadline, you risk hurtingmorale. On the other hand, if you give your team toomuch time they might procrastinate and wasteresources. The best project managers understand their teammembers and what works best for them. They setdeadlines that are realistic so that the team willmeet them and be successful.