It doesn’t matter what your project management qualificationsare, there are some aspects of project management that can simply not be taught, instead they need to be learnt whilst actively working on a project. There is always room to improve on the way in which you do your job. Whether you have been managing projects for many years or are just beginning out in your career in project management it is always a good idea to have a quick checklist that you can refer to of any of the hidden pitfalls and snags that you might come up against that could indicate that the project isn’t being managed well and changes need to be made.
Your team don’t listen
The single most important thing that your team need to be doing to drive the project forward is communicating. If they are not communicating, then they may be missing some of their objectives. When deadlines that have been set and agreed upon are not reached by the appropriate time then this can have huge implications for the rest of your project. This is something that good communication can often avoid as you are aware of issues before it’s too late.
Your team are not involved
A good project manager will work with all the resources that they have and that means using the skills of the team to their best potential, from the project management apprenticeup. If your team have skills that you are not using and instead are giving task to people who lack those skills than your project will suffer. Its never a bad idea to have someone learning new skills in your team but make sure they are learning them from someone who has what it takes.
Trust your team
Involve the members of your team in your decision making, they may be able to see things differently to you, things that could in fact make certain tasks easier. They may also be able to see potential issues that could occur, again that you might not see. Working as a team can really help to drive a project, leading a team and not listening to the team members could mean missing out on valuable insights.
Unrealistic deadlines
Deadlines are a great way of keeping on top of the workload for a project, but they need to be realistic. A sign of a good project manager is being able to assign an appropriate length of time to each part of a project. If something is going to take 3 days, then asking your team to do it in 1 day is impractical and can lead to a team who are stressed and inevitably make mistakes or cut corners.
Overloading your team
A team who have too much work to do are likely to flounder under the workload. If your team does not have enough people then don’t expect them to be able to complete the workload of a larger team in the same length of time, deadlines may need to be more flexible.
