6 Reasons Why Your Projects Are Struggling and Methods to Improve

Every project is unique. It can have its demands and requirements. But, if you see yourself struggling through most of your projects, then you might be doing the basics wrong.

Project managers sometimes blame it on the incapability of the teammates if the projects are struggling constantly in terms of performance dip or deadline meeting.

If you are one such frustrated project manager ready to adopt a ‘fire and forget’ policy for the team. Then you need to hear this!

All teams are good enough to perform and meet goals only if the groundwork is done right in the organization.

Groundwork includes the work of executive managers and project managers in terms of the right planning, the right tools and technologies, and the right environment.

This post is dedicated to understanding the reasons for the failure of most of the projects and how you can save your projects from being doomed.

1. Clarity about objectives

Before you read this ahead, ask yourself, what is your company’s central objective?

Are all your project teams well aware of this objective? And are the kind of projects you are taking up lead you to meet your ultimate objective (in terms of profitability and recognition)?

I am sure you did not say yes to answer the above questions. So it is the responsibility of executive managers to first define the goals and strategies of an organization. Then the projects which do not align with your goals can be eliminated. The goals and objectives should be communicated and discussed with the entire team so that everybody is on the same page.

The lack of vision at the top levels of hierarchy leads to project managers handling an excess number of projects which not even contribute to achieving the desired goals. So, project managers should be a part of the meetings with executive managers to discuss which projects should be dropped for not being suitable for the goals of the company.

2. Unorganized information

Lack of access to the right information at the right time is an important reason why projects suffer.

Most of the time, executive managers are informed about the project plan at the outset of the project and get no visibility into project schedules later on. Having no access to project schedules and reports, the executives or sponsors cannot take any timely decisions regarding redirecting or canceling on a project. Finally, the cost of the project overruns to the company thus making the project a failure.

Another important aspect under the same umbrella is a lack of visibility of tasks to teammates.

Sometimes one person is a member of many project teams and goes through a constant confusion about his tasks and which tasks are to be prioritized.

Generally, project managers make a schedule at the beginning of the project and then never get time to update the tasks on the schedule because they are too busy with other things. As a result of which, they have no visibility into which resource is working on what on a particular day.

3. Defined processes and methodologies

Sticking to some processes and methodologies which could be used as reusable assets in the future can help in making your project management easier. These might be in the form of templates, lessons learned from previous projects, guidelines, etc.

Standard processes open avenues of improvement in terms of technologies, quality management, risk management etc.

Many processes in the organization like criteria of acceptance of deliverables, communication protocols, how project information will be gathered and delivered can be directed using their standard practices thus giving a structure to the whole process.

But, projects struggle when teams are overworked and get no time to record and reflect on the findings. When working on a technologically challenging project, the learnings from such a project can act as a medium of future project estimations.

4. Communication

Communication is of paramount importance to make any project a success. In such scenarios, team members generally use emails. But let’s say, a new addition happened to your team. How would that new member come to know about the project history? Also, when a group email is sent, there is a possibility that one of the members might be missed by project managers. Apart from that, all the members might not make the optimum utilization of the email options like a reply to all.

Make communications quicker. Communicate on ProofHub

Otherwise, also emails are a very cumbersome way of carrying all your project-related conversations because going back and forth through email threads is very difficult to manage. Rather, there should be a common platform where you can keep all your project-related conversations in one place.

5. Resource management

Resource management is important. Projects struggle if your teammates are overworked, unmotivated, have no growth opportunities. If your team is only working continuously and you are making no time to spend time with your team or celebrate any milestones, it will cause resource burnout. This, in turn, harms performance and project success.

So, hire more people if you need to so that team members get adequate opportunities to improve their professional skills by learning new technologies and skills. Give your teammates time-to-time training on improving their soft skills.

Developing professional skills and training people in multiple areas will build bench strength for the company. If an important resource leaves at a critical time, your projects can be saved by a strong bench strength.

mindedly so that teammates feel at ease at their workplaces and do not bear any kind of emotional burdens.

6. Tools and technologies

When you are dealing with many projects, many resources, you will need an organized method to systemize your entire work process. Emails, manual meetings, making sub-teams and leaders are not going to solve all the above-mentioned problems. A project management software can cure all your woes related to Projects. ProofHub is one of the best Project management software in terms of the relevance of tools and simplicity of usage.

Organize your teams with ProofHub. Click here to try.

What exactly is it about?

ProofHub is a project management software. In the simplest of words, it is a medium to keep all your project-related files, documents, ideas, tasks, teams, conversations, discussions, status reports, etc. at one centralized place.

Everyone on your team can have access to all the project-related information just with an internet connection. All the confusion regarding who is working on what, how many tasks have been performed, if the resources are overworked or underworked, everything is sorted here in a click.

You will not need to call special meetings to allocate tasks to teammates and you can throw your notepads out of the window as you can assign tasks to your team with ProofHub and they will be immediately notified about that. Not only this, you can track the progress of the work to find how much has been accomplished in just a click using Kanban boards.

You know Kanban boards right?

Kanban boards make your entire process highly efficient.

How?

Well, as you know that Kanban boards are a visual representation of your workflow. There are different columns on this board which represent different stages of your workflow. The default set up of the Kanban board in ProofHub includes ‘ to do’, ‘doing’, ‘done’ columns.

You can keep the project ideas that you need to work on in the ‘to do’ list. Once a teammate starts working on it, he can move it to the ‘doing’ column. As soon as a task is moved from one column to another, everyone will be notified.

So, here you have the status report without any extra communication channel. Isn’t it amazing? The fun fact is that you can customize Kanban boards in ProofHub as per your own organizational needs.

Apart from this, you can have all your project-related discussions in the Discussions section of ProofHub. Project managers can create a new discussion and subscribe people to it. All the subscribed people can now give their opinions and viewpoints on the matter of discussion. Thus everyone gets a fair chance to express their opinions.

Apart from this, remote teams can highly benefit from this tool as conversing over a video call or conference call for discussions is not as congenial an idea like this one.

This was about Discussions. ProofHub provides a chat section if you need to converse with any of your teammates individually on a matter of concern. You do not need to draft a separate email for this. Rather you can keep all your conversations with different people in one central place.

Announcements is another section within ProofHub dedicated to non-project-related communication specifically. You can celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, milestones, achievements using announcements. This can be a very good method for remote teams to develop a team culture by getting to know their global teammates better. You can develop a culture of mutual trust and respect which is otherwise very difficult to attain in remote teams without enough communication.

There are a plethora of other tools within ProofHub which can bring so much ease in the whole project management process. Gantt charts, calendars, proofing, timesheets, etc. are some of these tools. Go and explore yourself to see how you can organize all your project-related work in a click.

Conclusion

Just like they say ‘getting success is all in the state of mind.’ Project managers or executives managers can take their projects from doom to bloom with the right vision and approach. There is no rocket science which is incomprehensible about project management. All we need is the desire to find out solutions and execute them.

But, we can not underestimate the fact that the organization can be facilitated by using the right technologies. Switching to the right technological solutions like a good project management software can revolutionize your project management.

Sometimes managers tend to turn a blind eye to the problems just to ensure that the senior management does not question them if the difficult areas become visible. As a result of which, team members who have the pressure of performance on them suffer daily. Project managers have to bear in mind that making loopholes visible at the right time and taking steps to correct them is the best way out.

I hope that you found this article useful. We would love to know if you have more to say on this topic.

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