Some Pain Points for Project Manager

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#Task Tracking/Up to date Project Plan: When the Project Manager plays individual contributor role, then it’s really a challenge to collate the status update of different teams involved. When the teams are distributed, this challenge becomes even more complex. For a Project Manager as individual contributor to be successful, the person needs to be more organized, very positive and highly influential. Normally matrix kind of organization tend  to employ  this kind of structure whereby team(s) or team members may need to report to more than one Manager. Actually, this organization structure is still universally accepted and followed in many organizations. Reason attributed is the need for strong Project Management in those areas where they don’t want to dilute  Project Management by combining Team Management with Project Management. That’s the main reason why such organizations follow such structure.

Solution: As stated above, with strong Project Management principles we should be able to overcome the shortcomings. Also we would require well organized people endowed with effective communication and influencing skills.

#Multiple Stakeholders on Decision Making: Another area where Project Managers struggle or face lot of issues are - when there are more than one decision makers involved for a particular undertaking. It becomes more complex when the priorities are not in sync. That may lead into conflicts thereby adversely impacting the project  in many aspects – Cost, Schedule, Effort & Scope.

Solution: As its related to people, all we could do is bring all the stakeholders in the same page and collect consolidated feedback to figure out a single outcome. It requires good Stakeholder Management skills.

#Scope change during Project Execution: The most common problem encountered in almost all the project is with regard to the scope - either as change or creep. This has been curbed to some extent through Agile . However scope change which derives the architectural change is still challenging even in the Agile era.

Solution: Scope Change or creep is a known known, and largely expected despite the best of efforts to rein in and hence it will be prudent and professional to secure the buy-in of the stakeholders by explaining and recording the changes/creep. Usually a log is maintained and sign-off for concurrence will stamp the inclusion as part of the requirement. In general any solution provided for any given problem should be scalable in this dynamic environment. As Project Manager, its incumbent  to ensure the project is scalable in all aspects.