Top Challenges In Project Management

Project management is a job much different from a technical director, in the sense that they require a variety of skill sets, including those to handle the technical aspects of the job as well as those to handle the emotional aspect of the team.

These are some of the challenges you may come across as a project manager, along with their suggested solutions:

a. Hiring the team

A project requires a diverse range of professionals working together, and a successful project requires them to bond together as a group. This is something the manager has to ensure while choosing his team.

The solution to this problem may be problem solving interview questions for the prospective team members. This would help you analyze how they think and put together the like-minded professionals.

b. Motivating an unmotivated team member

Your team will have all kinds of members, those who are excited to work and those who couldn’t be less motivated about the job. And you need to learn to handle both the kinds.

A solution to handle the unmotivated team members is career counselling. If they’re not suitable to pursue the career they have chosen, you need to help them figure out what they are suitable for. Maybe not for the immediate goals of the team and the company, but to help the greater cause.

c. Office politics

The difference in attitudes, behaviors and, in some cases, background of the various team members, leads to conflict of opinion between the members of the team. More often than not, this takes the shape of office politics where one group tries to undermine the other in front of the higher ups, and one of the worst effects of this is the shift in focus of the members from their work to useless activities.

The solution to this can be to curb the conflict as soon as it starts without letting it grow to that level. This may be done by talking to the conflicting members and trying to mediate the issue, or by a strict approach, depending upon the circumstances.

It must be noted that the above mentioned solutions may work in some situations and may not in some others. The biggest trick in the job of a project manager is to figure out the unique solution to every problem before this problem enhances to a level they can’t recover from. The technical job of the project manager has its own challenges, but they may be figured out by books. But problems like handling office politics is something that requires a unique creativity and experience to figure out.

About Author:
The author has a vast experience on the job of career counseling and is now a writer and motivational speaker for those who are looking to follow his path.

The Secret To A Successful Project Management

Project management is a blend of many tasks.  One needs to write up everyone else’s job and fill in the various positions in the loop lying empty. The technicalities of the job are not tough to understand for any motivated project manager. But with the growing competition in the industry, you need to come out with an edge over the others.

Here are some answers to the question, what are some unique project management skills a successful manager requires;

a. A link between higher ups and the project team

A project management success depends upon the communication between the key management of the company and the project team. This, a lot of times, requires diplomacy of a politician. Because a project manager needs to handle many uncomfortable situations, and needs to act differently in each. He needs to be different at a presentation in front of the bosses and very different while handling an irresponsible subordinate.

b. Managing through change

Project management skills require a person to be able to manage the team through a changing technology, atmosphere, etc. This skill, however, gets the trickiest when it comes to managing the changing emotions and attitudes of the team members. A manager needs to be careful of what triggers a member in some way and make sure the same is used to make him motivated to work harder.

c. Strict but funny

A project manager needs to be likeable. The most important among the many reasons for this is, he needs the team members to open up to him considering him one of their own. By knowing the team better only can he make sure he can manage their diverse attitudes and fickle emotions. But this should not come in the way of keeping his team disciplined enough for the office environment. Too casual an environment may not be good for the efficiency of the team. Neither would too strict an environment. Success of Project management depends upon figuring out the line between the two for your specific team.

d. Using client expectation as the basis of his strategy

As a project manager, one would get a lot of factual details. Using those details to make a technical plan is something every motivated project manager can do. In order to bring out the edge, one should learn to read between the lines. Figure out the expectation from the perspective of a client and the capabilities of your team, and use them to form a strategy.

The rules for an IT project manager are not different from the above, except that as an IT management needs to learn to manage through both emotional change and technical change at a regular basis.

About Author:

The author Joy Dsouza has worked in the capacity of a IT project manager for some of the most successful projects in various countrie