Bruce Gay Principal Consultant| Astrevo LabsPittsburgh, Pa, United States
I am working on an article with a colleague from another profession. While he has managed people, he does not have a lot of project management experience. One of the topics we want to cover is how to address the top challenges or pain points that we face as Project/Program Managers.
Here is my initial high-level list of challenges. I would welcome feedback and input on the list.
1) Scope Management / Scope Creep 2) Stakeholder Management (aka ‘Expectation Management’) 3) Poor (or inefficient) communication 4) Benefit Realization (Are we building the right thing that brings value to the organization?) 5) Lack of Accountability
Thanks in advance,
-Bruce Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The big challenge is: you have to persuade people to work with you in the project or projects under your administration making an extra effort besides their daily activities while you do not have any power in the organizational structure. Saving Changes...
Stephanie GrahamVP of Strategy| BankOnITOklahoma City, Ok, United States
Leadership and Positive Attitudes
You have to be able to, as Sergio stated, persuade a team to execute work to their fullest. Not everyone is going to agree with everyone else - or even with yourself. So you have to maintain that leadership and positive attitude to mold the team in to a working machine. Saving Changes...
I agree with Sergio in the early stage of the project the big challenge is getting the team.
In the execution phase I would often see a problem with managing both the scope and the stakeholder. I link both because it is often a scope with open ends that open the door to scope creep and managing expectation of Stakeholder. Saving Changes...
One of the most challenging is communication management which affects your way to lead the project team , to influence the stakeholders , to present your project and to deliver the expected result from the project Saving Changes...
C Joseph Gonot JrIT Project Manager| Bayer CorporationPittsburgh, Pa, United States
I'm thinking there are whole books on pain points in Project Management. Your approach of taking on only a few - like a top five - is a great approach. We all know the list could be near-to-endless, or so it seems at times. I see alot of comments liking Sergio statement, but I think his comment is more of a symptom of multiple causes listed in Bruce's list - ie. Poor communication (resources not aware of their amount of involvement), lack of accountability (no personal accountability for tasks), stakeholder management (especially when resources are coming from that stakeholders area). Saving Changes...
Bruce Gay Principal Consultant| Astrevo LabsPittsburgh, Pa, United States
Thanks everyone for feedback on the top challenges that we face as Project Managers.
The initial list de-emphasized resource-related pain points (e.g. securing the necessary people for the team, lack/shortage of expertise & skills, managing staff who do not report to you directly, leadership, etc.). We will consider those for the article we are writing.
