Avoid these common project management pitfalls to keep things running smoothly.
According to the Project Management institute, demand for project managers continues to increase, with the project management-oriented labor force expected to grow by 33 percent, or nearly 22 million new jobs, through 2027.
With this growth, the ability to work in many different industries, and opportunities to learn something new every day, there are plenty of reasons to pursue a career in project management. However, the role of project manager does present unique challenges.
SCS instructor Joanna Tivig shared a few of the most common project management mistakes she has seen to help you avoid them and keep your projects running smoothly.
- Project thinking instead of big picture thinking. New project managers think that projects are what they need to deliver. In fact, it is the outcome of a project that will be sold to the customer.
- Doing only or too much task management. These project managers look like task managers or checklist controllers.
- Consider people to be resources that you can dispose of and obtain at any point in time. The reality shows that the more we treat team members as people, the more they will work in collaboration for a common purpose.
- Micro-managing. Overtiring the team members with status meetings and questions that add no value, just to find out where they are with the workload.
- Building documentation that cannot be changed. In today's world where everything is changing fast, you need to build just enough documentation to get started and work and assume changes will need to be incorporated later.
Joanna teaches 1952 - Leading Projects in Organizations, 3401 – Practical Project Management – Part 1, 3402 – Practical Project Management – Part 2, 3523- Agile Essentials in Project Management, 3523B Agile Project Management Basics: Release Planning, and 3551 Agile Leadership and Transformation at the School of Continuing Studies.