Modern Project Management is a well-understood discipline that can produce predictable, repeatable results.
A key challenge of Modern Project Management is the creation of realistic schedules that provide a basis for monitoring project progress for the time dimension of the project and subsequently, to implement and stick to them. Unrealistic schedule is the Project Manager's fault! One of the key reasons for the Project Manager's existence is to see if the needed end date can be met and create options to make it happen, all before project executing starts. Project Managers must know how and when to introduce multiple strategies and compress project schedules to the deadlines. Even more importantly, the Modern Project Management approach must support the aggressive schedules.
Each activity in a project is unique. A project has never happened before, and it will never happen again under the same conditions. Something is always different each time the activities of a project are repeated. Usually the variations are random in nature - for example, a part is delayed, someone is sick, a power failure occurs. These are random events that can happen, but we never are sure of when, how, and with what impact on the schedule. These random variations are the challenge for the Project Manager.
Most companies use a functional organization: managers (called functional or line managers) oversee the performance of a business function, such as accounting, engineering, or marketing. These managers set policies for their domain, are accountable for achieving functional or departmental goals, and supervise the resources that perform the function.
Project Management is considered as a discipline that is mostly an art as well as a science. When a profession needs both the soft skills and hard skills of a manager, it is the challenges related to soft skills, which become the most challenging aspect of practicing that profession successfully.
As temporary endeavors, projects don’t have resources of their own. Most of the time, the people who perform project work are obtained from functional managers in the organization. Obtaining resources that have the right skills or characteristics is usually a challenge. Some resources are simply scarce, such as a consultant who is an expert in physical and computer security issues and who is also fluent in German, Italian, and Japanese. Other resources might be more plentiful but still hard to obtain because every project uses them, such as a backhoe operator for construction projects.
After the resources are successfully acquired for a project, the next challenge is keeping those resources assigned to the tasks. Assigning people to work 12-hour days and weekends not only increases overtime costs but also leads to burnout, errors, rework, and employee turnover – none of which is a characteristic of a successful project. Conversely, assignments that leave people idle for days on end are open invitations to lose those resources to other projects. Then, when you need those people, they might still be working on their other assignments, or in the worst case, laid off.
Demanding, dictating, wresting, or wringing work out of people might deliver results at least, initially. Over the long-term, however, the project performance will deteriorate along-with Project Manager’s relationships with the team members. Leading people is a big part of a Project Manager’s job. Building good relationships is especially important in today’s business world, as team members try to juggle multiple projects in addition to day-to-day responsibilities. Team members are more responsive to project managers who get to know them and respect their expertise and time.
Another challenging aspect of Modern Project Management is the tendency of the team members to “pad” their estimates of cost and duration of project activities. Padding of estimates leads to delaying of activities unnecessarily (According to Parkinson's Law), which ultimately affects the overall project delivery and cost. Padding games usually end badly. One of the most common padding practices are when managers cut every number they receive, assuming they’re padded. Team members remember that their last estimates were cut so they thicken the padding the next time around. The final numbers end up the same, but the cycle of padding and cutting grows longer and trust drops lower. The Project Manager should provide realistic estimates and schedules with marginal padding. A trade-off between time and cost is unlikely to help, since increasing the duration of the project will increase the cost.
Another challenging aspect is not being proactive in managing risks in the projects. The practices of risk analysis and risk management in many companies are more or less limited to dealing with uncertainties and threats that may be encountered on projects after those projects have been approved. For the most part, project teams utilize risk management techniques as a means of minimizing the amount of unfavorable variance between the project’s final outcome and the targets for cost, schedule, and deliverable performance - targets that were established at the time of project approval.
There is a significantly larger potential for improving the overall approach to project management, by simply applying good risk management tools and techniques before projects are formally approved. Specifically, we can make risk analysis a key component of the project selection process. All unknowns and risks should be considered carefully, and contingency and fallback plans should be developed to recover when problems are encountered.
Another biggest challenge we’ll face in Modern Project Management is likely to come from poor communication. Many people do not communicate as effectively as they would like, and many try to avoid documentation. Effective communication and proper documentation are threads that bind the project together.
Communication is a challenge in any organization, but it’s a particular challenge when you’re working on a project. The challenges of communication are many. Mental paradigms, values, beliefs, and attitudes, for example, may restrict how the vision statement is received. People tend to filter or slant the message. Also, “pockets of resistance” exist, reflecting non-acceptance of the vision. That resistance might be covert (subtle, negative comments) or overt (vocalizing opposition). Another challenge is to cut through the layers of bureaucracy. Organizational layers may filter or alter the message, either intentionally or inadvertently.
Although communication can often seem like a time-consuming exercise, it’s hard to have too much communication, particularly when you’re working on a project that will result in a change to the organization or something very new. Preparing stakeholders for the results of the project is as important to its success as doing the tasks of the project in the first place.
This article is an effort to steer project management professionals toward a greater understanding of the challenging aspects of modern project management. Project management is a large undertaking requiring an understanding of multiple performance expectations. The issues highlighted in this article, likewise, require us to develop an equal degree of breadth.
