In a project management landscape, every project manager experiences certain challenges that hamper progression. After all, it’s a challenge in itself to don several hats and still focus on the competing priorities. Moreover, it worsens when projects face certain constraints, namely resource crunch, budget and timeline issues, etc.
Unlike larger organizations that may have one project manager for marketing, another for sales, and so on. A small business project manager has to oversee multiple departments, streamline the business process, and keep track of every project metric.
Let’s look at some of the leading project management issues that are unique in small businesses and how to overcome them.
1. Staff management and scheduling issues
When multiple high-priority projects are running simultaneously, it can be challenging to manage staff effectively. Considering the resource crunch in small businesses, the demand for employees with the same skill set for different projects can arise. This results in some staff members getting overutilized, which adversely impacts the final quality of the deliverable.
In severe cases, when the workloads get to be too much, every employee has to put in extra hours. Besides suffering from burnout, there’s the risk of delayed delivery of the products as well. Put simply, inefficient scheduling of the workforce lowers productivity. This is because the employees are unaware of the tasks and do not have enough time to plan the workload.
To overcome this, effective project resource management will prove beneficial. Besides helping you streamline the project’s tasks, it will also help you in resource scheduling with agility and optimize their utilization. Eventually, a strategic plan with efficient scheduling will increase productivity, helping you meet the project deadlines.
2. Project planning issues
You may feel that you can keep critical project information in your head. But it can be a significant problem later on, primarily when you oversee multiple projects. This may result in unexpected loopholes at the eleventh hour.
Despite having the required skill set onboard, inefficient planning can make you miss critical tasks. With one person multitasking and fewer resources on board, meticulous project planning is easier said than done.
Documentation of the project attributes would ease the delivery cycle. It can be done using a streamlined project management approach by creating web-based Gantt charts that give you complete visibility into various resource schedules. Real-time reports will help you monitor other project aspects like tasks, milestones, budget, and timeline; it will also help you forecast the project needs, risks, financials, and resource demand well in advance.
3. Employee management issues
Employees are the most critical asset of any organization. Their skills and diligence will propel the success of your organization. Hence, managing the workforce appropriately is extremely important to get maximum returns.
For small businesses, the issues associated with managing employees vary from micromanaging them, favoritism, and both cases are detrimental to your business. While encouraging open and healthy communication is beneficial for management and employees alike, it carries the risk of compromised objectivity and personal biases.
To effectively manage employees, encourage them to take leadership and keep them motivated by allowing them to work out schedules that enable them to do work full justice. Along with this, convey your vision. Clarity on the vision will help them contribute more towards the company’s goals. That will also help them bring novel and innovative ideas to the table, making them feel valued and helping you optimize their talents.
4. Skill assessment issues
Assessment of an employee’s competencies plays a vital role in allocating resources to the right job. Unfortunately, since the manager is handling multiple functions in small businesses, the chances of not noticing the employee’s skills are high.
Inadequate assessment of skills will lead to inappropriate allocation of resources, which will later affect the quality of deliverables and reduce productivity. Moreover, an apt assessment of skills will help reduce employee turnover and highlight the areas of improvement.
A thorough data gathering and analysis will come in handy for skill assessment. This can be accomplished by assessing skills with a competency tracker, skills tests and behavioral assessments which will let you close gaps and smooth out hiring cycles. That way, you’re not unnecessarily adding more people during a recession or giving up quality talent during a seasonal peak. Besides this, it will also help you allocate the right resources and will help in planning resource requirements for a pipeline project well in advance.
5. Lack of collaboration
For meeting the project deadlines, it’s crucial to keep every team member on the same page with the progress, challenges, and achievements of a project. After all, the team is the backbone of a project. Moreover, a collaboration between team members opens the door for creativity and innovation. Besides keeping track of the resources and the project’s progress, it also crowdsources a solution when one member faces a problem. While keeping teams aligned across multiple departments and different project management tools can be challenging, using an integration platform can help bridge the gap between siloed work apps. Likewise, whiteboard software can provide a system for real-time collaboration on diverse ideas.
However, in small businesses, due to multiple high-priority projects running simultaneously, it creates team conflicts. This makes it highly difficult for the manager to assemble the team for collaboration because of which the projects might fall flat.
Efficient leadership calls for both collaboration and communication. To permeate cooperation in your organization, adapting to advanced project resource management software is the key. Besides giving you complete visibility of the project’s progress, financials, utilization of resources, it also helps keep the remote employees in the loop, enhancing productivity and letting you execute the deliverables on time.
Ready to transform your business? It is now evident that challenges are inherent in projects and can continuously evolve if not mitigated well in advance. Therefore, managers can follow the solutions mentioned above and cater to all the issues well in advance. Let us know how these tips helped you become a successful project leader!
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