Project management: Main problems, challenges and solutions

As we have already mentioned in previous articles, project management in the construction industry has several parts you need to take into account to carry out projects correctly.

In other words, project management is a field that requires a lot of practice, skills, knowledge, and expertise. Even though there are several resources, certifications, and advising from experts at present, it's still one of the most challenging careers. 

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Each project is different as regards the scope, goals, or customer's requirements, and there isn't a common template to make the development of the project lifecycle easier. Although the problems that you have to deal with in each project are different, there are some problems that are more common than others. 

• Unclear goals
• Ineffective communication
• Bad estimate of expenses
• Poor risk management
• Unrealistic deadlines

Identifying problems in project management is one thing, but what about solving them? Nobody wants to work with somebody that only finds problems and doesn't suggest ways of solving them. This negative approach can slow any task down but, in project management, it's not acceptable. As a project manager, you don't only have to assume risks but you also need to have contingency plans to help you face them (before they become real problems). 

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The more you worry about the challenges of project management, the easier will be to overcome them and continue with your projects. Here, we'll take a look at some of the most common problems of project management and how you can solve them. 

Change orders

Why it happens: no matter how hard-working you are as a project manager during the first phases of a project, most interested parties find deficiencies in the scope of the work. When managers allow the team to take new requirements with no change orders, the deadline and budget of the project are negatively affected.  

How to solve it: the only way of fighting the scope creep is putting things in writing. Whenever your customers ask for deliverables or another type of work that wasn't described in the purchase order, insist on following a formal process to document their requirements, estimate the necessary additional resources and identify the effect it will have on the other tasks and deliverables. This way, you'll have everything covered. 

Lack of resources

Why it happens: due to the long periods involved in business projects, project managers usually deal with different challenges to predict beforehand who will be available to work on the tasks of the project. This challenge is even bigger when the members of the team have to divide their time among several simultaneous projects. 

How to solve it: a project and portfolio management of the company can eliminate the speculations about how resources are assigned. By using management tools that give visibility to the use and assignment of resources in the different areas and business units, you will not only be able to plan the future but also to find the best option for current needs, for example, when the deadline of the project changes. 

Conflicting methodologies

Why it happens: construction projects tend to include different teams and, sometimes, contract workers or independent companies. Due to the great number of project management methodologies that are available at present, it's common to expect that two teams that use different methodologies work together on the same task. 

How to solve it: asking a team to use the same project management methodology that another team uses can result in serious delays and quality problems. A better approach would be to use a project management software tool that allows teams to translate the information of tasks and other details of the project from one methodology into the other.