Pitfalls of Project Management

Communication - It is very important and the manager need to carefully document the information needs of all the stakeholders. Communicate the true status of project to all the stakeholders.

Assumptions - Document all your assumptions. Track all your assumptions periodically, beacuse they are the potential risk elements.

Some Best Practices for avoiding pitfalls

• Stronger the pre-project assessment lesser will be items in the risk mitigation and contingency plans; similarly, good project initiation results in lesser number of issues in the Issue-Remediation tracker
• Human-centric projects will always be more successful than process-centric [methodology] projects
• Methodologies can never replace/substitute for human talent
• A project must arise out of a burning need; such a need keeps all stakeholders continually engaged in the project
• Project manager must be identified based on willingness and ability and not just on availability
• PM must be able to scout for knowledge resources within and outside the organization and leverage them to continuously improve the project performance
• Documentation must lead to action and should not be just a part of soft junk in databases
• Project closing with a discussion post project review involving all members as well as other project managers; can be a valuable knowledge-sharing platform

Uncertainities of varying degree and impact forms the part and parcel of any Project. Without uncertainties there is no project.

Our objective should be to standardize and manage the project such that these uncertainties are minimized to the extent possible.

 A contingency fund and contingency plan to be established for uncetainties not under our control or not predictable from past expeirence.

PM should be well aware of the project, he should find the resources required for the project and has to plan the project with the resources available and to complete the project at given time and within the PCA cost

I could say is the PM has to be aware of many different project management methodologies and may have to select from the particular model which is aligned to the nature of the project scope. The PM also has to have inter-personal skills which cam make decisions, motivate personnel to action and also be able to effectively communicate with all levels of company management. Furthermore the PM must be sensitive to cultural and global differences in work ethic and management styles.