Part 1 – Five common project management challenges and how to overcome them

12 Jun 2023

This is the first part of a two-part series looking at common project management challenges, with some helpful tips on how to overcome them. In this post we’ll look at:

• Managing diverse stakeholders
• Right people at the right time
• Hitting timelines

In a future post we’ll explore:

• Scope creep
• Realising value from project investments

CHALLENGE – MANAGING DIVERSE STAKEHOLDERS
Projects by their very nature are cross-functional. They typically involve people with different professional experiences, viewpoints, interest levels or at worst conflicting expectations.

Project managers that manage projects under the assumption, that all people are the same, with similar expectations and who take a ‘template’ approach to engaging stakeholders are likely to be doomed to a project of continual restarts, protracted discussions, tedious meetings, milestone slippages and potentially by the project’s end, satisfying no one.

Knowing and understanding the project’s stakeholders
Effective management of diverse stakeholders starts early, by having at the outset of the project, clarity and agreement on the project’s objectives and scope. This acts as a solid foundation for early identification of WHO, beyond the project’s sponsoring group, are the project’s potential stakeholders.

A stakeholder can be described as a person or group that may affect, be affected by or perceived to be affected by the outcomes of a project. They include both people and groups internal and external of the commissioning organisation. We may also need to point out, that project team members also fit within our stakeholder definition.

Broadening one’s understanding of the project environment further aids the stakeholder identification process. A quick rapid list exercise, perhaps as early as the initial project briefing meeting, together with the project sponsoring group, can help develop a more accurate stakeholder list. Just like project risk management, project planning and other important project management practices, stakeholder identification is a practice that should continue throughout the project’s lifecycle. As the project progresses new stakeholders may come in to play, existing stakeholders may even drop off our stakeholder list.

Understanding WHAT stakeholders are interested in, WHAT their current level of interest is and HOW they will be affected, provides valuable insights to devising the project’s stakeholder engagement approach. Use of techniques such as stakeholder maps, influence/power or interest/concern matrices, benefits mapping exercises, developing stakeholder personas are just a few simple techniques that can be used to further our understanding on how the project will affect them and how best to engage.

Engaging stakeholders
What we have described until now has focused on knowing and understanding the project’s stakeholders. The next steps involve identifying HOW TO ENGAGE, initiation of ENGAGEMENT activities and identifying how to IMPROVE engagement activities, to realise engagement objectives.

Not all stakeholders will need the same engagement approach, nor is it best that the same person engage all stakeholders. It’s important that project stakeholders have a clear understanding of the project, through sharing the project’s definition. Some stakeholders may even drop off early once they have obtained a better understanding of the project’s objectives and scope – what will change and what will not change, whereas the interest levels of others may even increase.

It’s important all stakeholders, but particularly those key to the success of the project feel they have been heard and their interests are being considered. This can be achieved by involving them in different aspects of the project, including during the development of the project’s definition, planning, solution design and testing, risk and benefits management. Some stakeholders will seek opportunities to be involved in reviews and provide feedback. Some may also need to be involved in key decisions.

Consider sharing the project’s engagement approach with stakeholders, at least a summary version to help alleviate any unfounded concerns about the engagement approach.

Designing the project sponsoring group with key members having responsibility to represent the different stakeholder interests is one simple approach of ensuring stakeholder concerns are being heard and considered. The project sponsorship team needs to be abreast of stakeholder interests and concerns so that decisions are made with consideration of potential conflicts.

If it is identified expectations are drifting from the initial intent of the project, catch-ups, briefing papers and presentations may be needed to reaffirm the project’s objectives and scope.

A few extra tips for effective engagement of diverse stakeholders:

Engagement activities may slow the project down, but on the flip side they increase the chances of project and product ownership and realising the outcomes sought.

For more information explore our previous article Stakeholder engagement quick tips

CHALLENGE – RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME
You’ve heard the adage ‘timing is everything’. However, securing the right people with the right set of skills is not always a straightforward task. Acquiring the right skills at the right time is an ongoing challenge.

Experienced project managers know that it’s rare to have the perfect number of people with the right skills readily available at any point of time. There are many different reasons for this, some include:

• Skills or expertise may not be present in the sponsoring organisation
• Competing demands, both internal or contracted parties working on multiple client projects at any one time
• External dependencies, like regulatory decisions will affect project timings and inevitably don’t align with people’s availability
• Absent or deficient organisational capacity and capability planning

Potential Solutions

• Sometimes compromises need to be made, which may require one or more of the following:
  • Seek agreement to delay the project or parts of the project
  • Reduce its scope
  • Increase cost, by sourcing resources from elsewhere
  • Prioritise projects, to ensure the most important projects receive their required resources first. Difficult decisions need to be made, like delaying or cancelling projects to ensure the success of high-value projects
• A strategy sometimes not considered: If we know where from the organisation the bulk of the resources or critical resources will be sourced from, include their senior line manager on the project sponsorship group. As they become personally invested in the project’s success, this may increase the chances of the ‘right’ resources being released when needed.
• Micro-contracts: This involves creating internal agreements with line managers to release resources when needed. Such agreements are more likely to succeed when they define the benefits for each party.
• Identify resource requirements early: The need for a project is more often identified well in advance of their initiation date. Strategic resource management involves identifying resource requirements well in advance of the project, and then making necessary preparations in time for the project. In simpler language, effective capacity and capability planning driven by the organisation’s strategic goals.
• The project team having a common understanding of the elements of effective resource management, by attending a resource planning or project management training course.

CHALLENGE – HITTING TIMELINES
Why do so many projects not meet their timelines? The reasons for this are numerous, and the challenges already explained in this article can also be the source of this problem.

Studies show and continue to show project teams have a tendency to underestimate time and cost and overestimate the project’s benefits, even with this situation being well known, people are still keen to commit to sometimes unrealistic goals. Other reasons for sticking to unrealistic goals may be, political in nature, budgets and timelines being imposed on project teams with little opportunity or authority to adjust. Predicting timelines and budgets is tough. Let’s not forget, estimating is a prediction into the future, a future with many unknowns and a rapidly changing business and political environment.

So, how to hit timelines on a more consistent basis? Here are 3 approaches you could consider.

Estimate with tolerances
Hitting an exact target is close too impossible in most situations. It’s probably easier to hit the bull’s eye on a dart board on a more consistent basis, and we know that too requires a high level of training and skill.

The term tolerances, is a concept fundamental to methods like PRINCE2. The tolerance concept recognises estimating is difficult and because of this PRINCE2 recommends that estimates for key target parameters such as time, cost, benefits should always be presented with a ‘permissible range of deviation’. These ranges are agreed by the project’s sponsoring team and has an added advantage of providing the project team some flexibility, or if you prefer, empowerment to make changes to increase the project’s chances of hitting a more realistic target, as the target is presented with a more realistic and acceptable range.

It’s similar in application to a planning technique known as 3-point estimating. In simple terms, it involves estimating with 3 possible scenarios in mind, and presenting these estimates in the project’s planning documentation for endorsement. They are: Worst Case, Likely Case, Best Case scenario estimates.

Sacrifice scope, but not quality or time
A paradigm behind most agile frameworks like APMG’s agile project management framework: AgilePM

We’ll explain this approach by outlining two AgilePM principles and how they are applied to support ‘hitting timelines’.

• AgilePM Principle: Never Compromise Quality
• AgilePM Principle: Deliver on Time

AgilePM Principle: Never Compromise Quality
We’ll first explain Never Compromise Quality to provide the necessary context for the Deliver on Time principle.

The thought behind this principle: “all work should be aimed at achieving the level of quality agreed to, no more and no less”. That the solution should be ‘good enough’ to use effectively and deliver the value expected from the project investment. The product delivered in this context is often referred to as the ‘MVP’ – Minimum Viable Product or as the AgilePM framework describes it, the: MUST – Minimum Useable SubseT.

If the MVP/MUST concepts are not palatable, perhaps take a look back at your last projects and consider, was all that was asked for:

• Delivered?
• Necessary to realize the value sought?

It’s rare for all that is requested at the outset of the project turning out to be MUST haves by the project’s end. As projects progress more is learnt about the business environment and as the project team seeks clarifications from the customer, both the project team and customer will identify aspects of the product critical for success, and aspects of a lower importance. Using a prioritisation technique like MoSCoW – MUST HAVE, SHOULD HAVE, COULD HAVE, WON’T HAVE, described in a previous post: Top Tips for Agile for the Agile Project Manager helps to determine the MVP/MUST product, so that quality, be it key features and non-functional requirements are not sacrificed, whereas those that are considered non-critical are then sacrificed to ensure timelines are achieved.

AgilePM Principle: Deliver on Time
In summary, by having an upfront agreement on the MUST HAVEs for both product features and project scope, should a project find it challenging to achieve its timeline or budget, removing COULD HAVEs followed by SHOULD HAVEs from the project’s product or scope, acts as a buffer that enables achievement of time and cost targets.

Involve more people in the planning process
Planning should always be a team process, involving the views and experiences of the complete project team, rather than being reliant on a single person’s view. Rarely, does a single person have the complete knowledge and experiences to calculate the best possible estimates or insights to the competing commitments of resources. Project management is a team effort and therefore why is project planning so often not a team effort?

There are a number of simple approaches to involve project team members in the planning process:

Top-down estimating

• Using a group of people in a workshop founded on the ‘top-down’ estimating approach, where major products or functions of a solution are estimated, and these estimates are allocated to subordinate products or activities in the product or work breakdown structures. This can then be used to validate or adjust the higher-level estimates accordingly.

Bottom-up estimating

• Again, in possibly a workshop environment, or sometimes multiple 1:1 meetings with delivery team members, estimating time and effort for lower level products and activities and aggregating these estimates to establish an overall estimate.

Top-down estimating and bottom-up estimating

• If time is available, making use of both techniques for a single project or for a stage within the project. Two different estimates are likely to be established, with the lower adopted as a ‘best case’ and upper ‘worst case’, with somewhere in between, the ‘likely case’. These estimates can also be presented as the project’s ‘tolerances’, as explained earlier in this article.

To improve the accuracy of estimates it’s important to seek the views and opinions of different people, be it line managers, resource types, subject matter experts. Though these sources of knowledge can also get it wrong, as no project is the same.

Remember, each project has its own unique mix of characteristics be it different materials, resources, experience levels, functional designs with a different complexity level.

These are just a few characteristics that make each project unique. Uniqueness leads to uncertainty and estimates are based on assumptions. Presenting estimates with a buffer to accommodate for estimating uncertainties, whether in the form of tolerances, or feature prioritisation by using techniques such as the MoSCoW approach, will likely increase a project’s chances of hitting its timelines.

Ever considered a project management training course to enhance your team’s project planning skills and knowledge or the use of an independent planning facilitator? Contact us for more information.

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