Why project handling is difficult in an organization?

As a project manager, you need to evaluate the culture, your role, your team, the escalation of problems, your responsibilities and how to deal with extreme cases (delays, problematic team members, budget overruns, overruns, disagreements with a client, etc.).

And, in an appropriate environment, everyone follows the company’s mission and basic principles. This turns your decision-making process into a quantifiable and well-oiled machine designed to facilitate the team’s work and get the job done.

In theory, project management is the activity of ensuring the success of a project within a company.

Difficulties in managing new projects

Joining a new company and managing new projects comes with its own list of horrors. Here are some of them:

1. cope with a new corporate structure

Companies tend to organize their structure according to one of the three common methods:

· Functional organizational structure

· Organizational structure related to the project

· Matrix organizational structure

Each approach determines the role of the PM in the company and its daily activities, which could extend to several different areas as well.

Taking into account the techniques of Henri Fayol (the author of the 14 management principles), the main areas on which a project manager focuses are:

· Planning

· Organize

· Leadership

· Coordinate

· Management control

The time a PM spends on each activity depends on the project phase, the maturity of the company and the rest of the team.

2. Creation of a new efficient workflow

A project manager can be responsible for defining business processes, motivating the team, managing conflicts within the organization, overcoming objections from product owners, writing project documentation and facilitating discussions between different members of the organization.

This includes reporting, coordinating workflow with senior management, allocating resources for each sprint/interaction, identifying key people for a project and often juggling between several projects at once.

When you think about it, there are many “organizational” and “coordination” tasks that are not directly related to a particular project. Building the right organization and creating the right workflow is essential for the organization’s other current and future projects.

For this reason, a PM may be less involved in the day-to-day management of a project since he or she is involved in other strategic areas of the business development process.

3. Lead a new team of different personalities

From my point of view, this is a good start it means that there will be obvious problems at the beginning. There are also fruits at hand, and improving the team’s efficiency and productivity is a child’s play (a minimal effort in the right direction will give good results).

Of course, this usually means a lot of work and breaking eggs for an omelet. Toxic people must disappear. Interpersonal conflicts must be stopped. Sagging must be largely limited.

You will make enemies on your way it is inevitable if you lead change. There is no way out if you don’t give up and try to find a friendly and positive place in a well-funded start-up where everything is going as planned.

4. Priority setting

One of the most important questions to answer is:

Who should I serve?

Since you can’t please everyone, you need a certain goal:

· Your CEO/General Manager

· your employees

· Or your own reputation

· Income (or your commission or other)

· The purpose of the company

· Investors or members of the Board of Directors

· Some third-party partners/peers

Most people would opt for executives or cash. It’s not the only choice, so choose wisely.

Once you know the answer, find out about the action plan. Make a SWOT analysis of the business plan, your team, finances, projects or any other element you have created.

If some contracts are more profitable and successful than others, you should invest more resources in them. If some employees have a lot of potentials, give them a promotion or give them authority over toxic employees.

This requires that you can correctly assess the situation in a limited period of time.

Then turn the page around and find out what to do. People, projects, processes, tools.

5. Closing the gaps of former management

The next step is “filling in the gaps”. There has been some restructuring and you have no strategic roles. This often happens in parallel to the previous phase, i.e. you lose workers when you lay people off and need an emergency plan to meet the quota. But sometimes we talk about no loss when we hire someone who literally does nothing for 160 hours a month.

The pace of change depends on it. The process itself can also vary you can start slowly with motivating interviews that get the team going. Or jump right into the adventure and redesign everything before you even introduce yourself.

If this is your first time as a manager, it may not be a good start. This is a difficult case that requires some experience in the office policy, business development and growth strategy, finance, business processes in industry and more. If it is outside your comfort zone, it would be wiser to reject the role and find something simpler.

6. Dealing with bad scenarios

Your boss doesn’t know about it. Senior management decisions are poorly planned and executed.

The project is a waste. You have entered a minefield with bad industrial practices and ridiculous executions, delayed deadlines, false promises.

The team is hand-picked in “The Office”. We end up with people who are demotivated, underperforming, assigned to the wrong roles, who do not care about the company or the project at all.

The customer is demanding, cheap and promised the world. Now, you can try to work miracles but the result would probably be negative.

Conclusion

Convince your team that these best practices are not the bureaucratic effort to which they are accustomed, but that they are in fact an added value for the team. Use practical examples, tasks, extraction requests, commitments, business scenarios, customer requests. It may take a few laps, but gradually the team will agree to try it.