Graded Homework

ISSUES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT Issues of Project Management
Joseph Archie
University of Phoenix 1 PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES 2 Introduction
Project management involves the use of knowledge, skills, and tools to the project
tasks and activities for the project requirements to be met. For any project success, the project
manager should integrate various project elements such as cost, risk, quality, human
resources, and stakeholder management. Poor coordination of these project elements may
pose challenges that may lead to project failure or otherwise compromising the quality of the
project.
Project management challenges
Poor communication
Effective communication is an important ingredient in any project success. Proper
communication provides direction at each stage of the project to the project leader, so that
each team leader is aware of what is expected from the project. A good communication places
emphasis on both the written and oral skills aimed at boosting the morale and attitudes of the
stakeholders by setting up clear expectations. Further, communication facilitates information
flow among the stakeholders thus allowing feedback (Bisk, 2017).
Poor communication can therefore haunt proper execution of the project. If
communication is not clear, the expected project deliverables and requirements may not be
well articulated and understood by the project teams and management. Unplanned
requirements associated with poor communication may lead to resource shortages, creep
scope, poor relationships and end solutions that do not satisfy the project initial deliverables.
Further, collaboration between project teams may be impossible if proper communication is
not adopted. Ineffective communication isolates members of the project team, as many of
them do not understand the project deliverables and their roles and responsibilities. This can
lead to conflicts thus leading to failure of a project (Hignett, 2017). PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES 3 Resource over- allocation and over-commitment
Resource management focuses on the human, financial and other project resources.
Human resources need to be carefully managed for project success. If these resources are
mismanaged, then the project may fail, costs escalate and expose the project to more risks
(Bowen, 2009). Resource over-allocation arises when the task assignments are allocated to
resources that may not be adequate. It is majorly caused by poor project prioritizations,
planning failure and poor risk assessment. Over-allocation leads to excessive stretch of
resources since the resources are limited and the project (s) have multiple tasks (Bowen,
2012).
Poor task scheduling can lead to over-allocation of resources. Sometimes project
managers may be allocated a task and the efforts on that task turns out to be more than the
work was initially expected. Similarly, a project manager may be allocated multiple projects.
Projects can spin out of control if the resources are overstretched and meeting the project
solutions be hectic. Therefore, this may lead to additional costs incurred in the project for
realigning the project scope and objectives. If funds are limited to meet the arising demands
and pressures resulting from over-allocation of resources, then the project will definitely fail
(Fitzgerald, 2003).
Resource over-allocation can be solved through formulation of clear project priorities
and processes for mitigating the priority conflicts. This can be achieved through using
different techniques such as resource leveling, linking tasks, and giving a breather between
different project tasks. This will align tasks to the available resources and set up a clear
project timeline (Bowen, 2012). PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES 4 Gold Plating
Gold plating is a technique of constantly incorporating additional features to a project
which were not initially part of the project scope. It is usually done by project managers or
teams with a faithful intention at no additional costs. Mostly, clients do appreciate gold
plating as they are not required to pay extra charges for any new feature introduced.
However, sometimes clients may reject the projects if the additional features were not purely
required by the client as they may be regarded as unauthorized scope variation. Gold plating
is dangerous to any project in the long run since it exposes the project to additional risks,
input costs, and it raises client expectations which may not actually be met. This may
therefore compromise the quality of the project given the resource constraints that any project
targets to maximize (Usmani, n.d).
Poor risk management
Risk management involves the identification, assessment and ranking of the risks that
are likely to affect a project. Resource coordination and economic application is then utilized
to ensure the identified risks are mitigated, monitored and controlled so that their impact on
the quality of a project is minimized. Every project has different levels of risks due to the
great overdependence on the immediate environment, management, people, resources,
processes and other factors. As such, these risks needs to be identified at early stages so that
the management can plan on how to reduce the risk impacts on the project quality. Poor risk
identification exposes the project to future uncertainties that may lead to additional unplanned
costs. The costs can be unbearable thus implying that some activities and tasks of the project
may not be well undertaken due to limited resources that have been consumed by the PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES 5 emerging unforeseen risks. Therefore, the uncertain costs arising from poor risk management
may lead to budget constraints and consequently leading to project failure (Ratsiepe &
Yazdanifard, 2011).
References
Bisk (2017). Villanova University. Top 10 project management challenges.
https://www.villanovau.com/resources/project-management/top-10challenges/#.WVCMK-uGPIU
Bowen, R. (2009). Bright Hub Project Management. Key elements of Resource Management.
http://www.brighthubpm.com/resource-management/14438-key-elements-ofresource-management/
Bowen, R. (2012). Bright Hub Project Management. Resource Allocation: Do you overwork
your resources? http://www.brighthubpm.com/resource-management/11638-resourceallocation-do-you-overwork-your-resources/
Fitzgerald, D. (2003). TechRepublic, The keys to resource allocation.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-keys-to-resource-allocation/
Hignett, T. (2017). Corework. Poor Communication leads to project failure one third of the
time. http://www.coreworx.com/pmi-study-reveals-poor-communication-leads-toproject-failure-one-third-of-the-time/
Ratsiepe, K. B., & Yazdanifard, R. (2011, August). Poor risk management as one of the major
reasons causing failure of project management. In Management and Service Science
(MASS), 2011 International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
https://www.academia.edu/6699027/Poor_Risk_Management_as_One_of_the_Major_
Reasons_Causing_Failure_of_Project_Management PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
Usmani, F. (n.d). PM Study Circle. Scope Creep and Gold Plating in Project Management.
https://pmstudycircle.com/2012/09/scope-creep-and-gold-plating-in-projectmanagement/ 6