The 7 Lethal Sins — and Virtues — of Undertaking Administration

We already know that venture managers are heroes and saints for juggling all that they’ve on their plates.

No, actually. We even made the prayer candles to show it:

However saints aren’t all the time excellent. In truth, many famend saints had notoriously sinful pasts. St. Augustine even famously wrote about his transgression stealing pears in his autobiography, Confessions.

So, whereas venture managers will not be confronted with the time-honored sins of greed, gluttony, pleasure, and wrath of their every day work life (and if they’re, effectively, that’s for one more put up), they do have their very own management-related sins to keep away from.

And we’ve gathered them right here that can assist you confront your demons as soon as and for all. The excellent news is we’ve additionally paired every sin with a corresponding advantage. So you can begin righting your wrongs and streamlining your venture administration operation — guilt-free.

The 7 lethal sins —  and virtues — of venture administration embrace:

1. Utilizing out of date knowledge to make selections

Excessive-quality knowledge is the important thing to profitable venture administration. You can have nice collaborators, an easy-to-use platform, and clear venture targets. However with out the best knowledge, you received’t be capable of make knowledgeable selections and adapt on the fly. That means, you received’t be geared up to satisfy that many modifications that include every day venture administration.

Advantage: Use real-time knowledge to remain updated. Ensure that your venture portfolio administration (PPM) platform mechanically updates knowledge in actual time so you can also make extra knowledgeable selections and instantly take motion when modifications happen.

Based on a current survey from Proggio, 77% of venture managers really feel overwhelmed or overworked by the quantity of tasks they’re dealing with. And 75% say their instruments and work environments are largely in charge.

It’s no marvel, contemplating 77% of venture managers use 3-7 instruments and greater than 15% use 8-15 instruments. Once you’re making an attempt to handle and replace that many programs directly, it solely provides extra work and frustration to your already full docket.

Advantage: Select complete instruments with useful integrations. Do your analysis. Choose solely the instruments that make your life simpler by automating duties and streamlining workflows. They need to additionally provide a number of options and combine with different programs, so you’ll be able to handle tasks from one central hub.

3. Relying too closely on Gantt charts

When Gantt charts first took place within the early 1900s, they have been revolutionary organizational instruments. The issue is that, over 100 years later, the venture administration business nonetheless hasn’t innovated previous them:

Which means managers are caught with out of date charts that may’t deal with advanced tasks, don’t present full-portfolio readability, and aren’t constructed for cross-team collaboration. 

Advantage: Be a part of the twenty first century with Undertaking Maps. Commerce within the outdated Gantt chart for the fashionable Undertaking Map, an intuitive resolution that permits you to view and handle your complete portfolio on one, adjustable timeline.

4. Losing time on twin knowledge entries

As our survey discovered, over 60% of venture managers waste 7 hours per week on double knowledge entry and 19% waste 8-11 hours. On prime of that, nearly half of venture managers say handbook twin knowledge entry is their largest problem at work.

Time is one among your most treasured sources as a venture supervisor. And it’s a sin to waste nearly a full work day every week on tedious duties that automated programs can deal with.

Advantage: Save time and sources with automation. Discover a resolution that automates twin knowledge entry, so that you rapidly confirm knowledge and may make extra time to strategize and optimize in the direction of your targets.

5. Constructing silos between groups and collaborators

Undertaking managers should be capable of simply talk with venture members and stakeholders — throughout the group. If tasks and knowledge are siloed, managers will solely waste time manually checking in on duties and updating their progress.

Advantage: Allow cross-team collaboration and alignment. Use a Dynamic View characteristic to handle cross-functional tasks and venture knowledge on a collaborative timeline. With Dynamic View, you’ll be able to simply observe progress throughout groups, edit permissions and restrictions, and maintain stakeholders knowledgeable each step of the way in which.

6. Failing to foretell dangers

Some points are robust to foresee, sure. However, with at this time’s danger administration instruments, there’s no excuse for lacking identifiable dangers earlier than they trigger hassle. As many venture managers know, failing to foretell potential dangers can result in main setbacks and drain your finances.

Advantage: Establish and mitigate dangers forward of time. Use a dependable danger administration software to mechanically pinpoint and tackle dangers in your portfolio. The suitable software ought to assist you to categorize danger severity, construct danger matrices, and assign danger administration duties to totally different collaborators.

7. Lacking out on a chook’s-eye-view of your portfolio

Even with all the points above, venture managers say their largest problem is lack of visibility. Based on our survey, 70% want a greater view of what others of their workstream are doing. And an awesome majority say it could be essential to entry real-time venture visualizations.

With out clear visibility into their workflows, venture managers may have hassle making modifications and adapting in actual time. As a result of any adjustment might have an effect on the opposite tasks and stakeholders of their portfolio. However they received’t have any option to see or handle all of these modifications from one place.

Advantage: Get pleasure from full visibility of your venture portfolio. Use a PPM that gives a chook’s-eye-view of your complete venture portfolio, so you’ll be able to visualize and handle a number of tasks directly. Your PPM must also assist you to rank tasks by precedence, so you’ll be able to higher allocate your time and keep on observe in the direction of enterprise targets.

Absolve your self of venture administration sins

Look, everybody makes errors. And, as we famous, even saints aren’t excellent. However the fact is should you’re weighing down your venture administration operation with outdated instruments and methods, you’re solely robbing your self of invaluable alternatives to extend productiveness and outcomes.

Frankly, that’s a sin and a discredit to your groups and the arduous work that you just put in day after day.

So if you end up responsible of any of the above, begin taking the steps to absolve your self of these sins and streamline your processes. As a result of there are answers on the market to assist.
Able to observe extra virtuous and productive venture administration? Ebook a demo with Proggio.