Planning is an essential and indispensable step in project management. It essentially involves developing the project schedule. It requires taking into account all aspects of the project within the given timeframe.
Statistically, most projects that fail, often spectacularly, owe their failure to poor planning by the project manager. Here are 8 recurring mistakes that can irrevocably lead your project to disaster.
1) Poorly Defined Objectives and KPIs
One of the core missions of project planning lies in determining the project’s objectives. This step in project management should serve to clarify and define the purpose of your project. Many projects fail not because the risks were poorly assessed or the planning flawed, but because of a lack of clear objectives and goals for everyone involved.
At the same time, it will be difficult to successfully complete the project if you fail to communicate its objectives to your teams. You must ensure that you define the objectives and communicate them clearly to the project stakeholders. These stakeholders must understand the reasons for their commitment to the project.
2) Planning without mastering the project’s key milestones
In project management, certain tasks are considered critical. These cannot be delayed or postponed without risking delays to the entire project, or worse, jeopardizing it altogether.
Therefore, during the planning phase, managers must ensure they define the project’s critical path. The activities or tasks that comprise the critical path are those so interdependent that one cannot begin without the other being completed first.
Mastering the project’s key milestones by defining its critical path allows for better management of deadlines. This is an essential component in evaluating the effectiveness of project management.
3) Incomplete Assessment of Necessary Resources
Planning and allocating resources as carefully as possible in line with strategic objectives is a project management imperative. Failing to do so is one of the most detrimental mistakes to project viability.
While proper resource assessment and allocation are absolutely essential, they are also complex. Bottlenecks often arise when resources are not properly assessed and allocated. Therefore, it is crucial to detail cost estimates and avoid underestimating or minimizing the necessary resources.
Several program management tools exist that enable project managers to make decisions regarding resource allocation while ensuring adherence to strategic objectives and project dependencies.
In all cases, the right solution should provide an overview of the availability of resources and skills required for future projects. This will make it easier to make the required skills available, either by increasing training or launching recruitment campaigns. You will also have the opportunity to anticipate the necessary resources and initiate processes to address any shortages. Early identification of potential resource conflicts applies to all resources. Goods to be purchased, production equipment, etc., are all similarly affected.
4) Poor Workload Estimation
The planning process should determine in advance the time, in hours, days, or weeks, and the effort required to complete each task. This process defines the total project duration.
However, workload estimates are not always accurate. This is because all project stakeholders are rarely involved. Yet, who better than these stakeholders to tell you how much time they deem necessary to complete the tasks? It is therefore essential to involve all project stakeholders. For example, it is the developer’s responsibility to estimate the time required to produce the first draft of the website. You can also draw inspiration from similar project experiences to make the most realistic estimate possible.
Finally, workload planning must be realistic. This means distributing the workload while taking constraints into account. A realistic schedule also considers each employee’s vacation time and working hours. One indicator used here is the utilization rate, which ideally should be close to 100%.
This planning work is crucial, as it will enable to ensure employees can work in good conditions while respecting deadlines.
5) Single-criterion planning
It is common to see project managers rely on a single criterion to plan their projects, especially when they want to complete the project quickly. In this context, the most frequently cited criterion is the availability of human resources. However, this type of planning does not take into account employees’ skills, their interest in the project, or their aspirations.
It is undeniable that single-criterion planning can seem appealing. But it can cause numerous roadblocks during the project’s execution. So what should be done? Opt for a solution that provides a comprehensive view of the elements necessary for planning. This includes a skills map with levels of expertise and aspirations, interest or disinterest in a project or client, employee availability, etc.
6) Failing to establish a risk management plan
One of the classic mistakes in project planning is operating with a large number of gray areas and uncertainties. Choosing to ignore the inherent risks of a project or failing to identify them can quickly lead to disaster.
Since zero risk is impossible, managers must identify the various threats related to objectives, deadlines, human resource management, and the technologies used. Once identified, these risks must be ranked by importance. The best strategy to adopt from among the identified solutions must then be determined.
7) Failing to implement a clear work process
If you don’t adopt a sufficiently clear and appropriate project management method, things can quickly become complicated during project execution. A structure is essential to stay focused on the objectives and avoid losing track. This is a common mistake, as implementing a work process is key to successful project management. Not adopting a sound management method makes it difficult to define and structure the work.
But the choice of methodology depends on the nature of the project, and it’s this choice that will make it easier to achieve the set objectives. However, you must carefully consider your working methods and environment when making such a choice.
8) Not using a suitable project planning solution
With the advent of project management software, managers and project leaders now have numerous solutions for better planning, task allocation, and effective team communication. They still need to decide which ones are best suited to the project.
Not using these solutions that make life and work easier is a ridiculous mistake. But selecting the wrong applications can also harm team productivity. That’s why you must consider your needs and priorities, your industry, and the specific characteristics of the project to choose the best project management solution.
Ideally, discuss this with your team. Why not also consider providing training for everyone so that the solution is used optimally during the execution phase?
Conclusion
Planning is an essential and indispensable step in project management. It requires taking into account every aspect of the project. The complexity of this phase often necessitates avoiding certain errors that could be fatal to the project. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a suitable project management solution, accurately estimate the necessary resources and the appropriate workload, implement a clear work process, and finally, define and prioritize tasks. Project planning that adheres to these key principles and avoids these listed errors has a greater chance of resulting in a successful project.