A Plan Never Survives First Contact
In project management, planning and execution are the keystones to success.
However, as we said in the military, “A plan never survives first contact.” Problems happen, risks materialize, and even the most meticulously planned projects encounter pitfalls.
Ensuring your plan can either avoid or respond to these pitfalls is crucial for project managers and project teams to know.
This article will cover these issues that can pop up during planning and execution. I will offer insights and strategies to navigate these challenges and help ensure you can meet your strategic goals
1. The Role of Clear Objectives in Planning
Many organizations miss the opportunity set a clear strategy because they cannot focus their new ideas on strategic outcomes. When this happens we tend to get lack of clear goals and possibly misalignments with stakeholders.
Lack of Clear Goals
A huge pitfall that deserves to be the first one discusses is the lack of clear and defined goals.
When you do not have or you cannot communicate clear goals – you are telling your team to run without telling them where to go. In turn, the team works towards different ends, focusing on different goals, leading to confusion and a waster of time.
This must be avoided at all costs.
It is essential that the project manager and project teams work together to ensure clear goals are set. Each goal need an associated key performance indicators that meet the planning strategy of the project.
To do this, develop SMART goals:
Specific
Measurable
Achieveable
Relevant
Time-Bound
Setting SMART goals at the onset of the project ensures that everyone involved understands what the project vision is and what outcomes you are looking to achieve.
Misalignment with Stakeholders
Another common issue when it comes clear objective planning is misalignment with stakeholders. Stakeholders are not just senior leaders, but are the people involved with the delivery of the project.
To fall short on aligning the projects goals with alignment to your stakeholders means you lose support and possible value for the project. Conflict can occur as stakeholders feel their needs are not being addressed, making your life harder.
To prevent this, project managers need to engage stakeholders early in planning. Seek their inputs, get feedback on capabilities to accomplish work, and always get their feedback during execution. Regular communication and updates, through the communication management plan, can align and foster this needed collaborative environment.
2. Inadequate Risk Management
My favorite topic and least favorite thing to see go wrong for a project. Risk management, although not hard, can be tricky, leading to pitfalls early in a project.
Failure to Identify Risks
When planning and executing a project, it is easy to either overlook or speed through risk identification. But when we do this, we open ourselves to vulnerabilities and unforeseen issues with our project.
A risk assessment is integral to the planning process, but it is important to remember that risks are constantly evolving. It is time consuming, but necessary to constantly go through this risk identification process throughout your project.
Risk identification starts with pulling in your stakeholders and team members to go through series of planning events that target identifying risks. Examples of these planning techniques are:
You can prevent missing risks by properly putting the time together to go through risk identification planning. Then taking those risks and going through qualitative and quantitative risk analysis to finally build a risk register.
To learn more about this process, check out the article on the Risk Management Process.
Lack of Contingency Planning
When we plan for risks, it is not always about just identifying the risks. Instead, it is critical to come up with specific risk responses for each risk.
But, like most things, risks come with a cost.
Ex. I have a risk that has a 40% chance of happening and if it does could cost us up to $-5000
We use the formula Impact x Probability, which in this example is $-5000 x 40%
We come up with $-2000
The example above is an example of developing contingency reserve through Expected Monetary Value (EMV). The number ($-5000) could also have been just $5000, given that the impact was a positive risk or opportunity for the project.
EMV is not to be confused with EVM, which is Earned Value Management, learn more HERE
Many times we want to skip the math. It is time consuming and it is tedious, but it is the right approach to take when dealing with risks. Business leaders want to see the financial impacts as this can help push the strategic planning and execution of a project.
Which could end up helping you out with senior leaders just paying off the risk. Which is always helpful!
3. Underestimating Time and Resources
A serious problem comes in the form of time and resources. When you get this wrong, you can incur a high level of cost overruns. Which no one ever wants!
Unrealistic Timeframes
Setting unrealistic timeframes is a frequent pitfall that can severely impact project execution.
Underestimating the time required for tasks can lead to rushed work, poor quality, and burnout among team members. Overestimating time required for tasks can lead to extended timelines and increased budget.
To avoid this, project managers need to work with their team members to create realistic schedules based on accurate task estimations. These estimates need to be taken seriously, be well thought out, and should take the possibility of potential delays into account.
Insufficient Resource Allocation
Just like time, we tend to either overload or under plan our allocation of people.
Too often this comes from only looking at the people resources and overlooking other types of resources like equipment, materials, and even, computer programs.
Proper plannings for resources means looking at each ones:
Identifying the right resource
Ensuring availability
Managing timeline for low density items
Employment during needed points in the project lifecycle
Doing this means you can avoid bottlenecks and ensure that each team member has what they need to perform their roles, ensuring effective execution.
4. Communication Breakdowns
Communication breakdowns cause immediate problems. The execution of the project is almost impossible to progress if you cannot communicate the plan or the strategies involved.
Poor Communication Methods
Effective communication is the lifeblood of any project. A pitfall for project managers during planning is execution is they find comfort behind the computer screen.
Virtual communication is great, but it can lead to terrible communication methods
Poor communication channels methods lead to:
Misunderstandings
Missed deadlines
Risks and Issues
Errors
Low morale
It is essential to establish a robust communication protocol and tools suitable for your team and your plan. This communication can come in the form of:
Regular Meetings
On-call meetings
Clear reporting lines
Collaborative platforms
Chat groups
With the most effective and time proven method of in-person, face-to-face communication.
Solutions develop through daily activities which we communicate with one another. Each organization relies on this whether it be for developing strategies or receiving feedback. If you cannot talk to one another and use the right methods to do so, you will not achieve the strategic goals you are looking for in you project.
Miscommunication Between Teams
Even with new technology being use to open up the communication methods available, miscommunication can still occur. This becomes especially true for larger companies who form larger and more dispersed project teams.
The larger and more dispersed, the larger the effort for ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Project manager know that as your team grows, so do your communication channels. With the formula N(N-1)/2 = number of channels, you can see below how fast the number of channels can grow.
Having such a large number of channels can create:
Miscommunication
Conflicting Instructions
Duplicated Efforts
Missed Information
Risks and Issues
Errors
To mitigate this, project managers should put a good amount of effort into ensuring there is a culture of openness and transparency. Finding ways to stop the miscommunication through methods like a frequent newsletter, memos, or even daily standups an help alleviate this issue.
The overall goals should be to clarify anything that has been said. To ensure everyone is on the same page with the schedule. And that everyone know about any new or upcoming changes to the time, scope, or cost of the project.
No matter how junior they are on the project!
5. Inadequate Training and Team Development
My last area of shortfalls in planning and execution comes down to the team itself. Project managers need to get the team together, fight through Tuckmans Stages of Team Development, and start delivering the strategic initiatives they were formed to solve.
Skill Gaps in Teams
The first gap we have is in skills. During the planning phase, while the plan is put together, people and their skills need to align.
A skills gap within the project team can compromise the quality and efficiency of the work. Identifying and addressing these gaps early in the project is the difference between being able to successfully execute the project or fail.
Solutions for this skills gap start with knowing the plan and what skills you will need to complete it.
You then have to work with key stakeholders and/or executives to find the right people to make progress for the project. Doing things like providing training, hiring additional staff, or reallocating responsibilities to better match a team members’ strengths, all work to meet the strategic plan.
Investing in skills development ensures that the team is equipped to successfully execute the projects demands
Lack of Ongoing Training
When you bring on new members of the team, there needs to be a well-developed onboarding process. This process takes new individuals on the team and quickly tries to get them up to speed, hopefully slowing down the Tuckmans ladder drop by adding a new member to the team.
As most organizations these days are putting a focus on new technology, creating a fast paced environment. A high level of importance needs to be put on staying updated with the latest tools, technologies, and methodologies.
Project managers need to prioritize continuous learning for their teams. Using things like:
Workshops
Online Courses
Industry Conferences
Or even as simple as team lunches
By integrating these methods of learning, your team can grow with the project, overcoming the pitfalls around lack of ongoing training.
This not only enhances individual skills but also contributes to the overall success of the project.
Conclusion
The journey of project planning and execution can become overcomes with pitfalls. Each, of which, are capable of derailing your project – if not properly managed.
From setting clear objectives and aligning with stakeholders. To managing risks and allocating resources, the complexities are numerous. Effective communication, realistic timelines, and robust training become more and more necessary to navigate these challenges.
As project managers, our mission is to manage the project, which means foreseeing and working to respond to these issues, proactively.
Remember! The key is not to AVOID every pitfall – That is impossible. The goal is to have a strategic plan and the resiliency to respond to and address them swiftly as they arise.
Take strategic planning serious, constantly learn, be resilient, and you can easily turn these pitfalls into bridges of opportunistic for growth and improvement.
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