Problems faced and How solved them

 Problems faced and How solved them

As a project manager, they daily face different problems. He needs to solve them effectively.

Refer my previous article on Problem Solving Skills..

Now we will go through the problems I have faced in my experience and how I solved them.

  

Problem 1: 

Lack of accountability:

A common reason for project failure. 

A team member is not showing interest in taking accountability for the tasks assigned to him, not attending meetings, and not providing status updates to the lead.

Solution:

I had a discussion with the developer and lead, to whom he reports.

He found that he focused on the negatives of the project.

Started Encourage the team member to open his eyes to see what we are working on and why it's important to the client, organisation, and team.

A culture of punishment can poison any seeds of creativity and innovation. So we started encouraging him, and once he met the goal, we promised him he would be nominated for an award and ensured that he would be awarded.

Slowly, we have started seeing improvements in his work.

Problem 2:

Unrealistic deadlines: 

Project estimation was created during the proposal and approved during the SOW.

The team was assigned to the project during the project's kickoff.

Unrealistic deadlines are often caused by insufficient estimation of teams' capabilities due to the above factors.

As a project manager, my role is to estimate, negotiate, and execute project timelines, along with setting the right deadline for each task based on every team member's experience and skillset.

Review and revise the plan frequently based on the status of the task.

Problem 3:

Inadequate stakeholder (customer) engagement:

Remember, engaging with stakeholders is not just about meeting project objectives; it’s about fostering collaborative relationships that contribute to organization’s projects’ overall success and longevity.

During one of the project executions, we faced delays in getting APIs from other external project teams.

We addressed this to the client manager during the WSR and MSR meetings, but there was no support from him due to inadequate engagement.

I started to involve them in the decision-making process and used the communication channel as per the SOW.

I created a group in Microsoft Teams and started addressing our concerns and impact on project deliverables due to a delay in API integration and building positive relationships.

The client manager started understanding the impact on project success, and the account manager also started involving himself in the group chat. Then the client manager arranged meetings with the API team and our team. Once we started opening the communication channel, the API team provided their plan for releasing the API's, and we also revised our plan for the integration of the API and republished it.

The problem was solved smoothly due to building a positive relationship and providing a proper status update.