Productive project management can drive a company towards success, giving employees a clear, easy-to-follow path towards completing their work objectives in a highly efficient manner. If done strategically, project management can keep everyone on track, including upper management, and create much-needed transparency in business processes.

To be able to create realistic goals in line with the company’s vision and still retain flexibility for any unseen circumstances during the project’s life cycle, making effective decisions is crucial to adhere to a structure that keeps the team’s momentum moving forward.

The decision-making process in project management can heavily influence the success employees feel as individuals (and as a team) or, unfortunately, create a litany of workflow issues and interpersonal misunderstandings.

Importance Of Decision-Making In Project Management

There are many reasons why the decision-making process is important to project management:

• Lessens the risk of continued project delays or, in worst cases, delivery of an unfinished assignment
• Takes into account unexpected hurdles and seamlessly keeps the progress of the project going
• Sets up individuals on the team for success in the part of the project they own
• Reduces the amount of overwhelm employees feel by providing achievable deadlines and clarity on relevant processes
• Leverages the various talents on the team so they can operate within their zone of genius and produce high-quality work within the scheduled timeline
• Provides an organized structure that’s easy for everyone to understand and follow
• Helps clarify the goals of the project from start to finish
• Keeps the workflow focused so the team can achieve essential milestones
• Avoids costly mistakes due to repetitive project failures

Strategic decisions in project management are made with these four vital factors in mind:

1. The goals of the project – What are the milestones that need to be achieved from the beginning of the project to the very end?
2. The resources available – Who on the team will be responsible for particular tasks? What platforms, budget, services, and communication channels are available to the organization, ensuring collaboration and idea-sharing is an easy process?
3. The intended outcome – With this project, what do we want to achieve? What does success look like? And what type of value does the organization want to provide?
4. The value the result will have on the company overall – How does it impact the organization’s bottom line? Are the goals of the various projects in line with the company’s big-picture mission?

These are key elements of the decision-making process in project management. However, these types of decisions can create challenges for those involved with leading and managing various company initiatives.

Challenges of Decision-Making In Project Management

According to PMI’s “Pulse of the Profession: High Cost of Low Performance,” only 42% of organizations report high alignment with or projects to organizational business strategy. As little as 32% of organizations report that their projects are better aligned than previous years. In other words, if the goals of the project don’t align with the company’s overall strategy, the less success there will be for that organization.

To help overcome some of the inevitable challenges with project management, it’s important to understand the barriers that block efficient decision-making in the workplace:

• Engagement with PM tools – Much of this comes down to how familiar and comfortable employees are with using the company’s chosen systems, allowing for more streamlined project management. Using new technology and adapting to its various updates is a familiar challenge in the workplace. To combat this, training and development should remain a top priority for new and more senior team members to keep their knowledge up-to-date. If a team cannot keep up with evolving technology, they’ll fall behind quickly, unable to properly use these resources to their (and the company’s) benefit. For example, when a new team member is not thoroughly trained in the platforms used to keep track of a project’s progress, this lack of understanding and engagement with the tool can cause disruptive delays. They may not know when to mark a task as complete or how to provide an update so the project manager can make appropriate adjustments to the timeline and notify all relevant parties. This creates an unnecessary, negative domino effect for the entire team.
• Scheduling – Conflicts in scheduling happen frequently, especially if an organization is working on multiple projects at a time. A successful project manager (PM) takes this into consideration when proposing and implementing a timeline that is manageable for everyone. Issues occur when there is a lack of communication about vacation or time-off requests, demands of other projects and how it impacts specific groups, and no organization when it comes time to sync all the relevant calendars together and pull in the necessary resources, enabling a smooth pipeline of simultaneous assignments.
• Rapid changes – Of course, changes occur all the time during the life cycle of any project. External customers or clients can have unique demands, which potentially stray from standard company procedures. Sometimes, the changes to procedures can come from internal management trying to discover new and improved ways of doing different tasks. The PM, in coordination with the project’s key players and leadership, must be able to have thorough conversations about the changes and discover workarounds that benefit everyone involved. It becomes a struggle for the team when project demands are constantly outside of normal practices. This slows down the workflow, causing a backlog of work until a solution can be found. If this happens across multiple projects at the same time, the team may not be able to produce high-quality results. For this type of barrier to be overcome, the team should collectively be upfront about their capacities and what they’re able to accommodate so that the appropriate decisions can be made.
• No existing practices – There are many occasions when a company is in the process of developing new methods and processes in order to find what works best for their team. Since this often takes time and consistent input from all the relevant parties about what’s working and what isn’t, more robust decision-making can be impacted as it can be a trial-and-error process. Those in managerial positions may have different approaches to problem-solving or the process needs to be tested multiple times before the team finds its rhythm.

• Team skills – One of the biggest roadblocks to effective decision-making in project management can be the resources available, including the team’s skill set. The success of a project depends on the people involved with its completion. The team must be able to rely on each other to do their respective parts, with firm checks and balances in place to guarantee a successful outcome and limit mistakes. Managers should be aware of their direct report’s strengths (and provide training for areas needing improvement), assign them tasks that encourage their growth as employees, and understand how the team as a whole works together in order to ensure effective collaboration. This is a crucial part of the decision-making process: making sure that the right people are in the right seats so the project moves forward successfully. Managers should also be able to identify when it’s time to recruit for positions requiring particular skill sets to address any gaps in the current team structure and provide further support.
• Budget constraints – Budgets act as a guide on how to best move forward and can make it clear what projects take priority and what may be consuming too much time without enough return. It can also determine what resources are currently available and what needs to be allocated to other areas of the company. Put simply, budgets can help give a company direction in what’s possible. In order to make good decisions for the short and long term, the leadership team needs to be clear on where it stands financially to ensure productive operations and continued growth and expansion. Another challenge is creating a realistic budget that takes into account all the individual costs that go into a project. A stricter, smaller budget may impede some teams’ ability to get their work done efficiently if not coordinated strategically.
• Communication – In a survey of 400 companies with 100,00 employees, it was revealed that companies lose an average of $62.4 million dollars per year due to poor communication to and between their employees. Companies with poor communication often host a workplace environment where employees find it difficult to stay focused and feel motivated. As project management largely depends on how well a team communicates with one another to get a project to the finish line and problem-solve along the way, any breakdown in communication between leadership and employees can have disastrous results that extend beyond project management.

While many challenges exist that can heavily impact decision-making in project management, there are ways to help facilitate this process that can set the team up for success.

The Decision-Making Process In Project Management

There are a few steps to consider when approaching decision-making in project management:

1. Identify the purpose of your decision. This is the essential first step in decision-making. You must be able to clearly define the goal behind the decision needing to be made. For example, let’s say we have a PM who is working on putting together a structure for a writing project that will be read aloud on a podcast. Aside from creating a solid timeline of milestones, the PM will need to have a clear goal in mind in order to make effective decisions. The goal in this specific case would be to identify and choose the few individuals to comprise the team, whose expertise will deliver the final product in a faster manner than usual. Since this particular example is considered a high-priority project needing a finer eye, extra care and diligence must be top of mind when making choosing the appropriate team.
2. Have all the information you need directly related to the problem. Before you make a decision, you need to collect all the relevant information, both internally and externally. Let’s take our example of the PM whose team was tasked with writing a project that will be read aloud on a podcast, expanding the company’s visibility. Internally, the PM needs to know the team’s availability to be able to make a decision on a feasible timeline while simultaneously understanding the needs of the external client and their own expectations. This ensures that the team is meeting important milestones.
3. Consider the impact it will have on the rest of the team. When it comes to decision-making, you’ll need to keep in mind the proposed decision will have a ripple effect on the rest of the team. If the decision of a PM causes an imbalance of work – with one person getting more work than another – a new decision should be made in order to rectify the situation. Workplace initiatives often require regular feedback from the individuals on a team so that better, well-thought-out decisions can be made. In our example, the PM will need to review the workload of the team against the needs of the project. If there is considerable conflict in schedules or availability, a team discussion may be needed to identify a solution.
4. Identify different methods as alternatives. Part of a PM’s job is to think about different workflow paths in the event the process doesn’t go as originally planned, or identify if there is a way to work more effectively given the circumstances of the situation. When considering different alternatives, it’s best to keep in mind that whichever secondary options exist still need to be in line with reaching the ultimate goal of the project. If the alternative option can help the team complete the project faster and more efficiently, this would be the time to evaluate all the information available and make a well-rounded decision.
5. Execute your decision. Now that you have all the information you need and have considered the overall impact it will have on the relevant parties, it’s time to execute the decision. The team will carry it out as discussed with relevant check-ins during the process, especially if it is new to the organization. This ensures the workflow process is running smoothly and gives an opportunity to identify, solve, and discuss any issues that arise needing the team’s input.
6. Evaluate continuously. As with any other decisions that impact the team and the work product, evaluation is necessary to help keep processes fresh and effective. You must consider the results of your decisions and whether or not it has met the needs of the project. If not, additional information may be needed in order to make better, more informed decisions when reviewing and improving the processes in the future.

Now that we understand the initial stages of decision-making, let’s talk about the different techniques you can apply in the workplace.

Examples Of Decision-Making In Project Management

Effective decision-making techniques are a healthy combination of intuition, experience, and analysis. Let’s take a look at examples of decision-making in project management.

• Heuristic Technique – This is a method of problem-solving when you want to make quick decisions given a limited time frame, accelerated deadline, or have complex data. This involves relying on past experience, recalling similar situations, intuitive guesswork, trial and error, and mental shortcuts to arrive at a fast solution. This method is intended to be flexible, leaving room for future adjustments. The one downside to this approach is that it can produce errors later in the project’s life cycle. If a particular project is similar in scope and circumstances to a previous assignment, the team can use estimations based on this prior data to make decisions.
• Multi-voting – Multi-voting is a group decision-making technique structured to reduce a large number of action items to a manageable amount based on a team discussion and subsequent vote. The result is a prioritized list that identifies what is most important to the team. Often used during brainstorming sessions, each team member selects from a large number of items what they feel is the most important in the bunch. Depending on the group, this can be done electronically, physically (via a ballot), or through raised hands in a meeting. Each person casts one vote. Then the votes are tallied and the process is repeated until there is a prioritized list of top items. In the case of project management, multi-voting can manifest when the PM works with leadership on an upcoming project. After some discussion about the assignment and the potential issues that may be relevant, the group can then come up with an organized list of the high-priority action items needing to be done.

• Pros/Cons – Quantifying the pros and cons of a decision is one of the most standard approaches. This simple method allows you to think about your decision from all perspectives before confidently making a choice. It’s a quick, easy method to implement that results in objective decisions. This is especially useful when you have doubts about the decision you’re about to make. Whether you decide to do this electronically or on a piece of paper, you can start by writing down your decision at the top. Then, using two columns, write down all the benefits your decision will have on the team. In the other column, you can then jot down your thoughts on any negative outcomes you potentially foresee. An effective way to fully utilize this approach is to get your initial thoughts down as quickly as you can. After you have something on paper, you can then consider the more thoughtful additions to either column. The limitation to this technique is that this is best used when offered up two concrete choices and doesn’t offer much flexibility when you’re faced with multiple issues. Project management often involves various amounts of problem-solving, so if a quick decision needs to be made that has been thoroughly vetted, then evaluating the pros and cons of a decision can prove useful.
• Decision-Tree Analysis – Decision-tree analysis is a visual representation of decisions, potential outcomes, consequences, and possible costs. Using a series of branches and nodes, this support tool can help the project management team identify solutions and evaluate their readiness for implementation. Conversely, branches holding alternative options can be cut entirely from the diagram based on their usefulness to the project. This method is most useful for complex problem-solving, operations, strategies, and cost management. Undeniably, the greatest advantage of the technique is that it is a visual tool, allowing you to see all the possible scenarios in combination with expected outcomes. To use this method in project management, you first need to define the problem in which a decision is needed. Then you can start drawing the decision tree with all the possible solutions and consequences. Anything relevant to the outcome goes into the tree. This includes the monetary value and potential payoffs.

• SWOT analysis – SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It can reveal areas that need improvement and what is likely to succeed. In project management, Strengths will be your internal factors such as the resources you have available like software, the expertise of the team members, customer relationship, etc. Weaknesses, on the other hand, are the factors that hinder the project’s completion such as budget constraints, an inexperienced team, or lack of transparency into established processes. Opportunities are the external factors that support the project such as another task finishing early, freeing up more resources for the team. Threats are what can impair the success of the project. When you understand how all these components work together, it’s easier to come up with a strategic decision so you can take appropriate action.

A lack of resources in project management doesn’t need to spell disaster. In fact, a key part of a project manager’s role is finding a way to make things work without exceeding the budget with the resources they have available. Resources can be anything from material to equipment to staff power.

Good project managers will be able to navigate through their projects and supply their deliverables on time. They will know how to make the most out of the resources available and get more out of their staff. In this article, we’ll be looking at how to deal with a lack of resources and some tricks for meeting deadlines.

There are many reasons that could cause resources to be stretched and it’s the job of the project manager and their team to figure out the next move. Let’s take a look at some of the most common causes for a lack of resources at work.

What Causes A Lack of Resources In Project Management?

If only everything could operate as planned all the time, we’d never have any issues. Unfortunately, that is not the reality that project managers will face. Problems will rear their ugly face as often as they can if you’re not prepared.

The saying “everything that can go wrong will go wrong” is never more true than when you undertake a new project. Lack of resources can sometimes be identified early enough to prevent. However, there will be unexpected events that can derail a project’s progress.

Some of the issues that project managers can expect at work include:

Higher Priorities

Businesses often have more than one project running at any given time. On occasion, there may be a call to redeploy your resources to another project that needs them more. These decisions can be made by executives and are entirely out of your hands.

When this happens, the project manager will need to assist the company by relinquishing some of its resources to the other project. It could be moving materials, equipment, or staff which can lead to delays in the project.

Staff Absence

Team members may have to take unexpected time off such as sickness or personal days. Vacation days on the other hand can be planned ahead of time and shouldn’t affect the overall progress too much. However, when a staff member falls ill or suffers a bereavement they may need to take an undisclosed amount of time off.

The problem can accelerate when multiple team members need to take sick days at the same time. To combat this you may need to hire temporary workers or redistribute staff to make up the workload.

Broken Equipment

When equipment breaks it can be a major setback for any project no matter the size. For example, if your intranet system breaks and no one can access shared files, a project could be forced to stand still. Some issues are temporary and can be resolved quickly whereas others can be ongoing with a costly fix.

If you’re using expensive equipment that requires a significant portion of the budget and it breaks, the project is in serious jeopardy. An engineer will need to be deployed to fix the issue which is an added expense not budgeted. This stretches the time and cost of the project.

Supply Issues

Not all issues will stem from in-house. Supply issues can catch you off guard and there’s not a lot you can do if the other companies in the supply chain aren’t delivering. These issues can stem from a lack of materials at the warehouse, or not enough drivers to deliver the goods.

Despite exchanging contracts and agreeing on a delivery date, things get missed. If the delivery is crucial to project progression it can hold things up. Your team members will have to sit twiddling their thumbs until the goods arrive. As a project manager, you can jump on the phone and try to speed the delivery up but sometimes it’s completely out of your hands.

Poor Planning

Sometimes it just boils down to poor planning during the early stages of the project. Blaming the issues on poor planning should not be the last resort. The sooner the issue is identified the quicker problems can be rectified.

This is why a project needs to be properly planned ahead of time with all the relevant documents. A baseline budget is a great document to help anticipate and plan for a lack of resources in project management.

Plan the project thoroughly in the early phases and use these plans to compare actual progress with projected progress. That way projects can be kept on the right track as best as possible.

Technology Issues

In many ways, technology has increased productivity across all industries. However, it presents its own challenges that can hold up project development. One such problem is where people aren’t familiar with the technology you want to use and how large the learning curve is for it.

If you’re working with outdated technology such as desktop hardware, your productivity can be affected as things take longer to respond. This eats into the time your team has available to use on actual work.

Software that is no longer supported by the developer can hinder development. If the budget doesn’t allow for new software, staff will have to make do but their progress may be slowed down.

How To Prevent a Lack of Resources At Work

Prevention is the best course of action to deal with a lack of resources. If you can spot potential issues early enough, you can work on a plan to ensure the worst doesn’t come to pass. Of course, it’s not always going to be possible but preventing a lack of resources in project management is a big part of the job.

The easiest way to do this is by developing a method of monitoring the resources as the project is underway. At the start of the project, you should compile documents on resource allocation, budget limitations, and the project schedules. It may be worth splitting the project into phases which can be easier to monitor and control the risks.

Here are some things you should consider doing at the start of the project:

• Understand the deliverables
• Set a deadline
• Define the scope of the project
• Identify any project lags
• Estimating activity levels
• Forecast and estimations based on prior projects
• Develop a baseline budget
• Create a RAID log (risks, actions, issues, decisions)
• Project communication plan
• Use project management software

The more prepared you are at the start of a project the smoother the development will be. When compiling the necessary documents in the early stages you’ll be able to identify potential issues and plan accordingly. Preventing a resource shortage should be a top priority throughout the life cycle of a project and the best way to do that is through monitoring and control.

Using a good project management tool such as Teamly can make all the difference for your projects. We’ve designed it to be the only tool you’ll need for all your project management requirements. It allows you to connect your entire team remotely which gives you more flexibility to finish projects faster than your competition.

By having all your information in one place, you’ll be able to monitor project progression with ease. If there is an opportunity to spot a lack of resources early, software like this can give you a nice head start.

How To Plan Your Resources Efficiently

During the early phases of a project, you can put together a resource plan which documents what’s available to you and how to split it up during the project. This is a document that should be as thorough as possible when you create it. Include details of staffing, materials, equipment, and anything else you deem necessary.

Work out exactly what resources you need to complete the project on time and on budget. You can use previous projects as a benchmark when deciding on what’s needed for the new one. At this point, you’ll be able to anticipate if the budget and resources available are adequate.

Next, you’ll need to understand when each resource will be needed during each phase of the project. You may not need every staff member working on the project at the beginning but as production ramps up, you’ll need to bring more people in. If you can plan this ahead of time, you’ll know the impact the resources will have on project development.

If you’re dealing with limited resources you should figure out how often you’ll need to use them. Break down usage according to days, weeks, and months. If certain things are only needed for a single day in the project, you’ll know the best time to deploy them to keep costs down.

A good project manager will be able to identify what resources can be stretched to fulfill more requirements. Look at the unmoveable aspects of the project such as deadline and budget and work on getting the most out of every resource you have.

What to Do When You Notice A Lack of Resources?

When you first realize that the resources available are dwindling you need to figure out why before anything else. The reason could be obvious such as staff sickness and the fix is obvious as well, such as adding another member to the team temporarily. Other issues may take longer to identify but it’s an important first step to know what to do next.

Small problems that require an easy fix can be remedied by looking at the task list and rearranging priorities if there is any wiggle room. If it’s a major problem then you need to understand what the impact is going to be on the project, including time and cost considerations.

Once you have a clear understanding of the impact, note down if this will affect the scope or quality of the project. Now you’ll need to devise a plan to work around the issues and speak with the other stakeholders in the project. You may be tempted to try and fix the problem alone but involving more people can help address the issues better.

The other stakeholders in the project could include the product owner, executives, the client, and key members of the team. Put your heads together to devise a plan to address the lack of resources at work and how to move forward on time and on budget.

It’s at this point a request can be put into the control board to allocate more resources, whether additional staff or a budget increase. Ultimately, it will be their decision so including them in the discussion at this stage is vital. Avoid putting off the discussion if it becomes apparent more resources are required.

Once the plan is made, you’ll then need to implement and oversee the decisions. Keep a close eye on resource allocation to ensure the new agreements are sufficient to see the project through to completion.

Use the Experience to Plan More Effectively in the Future

Although a lack of resources can be stressful for project managers it can be a great way to learn and level up your abilities. Think about how the lack of resources impacted the project. Did you have to go over budget or ask for a deadline extension?

There will be clear lessons to learn when this happens and you should be open to them. Sit down with the stakeholders at the end of the project to discuss any inefficiencies and what led to the lack of resources at work in the first place.

Take on board any criticism or advice people have and grow from the opportunity. Unfortunately, the possibility of poor resource allocation is a common issue for project managers.

Think about what caused the issues and if there was a chance to spot things earlier. People can learn a lot from adversity and dealing with a lack of resources provides a great opportunity for growth.

Most sources claim that project management was “invented” in the mid-20th century, when Gantt charts were popularized and concepts like cost prediction and project scheduling were created.

But history is filled with endless examples of project management brilliance. What is true is that, until around 1950, project management-specific techniques and tools had never been used. Fast forward to today and project management is almost unrecognizable from just 1-2 decades ago. Its evolution has been rapid and transformative for virtually every industry in every nation on Earth.

In this article we’re going to examine that evolution, from the earliest examples of project management through to today and beyond.

The history of project management

For most of history, it’s been the master tradesmen and architects who have personally overseen the construction of their work. From Hemiunu (Great Pyramid of Giza architect) to Isambard Kingdom Brunel (one of history’s great and prolific engineering geniuses) these masters wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the implementation of their designs to anyone else.

The simplest definition of a project is any effort to produce a unique result with due care to quality, time limits and budget. The Egyptian pyramids were built to very specific dimensions using then-groundbreaking techniques, funded by taxing the people, and built to quickly honor the royal dead—though it satisfies the 3 criteria, most historians don’t credit this as true project management.

So let’s jump ahead to the 1950s when the foundations of modern project management were laid.

1950s and 60s

This was where the modern project manager was born: a role of which the sole purpose was the optimization of project delivery, by using groundbreaking project management techniques and tools. The earliest such tools were the Critical Path Method (CPM) and PERT—the Program Evaluation and Review Technique:

• CPM—Developed by Morgan Walker of Dupont and James Kelley Jr of Remington Rand, this was essentially an algorithm (the first of its kind) to optimally schedule any set of project activities.
• PERT—Developed during the Polaris missile mission (during the cold war) PERT was a decision-making tool that considered 3 variables (time, resources and technical performance specs) in order to find the fastest possible way to achieve project objectives.

At a similar time, headway was made in complementary areas such as cost estimation and management, engineering economics and many others. As a result, the 50s and 60s laid the foundations for a new era of technological growth.

The 70s

Throughout the 1970s, project management continued to evolve. Let’s highlight two particularly prominent progressions:

• Project management software—This was the decade where Bill Gates launched Microsoft and computers first became affordable for medium-sized companies. It also saw the launch of the world’s first project management software companies (offering relational database management systems) of which the most prominent were Artemis, Oracle and Scitor.
• Material requirements planning—Another shift in thinking for manufacturing during the 60s and 70s was the invention of MRP, created in order to optimize manufacturing processes. The basic tenets were:
  • Ensure materials are available for production
  • Maintain lowest possible levels of materials
  • Plan manufacturing, delivery and purchasing activities

This was revolutionary since all industries had previously relied on simpler systems of ordering new materials when they ran out (Reorder Point methods) or ordering the amount of materials that most significantly reduced holding and ordering costs (Economic Purchase Quantity).

The 80s and 90s

By the early 90s, the entire landscape of project management had been transformed. Computers now dominated project scheduling and management for nearly all large and medium-sized companies. Monumental projects continued to be completed faster and better than thought possible, while setbacks—for example the tragedy of the Challenger space shuttle—spurred the advancement of risk management and quality management to new heights.

It was around this time that the concept of a project management methodology was invented. The Scrum methodology (which remains immensely popular to this day) was introduced by Jeff Sutherland in 1993. Agile (perhaps the most famous methodology) was first introduced slightly later in 2001.

These methodologies described new approaches to organizing and completing project activities, which gave teams a framework for even faster iteration and development of outcomes.

The 2000s

The advent of the internet changed everything once again. The power of personal computing and data management became stratospheric: data could now be shared with anyone, anywhere, at any time. It has of course facilitated global projects, but modern cloud-based management tools were also transformative for domestic and local projects.

What project management looks like today

If we were to take a project manager from the 70s or 80s and plop them into a modern PM role, they would be nothing short of astounded at what it demanded of them. Even though project management was instrumental in feats like the moon landings, the job was entirely focused on optimizing the process. The greater strategic goals and context of the project were managed by higher-ups, and the project manager role was about getting your head down and being a first-class technical performer.

Today, the duties of a high-performing project manager are significantly broader. We’re going to look at the 3 areas we’ve identified as being the most groundbreaking:

• The importance of people management
• The challenges of managing remote teams
• The requirement of becoming a strategic partner

These principles are becoming cornerstones of “new age” project management.

Increased focus on people management

As the trend for empowering employees and prioritizing wellbeing has continued to climb, so too has the remit of project management widened. It is no longer a purely process role: as well as overseeing project deliverables, managers are now required to develop the personal skills and soft attributes of employees, cultivate fulfillment in their roles, and be an empathetic ear to complaints, troubles and problems.

The reason? Well, there’s a few. On the one hand, we can talk all day about the vital importance of tools, techniques, projections and scheduling. But if you don’t prioritize the humans in your team, your project will always fall below its potential. This is a relatively new way of thinking, but employees are less willing than ever to tolerate unfair treatment, abuse, or apathy—if your company doesn’t offer them what they need, they’ll find a competitor that will.

People are now considered more crucial to the success of projects than ever before—if you lose them, you derail the project.

Soft skills are becoming essential

Our increasingly more collaborative work environments—with less focus on strictly top-down management—means the value placed on soft skills is through the roof.

Unfortunately, most managerial promotions (including those of project managers) come off the back of technical performance. For example, a tax accountant smashes it out the park for 2 years and gets rewarded with a promotion to project manager—but has she actually demonstrated any managerial expertise?

This can be problematic. However, things are tracking in the right direction. Companies are beginning to prioritize soft skills like communication, empathy and motivation when promoting candidates. Those are traits you can’t easily teach, if at all. Those with well-developed social and soft skills are naturally better disposed to person management.

This is a hugely challenging balancing act for companies. Do you focus on building a happy and engaged workforce (even if projects are run less smoothly and incur greater costs?) or hire a brilliant technical project manager and risk alienating team members?

The unique challenge of managing virtual teams

The complexities of managing global teams, while still relatively new, have been largely figured out. Businesses and nations have been operating global trades for a couple of centuries, one way or another, and the internet era has generally made this job easier. Project management has adapted: the rise of online tools like Teamly—designed for project scheduling, task management, communication etc—is a direct response to digital globalization.

When remote work first entered the mainstream in response to the global lockdowns of early 2020, it was a safeguard; an emergency placeholder before things went back to normal. Now, nearly 2 years on, remote work (either full or hybrid) has become the expectation for a majority of workers.

And for project managers, remote work can be a headache.

First, there’s communication. If your team is spread across different locations and your contact is fully (or even partially) remote, that presents complications—nevermind contrasting time zones or language barriers. As project manager, you need to put in more work to ensure communication is effective and streamlined, or else risk a buildup of frustration, stress, conflicts, and delays.

Nurturing relationships within the team is especially hard without personal contact time or social events. Virtual team members can also suffer from a lack of focus and poor productivity. Since resource allocation is a vital aspect of project management, there can be a tendency for projects to overrun.

None of these obstacles are insurmountable, but they do highlight the marked changes in the project management remit, even in just a few years.

Becoming a strategic partner

Perhaps the most fascinating shift for project managers is that they are now regularly contributing on a more strategic, directional level.

Project managers directly benefit from understanding how their project aligns with the company’s overall strategic goals and vision. Without this understanding, it’s much harder to deliver concretely effective outcomes. Familiarity with concepts like the triple bottom line (i.e. the social, ecological and economical outcomes of the project) allow PMs to use their expertise to reshape projects for greater success.

Once again, this is radically different to project management as recent as a few years ago. Job descriptions that were built around hard skills like scheduling and holding the team accountable have been superseded by “understanding the bigger picture” and “thinking outside the box”. There is an expectation of questioning assumptions, challenging status quos, identifying and prioritizing risks more effectively, and generally employing a more strategic approach.

Project managers have historically been doers—they worked hard to make sure everything worked as smoothly as possible to deliver whatever the higher-ups asked for. Now, more and more project managers are taking seats at the thinkers table, and it’s a serious gear change in responsibility.

Project management keeps getting more powerful

As our projects become exponentially more ambitious, so project management tools & techniques become exponentially more valuable. The intersection of totally diverse fields, languages, cultures, ambitions, abilities and much more means that the old model—master directs worker—is simply impossible.

Over a 20 year period, Americans and Soviets overcame an incomprehensible number of obstacles in their desperate attempt to become the winners of the Space Race. With all the resources in the world, this would have been laughably futile without project management and its associated techniques.

The insane rate of innovation we witnessed during this period has continued to accelerate well into the 21st century. Globalization and the internet have made virtually all projects more competitive than could have been imagined during most of human history.

When ancient Egypt’s master architects were building pyramids, there was never a young upstart looking to build better, sleeker pyramids on a more aggressive budget. Not so in today’s industries.

Project management has become one of the keys to running a successful business. CPM and PERT were ground-breaking and have led to the establishment of various successful project management methodologies in use today, as well as the myriad software tools which make them practicable.

What does the future of project management have in store?

For many, the ideal project manager should be unburdened from the responsibility of managing and motivating staff and being a strategic partner. They would rather see this as a more technical, process-oriented role. In order to achieve that, some companies are now investing in separate roles: the project manager and the people manager.

Personal and professional development of employees is for the people manager; the project undertaking and its various arms and legs are for the project manager.

This is a fascinating development because it adds a new layer of complexity to projects. It also requires more budget per project (because of the second manager) but also introduces a novel dynamic, with the potential for teams to have two separate managers. It goes without saying that this is only really employed at the large, multinational level—but who knows how this might change in the coming years.

Other futurists are considering possibilities like “hybrid project management” (where project management methodologies are combined) as well as the inevitable impact of groundbreaking new technologies.

However, the only thing we can say for sure is that the role of project management will change, probably faster and more dramatically than anyone is currently predicting.

Project managers need to prepare a baseline budget for approval early on during the process. It’s an essential document that helps monitor projected and actual costs incurred during a project. Due to the focus on money, creating a baseline budget can be a daunting task but they are a great reference point at every stage of the project development.

In order to create a baseline budget in project management, managers should look at current spending levels to inform the document. They are a time-phased plan and although it can be hard to anticipate all costs early on, the budget can be redrawn when there is a change of scope.

If you’re undertaking a new project or looking to re-baseline your project, then this article is for you. We’re going to go over the importance of a baseline budget in project management and how to create one.

What Is a Baseline Budget?

In project management, baseline budgets are projections for direct and indirect costs. A budget will include reference points that can be used in performance analysis. As the project manager, you will be able to refer to the budget concerning short-term and long-term objectives.

One of the benefits of a baseline budget from an executive point of view is that it can help to prevent projects from going over budget. Although the actual costs may differ from the projections, a baseline budget can help costs from spiraling out of control.

During the early stages of planning a project, project managers should start putting together the baseline budget. Details that should be included in a budget are cash flow, overheads, cost breakdown, unit price analyses, staff, and contractor budget.

Creating one early can help the team to identify risks that could happen, the scope of work, indirect costs associated with the project, and the project duration. This information can help to inform your team as well as provide a timeline to the people you report to.

Here are some of the things that should be included in the baseline budget. Not all projects will incur the same costs but these are some of the most common costs:

Importance of a Baseline Budget

It’s an early challenge that is essential for project managers to tackle. Estimations need to be made properly to help establish clear targets and milestones. Not only can this be used by the team but is useful for other stakeholders such as company executives. The baseline can be used to justify budget requests for approval.

A budget needs to be created early in a project’s life cycle or when there is a change in scope. Time and costs are two essential parts of every project and they need to be well documented.

This way they can provide estimates of durations, spending, and revenue which is helpful for project performance measurement. You will also be able to include a breakdown of contractor costs of the deliverables as well as indirect costs.

Calculate all the costs separately to make the baseline budget clearer. Including proper detail level is an essential ingredient to making a great budget. Help yourself by calculating the costs of tasks and goods individually. This includes creating details for all materials used for each separate task.

Estimations made in the budget need to be clear and well defined otherwise it can make it harder to track and reach targets. When a baseline budget is rich in detail it becomes a really useful document to refer back to as the project progresses.

Tracking the Budget

Once you have crafted the baseline budget it will be time to get the plans approved. After the project and budget are given the go-ahead you will enter the next phase of tracking the budget.

Now the baseline budget is compiled with estimates and projected costs it can be used to monitor against the actual costs incurred. It’s useful for keeping the project on track and avoiding the development from exceeding the budget.

Break the budget down even further to account for the different phases and locations of a project. As phases conclude you’ll have a clear idea of how the actual costs are stacking up against projections and whether things are on target or not. If at any point you are coming in over or under budget, adjustments can be made if possible.

It is good practice for project managers to refer back to the baseline budget to understand the schedule and cost performance for the project. This can help to identify if there are any issues with the current budget and may inform when you should initiate a re-baseline.

Making Changes to the Baseline Budget

The main reason for making changes to the baseline budget in project management is if there has been a change in scope. Otherwise, there usually won’t be a need to re-baseline unless there has been a call from management to initiate one. This could be due to a company-wide review of current spending.

Change in scope can happen during the development of a project when the client changes the requirements or deliverables. There may also be technical reasons that bring about the need for a re-baseline.

Once there has been a need to change the baseline budget the costs should be reevaluated to consider any changes in project conditions. The budget may need to be increased or reduced depending on the results of the re-baseline.

It’s common for new costs to be incurred during the development phase when unexpected events occur such as sickness within the team. Here are some of the reasons you may need to request an increase in the budget:

• Increased contractor fees
• Extra materials
• Sickness pay
• Additional staff costs
• New equipment being brought in

Your company or client may ask for a re-baseline with the purpose of reducing the costs associated with development. There may be an opportunity to reevaluate the budget if the project has progressed smoother than expected.

Sometimes it may be necessary to redistribute staffing resources which can affect the cost and timeline for a project. It is not uncommon for tasks within projects to be over or underestimated. During the developmental phase of the project, this may become clear and warrant a change in scope.

Managing projects is complicated—managing them well is even harder.

Despite all the training, resources, tools, and methodologies available to PMs today, there is a wide array of challenges that they face on a regular basis. An HBR study suggests that nearly 20% of all projects end up costing over two times their estimated amount, and almost three-quarters of tech projects are delivered with significant delays.

The problems that cause spiraling budgets and missed deadlines can stem from a spectrum of different areas, ranging from the project manager’s ability to plan and communicate to corporate culture and beyond.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the most common barriers project managers have to address and, more importantly, explore how they can confidently overcome them.

Let’s dive right in.

Not keeping teams on the same page

A significant part of project management revolves around creating a shared sense of context for lots of people, ranging from stakeholders to team members—and while it doesn’t sound like the most technical and complicated task out there, it can be extremely challenging.

Failing to do that can often result in disorientation and lack of transparency in a project. Keeping your team on the same page will ensure that everyone understands what they’re working towards, what they need to do, and the project should be navigated.

Here are a few recommendations to help you keep everyone in sync:

• Make sure that everybody has a strong grasp of the project’s goals and priorities.
• Secure buy-in from all essential shareholders.
• Make high work standards the norm and focus on keeping that bar high throughout the project.

To some, these measures may appear fairly self-evident, but research suggests that up to 40% of projects fail because of a lack of clarity and a well-defined project plan.

Similarly, it’s crucial to establish a well-thought-out way of quantifying a team’s achievements once you’ve defined a project’s central goals. Not only does this provide everyone with a better grasp of their individual and the team’s performance, but it also acts as a solid reporting tool for project managers when communicating performance to upper management.

A very simple yet efficient way of ensuring that your goals are both useful and usable is following the SMART mnemonic— your goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Yes, this is a very basic and widespread framework for goal setting, but it seems like managers all over the world seem to disregard it on a regular basis.

Not analyzing skills and competencies

To ensure that a project will be delivered successfully and on time, it’s essential to thoroughly assess the team’s skills and competencies.

A PM’s responsibilities revolve around creating the right environment for a project to be executed well and a critical part of this task is to ensure that everyone on the team you’re working with has the necessary knowledge to do so. Failing to do so will invariably result in cascading delays, unsatisfactory work, and a host of other issues.

Before starting to work on a project, it’s vital to understand whether you’ll require additional people on board to complete the project within its allotted time frame.

If you’re looking to go the extra mile, it’s worth looking into the culture of the organization and the team itself. Often, the reason for project failure is a team’s immunity to change, along with a toxic or negative work environment. To counteract this, PMs should look into running team-building activities to strengthen the working relationship between people, underline the most pressing issues, and ensure proper goal alignment.

Being unprepared for scope creep

Change is an immutable part of life and business, for that matter. Most projects will require a slight course correction or scope reassessment at some point—and that’s totally fine. However, a critical part of a PM’s professional growth is learning to manage these moments efficiently, in order to prevent ballooning budgets, dwindling team spirit, and missing even the most reasonable deadlines.

Basically, scope creep is what happens when changes are introduced to a project unexpectedly and without any reasonable control procedure. As a result, they affect a whole array of project parameters like costs, schedules, resources, which will often prevent teams from reaching milestones on time. This phenomenon is fairly common, especially with clients that don’t have a very clear understanding of what they want and provide very vague requirements.

As a project manager, you should be mindful of this issue before it arises and counteract it as soon as possible. The best solution is being proactive in your communication with your clients during the planning phase and achieving shared agreement and understanding of a project’s requirements, goals, and expectations.

Not planning budgets

Project managers have to deal with a broad spectrum of budget-related issues on a regular basis—and it’s critical for them to learn how to address these problems in an efficient and timely manner. In fact, a study published in 2017 suggests that nearly half of the interviewed managers reported budget management as the area they most commonly face issues in.

Typically, as a team starts working on a project, the PM will typically have a good understanding of the time necessary to deliver a project and how much it will cost. However, teams, projects, and clients are different, and there can be a wide array of factors that can impact a project’s bottom line.

There are five common budget-related problems that PMs face:

• Overrunning contract expenditure
• Overrunning resource expenditure
• Overrunning risk management
• Inability to access management reserves
• Lack of expenditure tracking

It’s imperative that project managers adopt the necessary budgeting procedure and make reasonable assessments regarding a project’s needs and expenses in order to successfully avoid cost overruns.

There are plenty of things that PMs can do to make sure that they’ve estimated the budget correctly, yet it’s also important to underline that projects can be very different, so it’s critical to make the necessary adjustments when doing so. Here are a few useful recommendations:

• Analyze historical data—look back at similar projects and learn from them.
• Seek guidance from your peers—if you’re about to step into unexplored territories, it’s always a good idea to learn from fellow project managers. A quick call can easily safeguard you from the most obvious pitfalls.
• Baseline and re-baseline—budgets are a good way to track the progress of a project. However, as we mentioned previously, the vast majority of projects will have changes, and they have to be reflected in the budget as well. Make sure to re-baseline your budget once any changes are approved.

Improper risk management

An important part of a project manager’s job is to manage a project’s potential risks by understanding the potential issues a team can run into, analyzing them, defining the adequate responses to these issues, and being mindful of these risks as the project unfolds.

This may seem like a straightforward task, but given the sheer number of variables in every individual project, there’s a nearly endless number of potential problems waiting to derail its outcome. Keeping track of risks allows project managers to extract as much value as possible from opportunities and mitigate threats.

There are a few things you can do to keep these issues at bay:

• Have a well-thought-out risk management plan—this step is critical, and it should be made early in the planning phase. Start by establishing whether risk management is needed in the first place since this step can be avoided on small-scale projects. The larger the project, the more things can go wrong.
• Outline the most important risks—create a checklist of the most probable threats to your project and outline the events that can be associated with triggering these risks.
• Analyze them—it’s always a good idea to quantify the probability and the priority of each particular threat. Once you’ve established the risks that are most likely to affect your project, you should continuously keep them in mind throughout the project. There are also plenty of useful techniques and frameworks that can help you identify the most imminent risks like Monte Carlo analysis.
• Plan a response for each threat—the entire team should establish what the adequate response to every particular risk should be. Similarly, it’s always a good idea to think of possible preventive measures before a certain event even happens, as well as the necessary contingency plans associated with it.
• Control and monitor at all times—risk management is a process that demands continuous attention throughout the entire project. More importantly, it’s essential to continue exploring and identifying new risks as the project unfolds.