“Project management is an art form, but the number one thing that takes a project from project fulfilled to project nightmare is miscommunication. How you communicate and the protocols you use to ensure that your communication is received is critical to the efficacy of team collaboration and the successful fulfillment of deliverables. Without effective team and client communication, you can use the fanciest software and project management platforms and you’ll still wind up with confused team members, frustrated clients, and a huge mess to clean up. When managing a project, it’s important to be clear, detailed, and set appropriate and reasonable expectations from project inception, to project completion. I deal with every day - and the common denominator, the running theme for successful projects is that effective communication is present.
Once effective communication has been established, it’s important to make sure it is easily navigable, recallable, and visible. Make sure notifications are set up appropriately and ensure that your team and clients understand that it is important to tag people when directing a question or message to someone - it can be extremely frustrating and create unnecessary delays when messages are lost in the shuffle.
Employing effective communication should not be overlooked - preoccupied with tech platforms is so common focus, but remembering the fundamental principles that fuel the success of those systems makes all the difference when it comes to project management.”
- Amy Goldizen, Owner and Founder of Black Label Leads
“It is a rock-solid fact that proper communication is the most difficult obstacle in project management. Ironically, project management software actually seems to make it worse. At least, that’s been true for us.
Things get lost in translation. Perspectives are too narrow. Important information goes unnoticed or not communicated. It’s difficult to have constructive dialog — that’s especially true in software.
It’s a mistake to think communication is improved by Kanban boards, task management, or Gantt charts. That’s a form of communication that is mostly one-way, top-down, and instruction heavy. There is little room for collaboration, arguments that lead to positive change, or general discussion.
If the purpose of project management software is to provide one centralized source of truth regarding a project, it falls short when it cannot also be the same source for digital collaboration.”
-Holly Winters from Brandcave
“Many project managers try to take on too much at once and don’t ask for help or clearly communicate their needs, which can ultimately cause the project to be delayed. Additionally, delegating tasks in an unclear manner, or delegating tasks to the wrong people, can cause major issues. Not laying out clear goals and objectives for the team is also a common mistake that project managers make. Finally, many project managers hesitate to speak to individuals who aren’t taking on their fair share of the workload.”
- Emily Deaton, Financial Journalist at LetMeBank
“One common project management mistake I have seen alot of in the software industry is the lack of a clear line of communication.
Software engineers use many different platforms to communicate on. This is a problem for the project manger since it promotes communication compartmentalization. It is best to find a few lines of communication and stick to that.
I have been on projects that start on Asana then move to Slack and then to email and finally to whatsapp. It is so important to choose your channels and keep it on those channels. Unread messages or requests can bottleneck the project quickly.”
- Caleb Riutta, CEO of Dusk Digital
“A common mistake I see project managers in the software industry making is not tailoring communication to the audience. Projects with a software element have a huge array of stakeholders from the very technical people coding behind the scenes to the end user or Product Owner who might not have a clue how the thing works but they know what they like.
On a healthcare software project I worked on, where we were installing an off-the-shelf product with some customizations, one of my team led on communication with the clinical experts. She was brilliant at communicating what the software did and how it worked with people who shared her background. Her communication style didn't work so well with executives, who were often frustrated by the level of detail provided when they just wanted the headlines.
People say that project management is 80% communication and it's really important to make that communication count. Think about who you are sending the message to, what their preference is for communication (a quick Slackupdate? Detailed report? Highlights in an email?) and take a moment to make sure you're going to get your message across in the best possible way for that individual or team. If they want technical details, give them. If they care about user experience, focus on that. Ultimately, you're telling people what they need to know, but providing it in such a way as to make it easy for them to understand and act on - because that's what we want in a project environment: people to do their tasks and get the project over the line!”
- Elizabeth Harrin, Director at GirlsGuideToPM
“One of the biggest project management mistakes that I see made nowadays is the lack of communication. When you work remotely, you have to go the extra mile to cover all the details you assume that the other person knows. When working remotely and managing projects, always assume that the people in your organization know nothing and explain everything from scratch. Most recently, I assumed that our outreach managers knew not to pitch websites that ask for money to publish a guest blog, but apparently, they did not and we ended up wasting a few hours last month. Always put everything in writing and you should be good to go.”
- Jane Kovalkova, CMO of Chanty