Challenges Faced in Project Management for IT, Construction and Government Sector

Challenges faced in IT SECTOR: 

Requirements Gathering:

Requirements gathering, or requirements elicitation, is the process of determining all the requirements of a project. There are two main types of project requirements, business and technical requirements.

The project manager’s challenges start from gathering requirements of the project/product. Usually in Indian scenario, the project manager rarely gets a chance to communicate with the end-users of the project. If that happens there will be fewer chances for ambiguity in the requirements. Hence, the customer should facilitate a meeting between the project manager and the end-user. 

 Once the functional specifications are ready, the designed discussions can take place. Once the project manager gets the requirements from the customer, it is desirable to get a sign-off from all the stakeholders, so as to make the subsequent stakeholder management easier. 

There are commercially available tools in the market for requirements management. Caliber RM is one such tool. Getting the timely sign-offs for the requirements documents from the stakeholders is the main challenge faced by the project manager today.

Undocumented processes:

Challenges:

In many organisations there is often no or very poor documentation available about existing processes. In this situation, requirements gathering becomes a two-step process. Firstly, back-engineering of existing process, and then identifying areas for improvement and optimisation.

Solution:

To ensure requirements are full and correct, it’s critical to identify key stakeholders and subject matter experts and engage with them directly. This helps eliminate any assumptions and provides a full picture. Drawing business process maps and visualising workflows are effective techniques that can be used in this situation.

Conflicting requirements:

Challenges:

Uncertainty about exiting process or different priorities for different stakeholders, often leads to conflicting requirements. If this is the case, the role of a business analyst is to document all requirements, identify contradictory requests and let stakeholders decide on priorities.

Solution:

As a business analyst you may have some recommendations about what should be prioritised, but it’s still important to hear stakeholders’ opinion. Setting up a poll can be one of the ways to get clarity about what is important to the majority of stakeholders.

Lack of access to end users:

Challenges:

Unavailability of end users may occur due to a few reasons and requires appropriate resolution. Sometimes end users are too busy with their day-to-day work and unwilling to participate in requirements gathering activities

Solution:

In such situations the best a business analyst can do is to minimise the number and length of engagements. Doing as much research as possible prior to the engagement will help to make the conversation more structured and insightful. It is almost like turning requirements gathering into requirements validation sessions. Defining focus groups and finding the most suitable end-users in each group will also help.

Focusing on visual aspects rather than on functional:

Challenges:

Often stakeholders and end-users have a clear picture of how the new solution should look but don’t have understanding of what it should do. The user interface is an important aspect of any system, but it should not define or hinder the functionality.

Solution:

Business analyst should make sure there is a clear distinction between design and functional requirements in their documentation. To keep focus on functional aspects use more abstract tools such as diagrams, user stories and low-fi prototypes rather than design drafts.

Communication problems:

Challenges:

This category included language barriers, wrong assumptions, unclearly defined vocabulary, and excessive use of professional terminology that can lead to misunderstandings between stakeholders and a business analyst.

Solution:

The best strategy to avoid such situation is to communicate often and establish two-way communication. Document gathered requirements and send them for review and feedback to multiple subject matter experts, create and share a glossary of terms, and always verify assumptions.

Work Delegation:

Challenges:

Work delegation is another challenge for him, because in knowledge-based industries there is competition among the team members to take up the work that is more credible. When work delegation comes into picture, the project manager has to take the team members’ interests and skills into consideration. This is helpful in successfully completing the project on time with good quality. Otherwise, a lot of time would be spent in fixing bugs. 

Solution:

Here, Responsibilities Assignment Matrix (RAM) can be used as a tool. Using this matrix, one can see the tasks and the assigned resources to those tasks in a tabular format. The software tool ‘Microsoft Project’ can also be used for tracking and scheduling. Resource leveling is also possible using this tool. Leveling the resources in the project is yet another challenge the project manager faces during work delegation.

Meeting Quality:

Maintaining good quality of the deliverables is another challenge for the project manager. Even after having significant rounds of reviews of the deliverables, sometimes the product does not meet the quality criteria. Review efficiency and effectiveness are very important for product development. For example, number of pages of source code reviewed per hour indicates the review efficiency. Review effectiveness is evident with reduction in the number of bugs in the product and extendability of the code in near future. 

It is best practice to conduct internal and external quality audits to the project in question to maintain the consistent quality in deliverables. The audits result in Non-Conformance (NC) reports for the project. The main challenge of the project manager is to work on and close the NC reported. Usually, these NCs will be reported in senior management review meetings. The senior management takes these NCs as a benchmark in judging the quality of process involved in the product development. 

The project manager or concerned team member is responsible for closure of the respective NCs. These NCs opened and closed status will be maintained by the quality audit tools. The project manager’s challenge is to keep the NC count to minimum possible number, so that the project won’t get special attention from the senior management.

Maintenance of the Schedules and Costs:

‘Scope, time and cost’ are the triple constraints for any project. In a program, the delay of one project may delay the entire program, which may have financial impacts on the company. Hence, the project manager all the time tries to execute the project within the given time. The delay in schedules may lead to cost overruns. Hence, keeping to the schedules is another challenge for the project manager. 

Other extended constraints such as customer satisfaction, risk and quality also have the effect on the project, if there is any change in the triple constraints. The project manager’s challenge is to get more customer satisfaction for his project. He has to work towards getting good customer satisfaction rating. This is possible once the project is completed within budget and is executed with good quality in the given time.

Testing the Product:

Non-availability of user environment to test the product, during the system test time is another challenge for the project manager. Because of this, there can be many surprises during ‘user acceptance testing’. User acceptance testing is generally done by the customer. 

The challenge for the project manager is to get the user acceptance for the product or the result of the project. This is possible only with the frozen requirements and sign-off for main deliverables at each phase of the system’s development life cycle. If there are any changes in the requirements, there should be a Change Control Board (CCB) at the executing organization that handles such requests. 

Challenges faced in CONSTRUCTION SECTOR:

Poorly Defined Goals:

It often happens in construction projects that stakeholders don’t really know what they want to get as the final work result. The lack of clear vision and well-formulated goals instills confusion. It leaves managers guessing and improvising without a proper sense of direction.

Nevertheless, such an approach to project management may lead to excellent and creative outcomes merely in rare cases. It is most frequently associated with an elevated risk of errors, wasted effort and time, which is bound to have an adverse effect on overall project performance.

Solution: The best remedy to the problem of poorly defined goals is thorough planning. Keep in mind that the purpose of planning is not only to clarify the ultimate goal of your project. It is also meant to help you develop a detailed program of action and define some smaller performance objectives to attain on the way.

Cost Overruns:

Many construction projects fail miserably when it comes to meeting their initial cost estimates. On a global scale, the average cost overruns in construction projects starts at 16.5%. In the meantime, individual projects may exceed their budgets by as much as 175% (like it was in the case of the Humber bridge in the UK).

Overall, the larger a project is, the higher the risk of cost overrun it usually faces. Hence, complexity and project scale will certainly define your ability to satisfy original cost requirements.

But that’s not all. There are plenty of more factors at play. Some of them include: 

1. Material price escalations, adverse weather conditions and other external risks;
2. Changes in scope, initial project designs and client demands;
3. Unrealistic estimates due to naivety, ignorance or deception;
4. Inadequate project management and performance errors.

Solution:  Since cost overruns may happen due to multiple reasons, there’s no unified solution to this issue. However, overruns can be reduced significantly thanks to proper planning combined with budgeting and expense tracking.

Schedule Overruns and Unrealistic Deadlines:

This issue is just as common in construction project management as budget overruns and may stem from the same variety of reasons, including unforeseen problems and poor management. However, the main ones are deficient forecasting and the lack of preliminary analysis – they result in unrealistic expectations and unworkable deadlines.

When a project’s time limits are too tight and are not in line with the actual scope of work, a manager is likely to face some other negative consequences besides schedule overruns. Unreasonable deadlines cause excess stress, employee burnout and low team morale. Hence, they impact productivity and quality of performance just as bad.

Solution: To deliver projects on schedule and develop realistic deadlines, you have to revise your overall time management strategy. You need to plan, prioritize and estimate your tasks thoroughly. You will also benefit from undertaking a thoughtful approach to scheduling and implementing effective time tracking tools because they help to control work progress and ensure compliance with initial project estimates.

Consider actiTime. This time tracker collects data on the use of time in your team and provides evidence for more accurate time estimation. Thereby, actiTIME will enable you to set much more reasonable task deadlines and monitor team- and performance-related risks of schedule overruns in real time.

Inadequate Risk Management:

We’ve already mentioned that the failure to foresee and handle risks leads to budget and schedule overruns. However, risk management in construction projects is a challenge that deserves special mentioning because the hazards businesses face in this industry are much more diverse and costly than in many others:

1. Safety risks that may result in accidents and injuries,
2. Unknown site conditions,
3. Staff turnover and workforce shortages,
4. Escalations in material costs,
5. Economic crises,
6. Natural disasters and inclement weather,
7. Team coordination problems,
8. Issues with subcontractors and suppliers.

These are merely a few of the risks that construction managers must take into account prior to starting the actual work. Otherwise, they will suffer due to low quality of performance, constant delays and stakeholder conflicts, which decrease the chances for project success significantly

Solution: Since all projects are unique, the number and severity of factors that can threaten their completion vary to a large extent. To deal with the problem well, you need to adopt a methodological approach to risk management.

Begin with identifying all the risks that are relevant to your case. Then, proceed to assess them based on probability and impact severity. Afterward, think of how to avoid the risks you identified and reduce their harmful effects on your project. Be sure to focus on the most probable risks first. However, remember that the eventual aim of risk management is to address each and every project risk you’re facing.

Uncontrollable growth of the work scope:

 It may happen due to changes in original designs, stakeholder needs and the overall environment. In other words, scope creep is a result of inadequate risk management, insufficient planning and poor communication. And of course, it has many negative consequences, ranging from low customer satisfaction and minor project delays to massive financial losses and severe damages to business reputation. Therefore, it’s pivotal for every project manager in the construction industry to know how to deal with scope creep effectively and prevent it from happening.

Solution: Project planning and efficient control practices are your best remedies against scope creep. Define performance objectives clearly, set project scope boundaries, analyze risks and leave some room for possible changes in advance. More importantly, stay flexible but stick to your plan and learn to say “no” to unnecessary edits.

Besides, adopt a change management strategy for the cases when scope creep is hard to avoid. With a pre-made change management plan, you won’t be caught off guard whenever you project plans get altered or when you have to adjust to inevitable shifts in the environment.

Challenges faced in GOVERNMENT SECTOR:

Government projects are not private or commercial projects that only need to satisfy internal standards; they must satisfy a whole plethora of requirements, as they are primarily funded by taxpayers and must be well worth the taxpayer’s investment. Transparency and openness with the entire process are also heavily mandated, and documentation must validate every step that was ever taken.

The public sector is undoubtedly one of the supporting pillars of any functioning society. However, despite being a provider of services to better the general public’s lives, the public sector is not without its challenges. Difficulties with its reputation among young people, stops in communication, and reluctance towards change are rife in many western public sector organizations.

The archaic systems and modes of working in the public sector are turning away younger people: According to a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries—consisting of 37 nations from North and South America to Europe and Asia-Pacific—the largest age bracket in the public services are likely to be between the ages of 40-49, with a significant proportion of employees between the ages of 50-54 and 55-59. In comparison to the private sector, the public sector’s ratio of younger employees is notably smaller.

This presents a significant section of the public services workforce ageing out into pension status and a lack of capable and willing supplementary employees. When our experts asked younger audiences about their reluctance to work in the public sector, their answers indicated a lack of brand awareness from the public sector. Potential young employees were eager to dedicate themselves to helping people but hesitant to join public service.

Solution: 

Digitalization of the workplace: Expert predictions foretell that millennials and Gen Z will represent a whopping 27% of the global workforce by 2025. These generations are tech natives. Our change management specialists at Devoteam strongly suggest that transforming the mode of working towards a digital-first system will motivate younger workers to turn their sights on working in public services. 

Outdated Systems:  Outdated systems often cause stops in communication and lower efficient collaboration. Currently, most government-run services operate on outdated legacy systems, and the topic of modernization isn’t a question of if but when. Modernization is the answer for better management of public services and smooth adaptation to the workforce’s potential shift. The current setup of legacy systems is rapidly becoming outdated, making integrations with modern systems and applications more expensive and less efficient. 

Solution:

Cloud migration: The Google Cloud Platform requires no setup or on-premise servers to run, much unlike legacy systems.  For organizations reluctant to fully migrate into a cloud-first environment, solutions like SAP on GCP provide seamless integration for legacy systems into the cloud. Our change management experts have seen the implementation of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) propel collaboration and communication into elevated levels of efficiency and productivity. 

Reluctance toward change: Technology is simply a catalyst for change. Organizations can implement the latest technology and most innovative solutions, but efficient change is impossible if the workforce is not engaged or mentally working against the grain. People are naturally hardwired to resist change because of the ambiguity and risk associated with it.

Solution: 

Change management: Our change management consultants at Devoteam Cloud Services understand that the people are at the heart of every organization and the key to a triumphant transformation. They know that people make the company run, and to ensure cohesive and successful operation, employees need to be on board and driven towards the same goals.