Top 10 Project Management Mistakes You Should Avoid

Tanmay Vora

Posted on December 21, 2009

I was recently studying the anatomy of failed/troubled projects and following came out as a learning. Here are top 10 project management mistakes that should be avoided:

Estimating project tasks based on poor inputs on scope and too many assumptions.
Starting project without 102% clarity (100% clarity on scope/technology and 2% knowledge of how you can add value).
Not managing expectations of all stakeholders of the project (including your organization and in client’s organization).
Not staying on top of project schedule and not flagging risks early in the project cycle.
Not saying “No” when required.
Underestimating people issues thinking that everybody on the project team is equally good at everything.
Isolating end users and not involving them during project execution.
Not learning from your past mistakes.
Ignoring the basic discipline involved in following the processes.
Putting more effort later in the project. More effort in early phases of projects means more progress upfront.

Seth Godin’s “What Matters Now” and a Few More Gems

QAspire Blog 2009 – Essential Posts Redux

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utpalvaishnav (utpalvaishnav) December 22, 2009

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Avani December 22, 2009

Hi Tanmay
Though all the points are quality points & worth considering but sometimes situation varies between variety of clients & projects. Especially when middle client is there in the scene, unclarity of work, his commitment to the end client to fulfil deadlines, our duty to serve middle client (or sometimes end client too) according to his style of working puts us in tricky situation. We are being told to move further with assumptions forcefully, which in future becomes major hurdle with respect to timely deliverable, well defined architecture and code quality. It would be very nice if you can cover such ‘wrenched’ scenarios in your blog sometimes again. It would help us like your other blogs so far. Thanks

Tanmay Vora December 22, 2009

Avani, Thanks for stopping by. The purpose of these posts is simple – to extract rules of thumb for better management and leadership.

However, rules of thumb only help to a certain extent, which is where situational management comes into picture. Business is a complex game and so is project management. There are so many variables, with “leadership” being the most important.

I will try to cover convoluted/complex scenarios in future posts, but again, if these rules of thumb are followed, most software projects would not end up the way they do (overruns, disasters and failures).

Thanks for stopping by.

Best,
Tanmay

tnvora (Tanmay Vora) December 22, 2009

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