Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there existed a kingdom of project management where the 7 most common project management mistakes held sway.
The kingdom's inhabitants were in despair, toiling amidst chaotic conditions rather than within a productive flow. Yet all they truly desired was simple: to embrace creativity and revel in the triumphs of their projects.
To achieve this noble goal, valiant project managers tirelessly battled the 7 villains of project mismanagement. What strategies did these heroes employ? Did they emerge victorious? And could you apply their tactics to your own project management, evading silly errors? Let’s uncover the tale!
Tiny spoiler alert: The story, of course, culminated in a happily ever after. In the end, the project managers and their teams lived joyfully and contentedly in an efficient project management realm. (Just as YOU will soon, too! 🦄✨)
🚩 Villain 1: The Excel Beast
Starting Point: You surely remember the early days of your team. It was just the two of you, sitting down, opening an Excel sheet, and kicking off the project. Simple, clear, swift.
Issue: However, as your team and the company grow, that little Excel list quickly mutates into a bona fide Excel beast. You end up spending a lot of time feeding its insatiable cells – with responsibilities, project deadlines, and changes. Problems pile up, and no one but you can tame this planning monster.
🏆 How to vanquish the blunder:
Gain the overview: awork presents all projects to you in an organized manner. With just a few clicks, you can create a new project, assign tasks to team members, and keep track of progress. Project goals? Right on track.
Easy to update: Real-time tracking and sharing of project changes become a breeze. Whether it's status updates or deadline shifts, with awork, all team members know how and where the hare is currently running.
Simple coverage: Even if you, as the project manager, are unavailable, your team can keep working. You don't have to worry about the project coming to a halt without you. Because, well, it won't.
🚩 Villain 2: The Tool Hydra
Starting Point: Especially new team members are often bombarded with numerous tools in use (once you've moved beyond the Excel strategy 😇). However, even team members who have been on board for a while often struggle with the variety of tools. A feast for the Tool Hydra.
Issue: One tool for tasks, another for time tracking, yet another for capacity planning – and the list goes on. The result: You're juggling multiple tools, dealing with large datasets, manually exporting times, and then re-entering them in another tool. Argh. Headaches are practically guaranteed.
🏆 How to overcome this challenge:
Use ONE tool for everything: awork, for instance, combines project management, capacity planning, and time tracking all in a single application.
Integrated communication: With awork, the need to switch back and forth between different platforms is eliminated. You can communicate directly WITHIN the project's to-dos. Have questions about a project task? Simply comment and tag other team members – and everyone's in the know.
🚩 Villain 3: The Time Devourer
Starting Point: You're using a separate and complicated time tracking tool. This is one of the most common mistakes in project management. The Time Devourer rubs its hands in anticipation.
Issue: A difficult time tracking tool is no fun. Not for you, and certainly not for your team members. And no fun equals no recorded times. As a project manager, you end up chasing your project team members and sending reminders. Why? Because these times are important for you to keep an eye on project costs and prevent issues. Plus, billable hours might slip through the cracks.
🏆 How to defeat the challenge:
Integrated time tracking: With awork, team members can directly book their working hours to specific projects and tasks. It's easy, quick, and without the urge to close that laptop. The time tracking feature allows starting, pausing, and stopping work efforts for each task with a simple click.
Connect the calendar: With awork, you can effortlessly transform appointments from personal calendars into recorded work hours – such as client meetings or workshops. Super easy (and especially great for time tracking sloths 🦥).
Realistic estimations: With the captured data, you can plan better, create realistic schedules, and ensure that no one ends up working overtime. Comparing planned and actual efforts will also help you in the future to create more realistic project plans and proposals.
Project budget in sight: Thanks to integrated time tracking, you'll always have your project costs in view. And the best part: As a project manager, you can easily allocate times to different clients and generate lightning-fast reports.
🚩 Villain 4: The Overtime Nightmare
Starting Point: Your team is pushing the boundaries of the "perceived" capacity. A new project is launched in parallel. Workloads cannot be accurately determined. Before you know it, you're caught in the midst of the Overtime Nightmare.
Issue: Workloads keep growing, deadlines keep getting tighter, and the team becomes increasingly stressed. You lack the overview of the team's actual capacity and a strategy for a rescue plan.
🏆 How to eliminate the challenge:
Workload management: awork visualizes the workload of each team member. You can check project progress at any time and ensure that no one in the project team is overwhelmed. If internal capacities are insufficient, you can bring in external support.
Easy task assignment: Using the workload overview in awork, you can easily and fairly assign tasks and flexibly rearrange them. It's as simple as drag-and-drop – voilà, done!
Project planning 🤝 calendar: The game-changer for capacity planning? Connect your project planning directly with your team members' calendars. This way, meetings and client appointments are also factored into the workload.
🚩 Villain 5: The Communication Void
Starting Point: In the team meeting, you attempt to gather the latest project updates. But the information is scattered somewhere amidst emails, chat messages, and sticky notes. Now, the Communication Void takes center stage.
Issue: Lack of project communication, sticky notes, and message chaos are genuine productivity killers. They can stall projects, create confusion, and lead to errors. As projects grow larger, more people come into play, and the team operates from different locations, it turns into an unpredictable roller coaster ride. Emails get overlooked, tasks are misassigned, deadlines are missed, and before you know it, chaos reigns.
🏆 How to overcome the challenge:
Central repository: In awork, all project updates, notes, and tasks find a d-i-g-i-t-a-l home. Neatly organized, accessible from anywhere, and even if your laptop decides to call it quits, they don't vanish forever.
Slack integration - done: Slack and awork can be easily connected. This way, you can create, distribute, and update to-dos directly from a Slack chat – nice! (PS: This works just the same with Microsoft Teams. 💪)
🚩 Villain 6: The Habit Monster
Starting Point: As a project manager, introducing a new tool is a task that NEVER seems to have the right timing. The team's response: "Why not stick with the old solution until after the project?" You give in... and the Habit Monster strikes.
Issue: Why bother with the learning curve of a new project software when the good ol' system has been working for years? Result: Everyone simply carries on as usual. As project leadership, you face the challenge of pushing through the tool transition (because it's better for everyone involved) while making the process seamless at the same time. 😅
🏆 How to overcome the challenge:
Quick implementation: awork is designed so you can start right away. Just sign up, create a project, and go. Plus, our support team has you covered with easy how-to videos for you and your team. And if there are still questions, our support heroes are always there for you.
Smooth data transfer: Almost every team has them. Existing data from previous tools. With awork's data importer, migration is done in a few clicks, so you don't have to start from scratch.
Intuitive user interface: awork's UI looks sleek and is user-friendly. Complex navigation? Off limits. Everything is where you expect it to be and immediately understandable – even without prior tool experience. Of course, workflows can be customized to suit your team's ways of working. This way, you can stick to your familiar processes and s-t-i-l-l reap the benefits of a central project management tool.
🚩 Villain 7: The GDPR Ghost
Starting Point: You FINALLY convinced your team to let go of the old tool. You kick off a test project with a new tool. Opting for a software that seems to meet your requirements at first glance. Bam, projects created and accounts set up.
Issue: The trial period expires and the seemingly fitting tool... now isn't such a fit anymore. The procurement department rejects it – not due to costs, but because there's a privacy hiccup. All data is stored in the US. The GDPR Ghost suddenly emerges out of thin air. Boo!
🏆 How to overcome the challenge:
GDPR compliance: Right from the start, opt for a GDPR-compliant solution – like awork. You can work with peace of mind, knowing that your data (and that of your clients) is on secure servers in Germany. 🇪🇺
Data transfer? Secure!: awork ensures safe data transfer and guards against unauthorized access. Check!
Happy End in project management – just a fairy tale? Nope! 🦄
With a modern tool, your project management can f-i-n-a-l-l-y find its happy ending too. It goes something like this: And if they (the team members) aren't stressed, they'll be working happily ever after... with awork 😬. Where you, as a project manager, used to get lost in cluttered Excel sheets, now awaits a tidy structure. Instead of unclear workloads, there's clear capacity planning and well-defined tasks.
Instead of overworked colleagues, you're greeted by a motivated and efficient team. And instead of getting lost in a maze of tools, you integrate everything into a single project management software. Goodbye, project management mistakes!
Sound like a fairy tale? THAT's project management with awork
awork supports you as a project management software, whether you're conjuring in an agency, consultancy, or tech company. It's not just creative campaigns that run smoothly, but IT projects too. awork combines everything you need as a project manager: tasks management, time tracking, resource planning, and an overview of it all. ✨
Want to see if awork can vanquish your project management mistakes? Our heroic support team is always here for you!
