Hiring The Right Project Manager For Your Next Project

Projects are rarely perfect. You might have planned your project well, assembled the best team, have sponsors standing by you, and put some risk strategies in place, but it still fails.

Anything can go wrong when it is time to execute the project. Your team may not be as skilled as you thought, your sponsors can back off, delays can occur and sometimes priorities may change.

The big question is what do you do when a project goes wrong?

In a state of confusion, most people will panic when things don’t go as planned. Good project managers will maintain their cool and avoid making rushed decisions. The managers will calm down and try to properly understand how events are unfolding, their cause and how well you can deal with the problem.

As a project leader, panicking is the worst option you have. You need to find a remedy as soon as possible. You should be calm and clearly understand how the unforeseen events can impact the project. Whereas some situations can be beyond your control, there are others that you can easily influence.

When a project is going wrong, the project manager can quickly act on issues concerning:

• Project team skills
• Effectiveness of the project management structure
• Escalating costs beyond the plan
• Validity of the project
• Project impact on the organization

Before making any decision, get to know the root cause of the problem so as to handle it effectively. Some of the skills you may have learned in your MBA specialization courses can apply.

For example, you sort out issues related to delays, discrepancies in documentation and misunderstandings between the project team members. You can also evaluate how these problems are likely to impact the project. For example, you can determine how long a delay will take and how it will affect the project progress.

Whatever the circumstances that may affect a project, there is always a way out. Each option you choose will usually have a positive or negative impact on the project. It is therefore up to you to determine with route to take based on what is important.

Evaluate the costs and risks of choosing a particular alternative and how it will affect the entire project. It is always good to get a second and third opinion before taking any action. Sometimes you may need to seek your sponsor’s opinion if an option is beyond your responsibility.

One of the qualities of a good leader is flexibility. A project manager should develop a plan and be flexible changes that may be necessary. Projects wills probably go wrong. Therefore, it is good to have options to choose from in case things do not work out.