The 4 biggest project management problems and how you can solve them
Make it your project – or it will end up being a thorn in your side!
Maybe new software needs to be integrated internally or an order from a customer needs to be processed? Many a well-known DIY store would be shouting out to you to “Make it your project” – with the requisite underlying euphoria, of course. But anyone who has ever been sucked into a project, or even courageously thrown themselves into it, knows all too well, it’s not always plain sailing. There are many small and large obstacles you might encounter in the course of a project, which can really get in the way of reaching your goal. They may even postpone entire project phases. Or drive you to despair. But thank goodness for the helping hand that comes in the form of technical support. A software that can shield you from frustration. Figuratively speaking, an application with a kind of superhero cape – Zoho Projects! We’ll walk the trail together along the biggest project management obstacles so you can prepare yourself mentally, and we’ll share with you just how Zoho Projects can be your saving grace.
“If you want to build high towers, you have to spend a long time working on the foundation.”
What the Austrian composer Joseph Anton Bruckner described so romantically can also be transferred from music to project management. The reason is quite simple. The construct surrounding a project is one that encompasses its planning, organization, monitoring, and control in order to efficiently achieve a specific goal or outcome. How can it be done? With structure! As a project manager, you are the conductor of the orchestra. You work with employees from different departments and are all working in unison to meet the individual wishes of the customer. You have to keep an eye on every move and keep everyone involved happy. All of this can only be achieved with a digital solution. There is a wide range of providers and applications on the market to help you with this. The one that stands out the most is Zoho. That’s because Zoho knows exactly what you need before you do yourself.
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Main problem number 1: Inadequate project planning
Do you remember the words of Joseph Anton Bruckner? That foundation he is talking about is, and will always remain, your project planning. After you have collected the wishes and goals of your departments or customers, the task is to summarize them in a clear and detailed project plan based on the various steps required. But what step do you take first? Which one makes the most sense for your situation? What are the tasks, and who are the people responsible for each of them? You need to go through this colorful list of questions for yourself and create a realistic plan based on them. Without such a plan, there is really no need – to put it bluntly – to even start. After all, anyone who plunges into their project in a haphazard and unstructured way rarely ends up with a usable result, let alone a satisfactory one that makes everyone happy. Zoho Projects has created a digital board for this purpose. In it, you can neatly enter your tasks together with the necessary information, priorities and, of course, the responsible team member. And even more importantly, you can create a simple organizational chart for the different statuses of tasks, according to which everyone can divide their to-dos into clear progress phases and always keep an eye on what comes next.
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Main problem number 2: Tight schedule
Okay, the basics are in place and everyone knows what to do – but when exactly? As you will notice, deadlines are an equally important factor within these foundations. Tasks often remain undone if end dates are not clearly defined, especially if the project runs in parallel with day‑to‑day business. It is easy to forget a to‑do here and there. This may or may not be a catastrophe for an individual team member, but for you as the project manager it quickly throws you off track if this happens too often. Therefore, you must never forget the mantra: everyone sticks to the timetable! What may sound like a utopian idea is the core discipline of Zoho Projects. Because there is one thing you need to know: deadlines and notifications in Zoho Projects cannot be avoided. Simply set a start and end date when you create the tasks. When combined with the priority level, urgent to‑dos can be identified immediately. Those who still manage to ignore the deadline will be confronted with the escalation rules, which you can configure individually for your project. For each scenario, instructions can be set for each stage and a tailored set of notification options can be created. A deadline is approaching? Then Zoho Projects automatically informs all project members via push notification or email. As mentioned before, from now on no one can miss a thing. And the best part? You can monitor the progress of all tasks in a Gantt chart at any time.
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Main problem number 3: Poor communication
“What’s the score here?” “I gave you feedback on this, why didn’t you include it?” “I never received this info” – these phrases show up again and again in project management bingo. Poor communication is the axe that can also bring down your project plan, no matter how well it is structured. If one employee does not know what the other is doing, it becomes very difficult to pull everything together and reach your goals. The first rule here is to create a clear communication channel that ensures information does not get lost or delayed in any way. Zoho Projects has created the perfect symbiosis for this. Under every task you create and deploy for your project, contributors can share updates and upload documents in the built‑in commenting feature. Employees can tag each other in comments, which can’t be overlooked thanks to automatic notifications via email and push notifications in the Zoho Projects screen. This means that not only the responsible people, but also you as the project manager, can follow the flow of communication at every stage and stay fully informed all the time. This proves especially helpful in the event of absences due to illness or changes in personnel within an area of responsibility, allowing you to keep your project moving forward continuously.
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Main problem number 4: Overlapping cooperation
Different departments working on the same task and customers who want or need to be involved in the approval process: welcome to the next big hurdle in project management – conducting several orchestras at once. With Zoho Projects, however, you no longer have to run around in circles. Define the structural tone and let Zoho do the work with a single magical term: Blueprints. You can set up these Blueprints individually in advance according to your requirements and thereby secure standardized workflows and processes. You do not want a task to move to the next progression stage until you have approved it? Tell your Blueprint! Is there a checklist of certain requirements that must be met before the task can be defined as completed? Tell your Blueprint! You set the necessary parameters yourself and can therefore ensure that all project members work together according to the same standards and, above all, with full transparency. Speaking of transparency, there is something else: this of course also applies to your customers! Abandon tedious, step‑by‑step project reports and invite your contacts to follow your project directly. Via the user administration you can grant external users access to individual subtasks, tasks or entire projects and configure the customer role according to the respective permissions. You decide whether your customers are only allowed to read along or also to write comments and upload data. You are and remain the conductor!
Project work in 2023 – in cooperation with codafish
Digitized and clear – that’s the way we love project management! And it doesn’t just stop at one application: Zoho Projects easily connects with Zoho’s Connect and Cliq communication tools and integrates with other SaaS apps like Microsoft Teams. As you have read, Zoho Projects opens up unimagined possibilities and a wealth of features. Do you need a partner-in-crime to help you with this? Then get in touch with us! At codafish, we advise you on all aspects of project management, create a comprehensive project plan with you on request and completely configure Zoho Projects according to your individual needs. We have all the answers to the questions relating to structure, work-saving Blueprints and program additional functions in cooperation with Zoho to ensure your project management is optimal!
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