Which of the Following is Not True about Project Management?

Every company, industry, and professional operates and develops with guidelines and rules. Alongside, misconceptions emerged, and project management is no exception.

When projects become more hectic and plenty, and you have limited time, it might be tempting to lean on instincts and beliefs blindly, including the ones you don’t know to be true.

In fact, there are concerns and questions of whether or not managing projects is worthwhile. As a perfect way to improve project management, it is best to be familiar with the following myths:

1. Project Management Involves Never-Ending Paperwork

Basically, this insight echoes reality from the project management inception, where a pen and notebook are not drawing them away. Project management and collaboration have altered every project manager from activities like preparing product documentation, recording meeting minutes, and writing emails.

These days, most project managers carry a notepad, open source task management system, data support tools, and diary to develop an execution plan through some creative ideas.

In reality, project management is basically not a documentation work or clerical job. Rather it’s a dynamic environment developed to change within organizations.

2. Anyone Can Handle and Manage Projects

You will often realize that top executives and managers arbitrarily assign project management roles just to anyone in a company. Their belief is that no aspect is challenging when it comes to project management.

Basically, project management involves applying techniques, skills, tools, and knowledge to deliver the goals of projects and meet their requirements.

Putting this in perspective, the key requirements one must have include skills, tools, and knowledge to handle and manage projects. Plus, you must be able to apply those techniques, skills, tools, and knowledge to handle every project.

3. Customer is Always Right

When it comes to the buyer-centric arena where users’ experience triumphs every metric, it can be tempting to agree with this easily.

However, in project management, customers may not always know what their needs are. They normally have a strong idea regarding features they want the most, and not all the things they need deliver tangible business benefits. Even worse than that, customers can be unaware of or overlook features, which matter.

Team members need to listen to clients but avoid treating their word and whim as an immovable doctrine.

Similar to every individual on the project management team, customers might be wrong about markets, products, processes. The only trick here is to be proactive to deal with clients by:

• Handling expectations
• Providing helpful insight consistently
• Doing due diligence

4. Depend on Professionals in Everything

As a task manager, you need to gather many details to make the right decisions. Whether it’s a report, an interview, or data, information will be nothing without its context.

For instance, you might have different estimates for venue rentals for an advertising event. But without checking closely at the information, you will not be able to know that approximations are from 1990.

While software engineers understand better how long features can take to be created, they might forget a task or step in the process.

Using interviews, information, or expert research is vital, but it can be more helpful to examine those details from different angles while ensuring they are in context.

5. A Project Manager Only Assigns Tasks

Firstly, delegating tasks is not simple. You must learn how to put your team members together so as to develop a productive and effective crew.

Dividing projects requires planning since a bigger crew is more challenging to navigate and monitor, but if a team is very small, you can bury individuals with a lot of work.

An experienced and professional project manager jumps in when certain aspects of projects are not going as planned. The expert spends too much time working with a team leader so as to make the process move forward. When a budget goes dry, a project manager has to develop a good solution.

For instance, dependency like finish to start in project management can help task managers ensure the first work is completed before jumping into the next one while protecting team members when someone wants to take the blame for delays.

6. Changing Processes Midway Can Derail Projects

Events of the past years disrupted companies’ operations across all industries. Because of that, many projects have spun up and scuttled with little notice, and almost all aspects of how tasks are handled have changed.

Whether you want to adopt new collaboration ways or tools, this change has stirred up a certain amount of fear in many individuals.

However, changes in communication modes and processes may develop opportunities, which might not have existed some years back, paving the way to new methods of working and thinking.

Final Thoughts!

Whether you want to pursue a career in project management or be a successful project manager, don’t allow these misconceptions to stand in your way.

Plus, prepare, study, and earn a PMP (project management professional) certification to equip yourself with skills, tools, and techniques to manage projects.