Let's get straight to the point. You want to accomplish something. You have a goal in mind. You want everyone in your team to succeed. But how can you do it? − through project management.

You may have heard of this handy method that helps you achieve your plans in a timely manner. But as promising as it sounds, project management is far from perfect. It doesn't magically transform the process into a smooth ride.

To brace your entire team, here are seven project management issues to look out for and how you can solve each one.

1. Poor Communication

Poor communication is the bane of any project. It leads to several problems, from overlapping of responsibilities to delays caused by misinformation. It might even lead to misunderstandings that can hurt your team's overall performance.

On top of these, you also need to share your progress with stakeholders and investors. You have to be transparent. Keeping them in the dark will likely backfire, causing them to lose interest in the project.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) reports that almost 80% of successful companies attribute their success to a streamlined communications system. Not only that. They also perform better at nailing deadlines and avoiding unnecessary expenses.

You see, without an effective and transparent way to communicate, you'll increase the risk for failure either through poor teamwork or crippled budget.

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem: Dashup is a project management tool that lets you create project management solutions. It provides a team chat for communication issues where members can voice their concerns, forward suggestions, and comment on each other's work. You can also allow outsiders to peek into the project while limiting the amount of information they can view.

2. Undefined Goals and Unclear Expectations

A project without goals is like a ship without a rudder. It'll be pulled into any direction by several forces, and it won't reach its destination until you set some goals to guide that movement.

As a project manager, you must clearly define how to achieve your goals by setting up milestones to guide members on what to accomplish. Not only does it divide the work to make it appear easier, but it also provides incentives for your team to strive harder and meet the next objective.

However, you should also be careful about putting too much pressure on your people. You don't want to exhaust them with insane amounts of workload or unreasonable deadlines. It's best to have a discussion where you show them a clear outline of the deliverables you expect.

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem: Use Dashup's project management template and add a Milestone field option to track progress. As for goal setting, you can set up deadlines and pin announcements, so everyone knows how much work they need to put their backs on.

3. Lack of Accountability

Accountability is a word that's easily thrown around but understood poorly. Setbacks and issues are to be expected over the course of a project. When this happens, and no one is held responsible, your team members will just be pointing fingers at one another. 

Everyone should be aware of their roles and responsibilities that contribute to the project's success. That's why accountability is essential because it provides importance to each given task. 

More importantly, it will help eliminate excuses by creating consequences for mistakes. This encourages members to focus since they can't blame anyone but themselves if things go south. 

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem: Use the comprehensive board to assign roles to each member while delegating tasks specific to their expertise. You can also monitor their progress using highly visual charts. This way, you know who to talk with if something doesn't go as planned.

4. Getting Organized and Keeping Track of To-Dos

This is a pretty simple problem, yet it dramatically impacts the productivity of your team. A disorganized workspace makes people less efficient and effective. It can cause your members to mix up assignments, confuse dates, or forget about deadlines.

Now, this is where task management comes in handy. It helps you categorize and prioritize your tasks, allowing you to take the best course of action on time.

The typical approach to this involves writing a to-do list and posting it on the bulletin beside your desk. However, this method can get confusing as assignments pile up, causing unproductivity instead.

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem: Dashup has a task manager featuring a board view that offers complete visibility for all of your tasks. You can categorize them into to-dos, in progress, and done. Simply drag and drop a task to its appropriate status. Plus, you can also take down quick notes during meetings and set reminders for urgent assignments.

5. Underwhelming Team Skills

Let's face it. Not everyone is as good as you expect them to be. However, you must at least recruit the right people who can handle the pressure of contributing to the project. Teamwork makes the dream work, after all.

Sad to say, this is easier said than done. Sometimes, you'll be rushing to meet deadlines that you'll decide to fill in a position without filtering the applicants. This might result in getting a new hire based on availability yet lacking skills.

While it shouldn't be a problem for generic positions, you will have to recruit the best talents for more crucial responsibilities. A skillful hire will require less time for training and quickly hop on the project. 

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem: There's a lot of HR management templates available. You can use the applicant tracker to filter out applications that don't meet your criteria. You can also organize an onboard training for new hires and prepare a company policies log for them to read the moment they're in. 

6. Scope Creep

Relative to undefined goals, scope creep slowly eats away at your progress, eventually striking you at full force before you know it. But first, what is it, and what does it do?

Scope creep happens when the requirements of the project gradually increase throughout its cycle. It typically occurs when customers demand more features, require sudden changes, and pressure from stakeholders.

Such challenges are common among teams and aren't actually that big of a problem when controlled. Changes are to be expected. However, you can expect them to cause delays, wasted resources, roadblocks, or overshooting the budget.

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem:  The best way to handle scope creep is to be flexible and prepared. Firstly, have a clear discussion with your team regarding requirements. Then use Dashup to make a clear outline of your goals while coping up and adding changes to each one. 

7. Limiting Project Management Software

Nowadays, it's impossible to find a team today that doesn't use a project management tool or any organizer of some sort. Unfortunately, not all of them are effective in handling different project scopes.

Some management apps are made to be easy-to-use with minimal issues to avoid confusion. However, they will have a hard time coping up with enterprise-grade projects.

On the other hand, larger-scale tools tend to have a steep learning curve before you can use them effectively. That being said, you will have to find the right balance between the features you need and the complexity of the app. 

How Dashup Helps Tackle the Problem:  It would be an overstatement to say that Dashup is the best management tool right in its early state. However, it's safe to say that it can already fill in the void that other apps are lacking. With Dashup, you can add, remove, and customize features like time tracking, task priority, data entry automation, roles, etc. to meet your specific needs. This gives you more control to increase the overall success rate of your project. In addition, there's no need to code. You can do everything using drag and drop action.

Of course, it's better if you can see it in action. Why don't you give Dashup a try for free today? You can also contact the team and have them book a demo whenever you're ready!

Conclusion

Project management issues shouldn't be underestimated. They should be included in your risk management before starting the project. Knowing this, make sure to be transparent with your team and lend an open ear to their ideas and suggestions.