Bad habits are hard to break, whether at home or in your professional life. However, as project demands evolve and complexity increases, it’s essential to identify and eliminate bad habits that can undermine your team’s effectiveness. Here, we highlight common bad habits that continue to haunt some project groups and provide tips to help you ditch unproductive and obsolete routines that might jeopardize your project outcomes.
Hanging on to outdated techniques or underperforming workflows
Upskilling initiatives allow employees to expand skills relevant to their project responsibilities and develop new ones that help qualify them for more advanced roles. One issue workers may encounter, however, is that many educational tracks lack an emphasis on unlearning outdated techniques and processes no longer applicable to the organization’s needs. This leaves old inefficiencies in place, perpetuating waste within the project team’s operations.
Try this:
Review your training programs and identify where updated instruction might help team members unlearn old habits and replace obsolete workflows with more efficient processes.
Allowing punch lists to linger
Tasks that appear on project punch lists are typically low-visibility issues related to quality rather than critical workflows. By the time an initiative reaches the punch list stage, team members are already looking ahead to the next project. New projects demand significant collaboration, which often diverts attention from unresolved punch list items. As a result, these tasks sit unfinished, hindering project closure.
Try this:
Assign every punch list task to someone responsible for its completion. Continue pushing out status updates until all items are completed, allowing your team to track progress and ensure nothing is overlooked.
Seeking reassurance rather than truth
Not all project information is created equal. Some prefer a more comfortable version of the truth to avoid unpleasant realities. For instance, if someone regularly provides overly optimistic budget forecasts, other team members might embrace those numbers because they make the situation appear better. But if actual spending exceeds the project’s allocated funds, the team will need to make cuts—potentially compromising the project’s success.
Try this:
Use technology and modern project management tools to provide highly accurate, real-time data on demand. Encourage accountability and transparency by eliminating the habit of “bad news avoidance.” This shift helps prevent multiple versions of the truth from taking root within the team.
Unrealistic timelines
Today’s pace of innovation pressures teams to accept unrealistic timelines. The rise of automation and optimization tools creates an expectation for faster delivery, despite growing challenges like global supply chain complexities and expanding regulatory requirements. Often, there’s a disconnect between what executives expect and what the project team can realistically deliver. Unfortunately, teams may agree to unrealistic deadlines to maintain resource allocations and leadership support.
Try this:
Utilize accurate task duration data to justify why project schedules can’t be compressed to meet executive demands. Portfolio-level insights can also provide senior sponsors with the necessary visibility into the team’s workload, allowing them to make more informed decisions and support realistic timelines.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.