Hindrance to Effective Software Project Management

Most of the IT organizations acknowledge the value proposition as a result of efficient and successful project management implementation. Then what are the common obstacles in the IT organizations for effective project management which lead to project failure with additional cost to the annual budget. One of the most dominant factors is the failure to manage the change in culture. Most of the organizations struggle to manage the change in culture in general and project management in particular. It requires a lot of hard works, resources and commitments. Psychological barrier among the resources could influence the wide adoption of project management methodologies extensively. Lack of commitment within the organization is quite prevalent; most of the organizations want to adopt best practices and sound methodologies in order to meet the standards set by the international organizations; however their actions fail to backup their words. Conflict of interest among the stakeholders could influence the decision significantly. While managers might take initiatives to implement certain practices to manage the primary aspects of a project such as scope, schedule, quality and risk efficiently, there may not be adequate incentives for the programmers and developers to support the idea straight away. Another legitimate concern could be the past failures in adopting proper methodologies, the general perception about project management methodology is that it is cumbersome, resource intensive and takes away too much focus from work at hand, esp. when the methodology is not scaled appropriately to the scope of the project. However, setback never lies with the methodology; it is the implementation strategy which fails to scale with the project specific requirements. Insufficient investment of time in the planning phase is another critical factor to drive the project to failure. Typically organizations work under stringent project schedule due to extremely competitive nature of the business; consequently they prefer to start on the design and development phase right away instead of focusing on the planning aspect of the project which significantly affects the overall quality of the project. An entirely misleading perception is that project management is all about implementation of tools and techniques required to manage a project effectively. Some aspects of project management may utilize a tool to create and manage work plans efficiently; however that is not where the true value of project management lies. Project Management is about discipline and implementation of proactive processes and standard practices which facilitates successful accomplishment of the project.