PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Professional Issues



Professional Issues

Introduciton

In the life cycle of any project, there will almost always be unexpected problems and questions that crop up. When these issues arise, you have to be ready to deal with them - or they can potentially affect the project's outcome.

Since most issues are, by their nature, unexpected, how do you make sure you'll be able to deal with them quickly and effectively? Ideally, you need an issue resolution process in place before you start your project - to make sure that you stay on schedule, and meet your objectives.

Issue management is the process of identifying and resolving issues. Problems with staff or suppliers, technical failures, material shortages - these might all have a negative impact on your project. If the issue goes unresolved, you risk creating unnecessary conflicts, delays, or even failure to produce your deliverable.

Without a doubt, people will fight. Fortunately, in most offices, people are mature enough to bite their tongues, try to work peacefully, and, as a whole, strive to finish the project happily and effectively together. (Lewis, 2006)

Most disagreements in IT project management happen when two or more people feel very passionate about a particular IT topic. For example, one person believes a network should be built in a particular order, while another feels it should be constructed from a different approach. Or two developers on a project get upset with each other about the way an application is created. Generally, both parties in the argument are good people who just feel strongly about a certain methodology of their work.

Professional issues

In most projects there will be instances when the project team, management, and other stakeholders disagree on the progress, decisions, and proposed solutions within the project. It's essential for the project manager to keep calm, to lead, and to direct the parties to a sensible solution that's best for the project. Here are seven reasons for conflict in order of most common to least common:

Schedules

Priorities

Resources

Technical beliefs

Administrative policies and procedures

Project costs

Personalities

Dysfunctional Digital Families

Web designers hate developers, developers whine about designers and both bitch about the Web Project Managers - this is the stereotypical view of the relationship between these three parts of a web project team that resembles what social workers would undoubtedly call a dysfunctional digital family.

Conflicting Priorities

As a Web Project Manager you are smack bang in the middle of web projects. Your boss just wants the project to go well, the client wants what they paid for, designers want to produce something they can be proud of and developers want to create elegant efficient code that solves the problem.

Client Gives Vague, Ever-changing Requirements

Fickle clients can be a huge hassle. If a client doesn't know what they want until a certain stage is complete, then schedule those decision points into the project as milestones. It is important to have a clear path mapped out from start to finish because it forces the client to be specific with their requirements, as well as keeping the project on ...