The 3 most common mistakes in planning management
May 30, 2022
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4 min
When it comes to planning, mistakes are easily made. The people in charge of assignment, planning or human resources can confirm this. When it comes to organising the schedules of your project teams, the first achievement is not only the most painful, but also the most time-consuming. Don't panic! If you are embarking on the creation of a forward schedule, there are easy solutions. Here is an overview of the three most common mistakes with planning software.
The first major challenge in managing your schedule is to keep to the time associated with each task in your project. It is not uncommon for project leaders or managers to define a time frame for each assignment without taking into account many parameters:
Some tasks may appear to be quicker to complete than others. Consequently, in order to speed up the project, the tasks are not prioritised but by time taken to complete. A classic mistake, but one that can have serious consequences for your project.
It is important to classify the different tasks you have to carry out by objective, as well as their difficulty of execution within your planning management. By combining these different criteria together, you will be able to better establish your planning schedule.
As a result of poor time management, employees quickly find themselves overloaded and in a rush to complete tasks. By not prioritising tasks, you run the risk of a "half-done" job, triggering frustration and stress.
Many managers and staff enter information manually. Although this practice is in the interest of doing the right thing, it does not allow information to be passed on to all stakeholders in each project.
The consequence of such a working method is multiple. It is marked by a waste of time for the people in charge of planning, who are constantly running after missing information (holidays, absences, project deadlines, etc). They will look for this information in your additional tools such as: ERP, CRM or HRIS. In turn, the HR manager manually integrates all the information into a planning Excel. This is at the expense of more errors, not to mention the loss of information. Indeed, Excel does not recover the information automatically. The document quickly becomes obsolete. The HR manager has to search again for all the missing information, wasting precious time.
With a planning tool, you can automatically retrieve all data from third-party tools used by the company. Updates are made automatically and transmitted to the central tool. You ensure reliable data in real time.
In order to complete a project quickly, planners use a single criterion to plan their project. The criterion most often used is the availability of resources (i.e. employees), without taking into account their skills, their interest in the mission or their aspirations.
Although the single criterion seems very attractive at first sight, it is nevertheless responsible for many blocking points during the course of the project.
Planners base their project planning on a single criterion: the availability of resources (employees). They do not take into account their skills, their interest or their aspirations. This is a real risk for the success of the project.
The solution is to adapt a planning management tool, which will provide a more exhaustive view of the elements necessary for planning, such as the availability of staff, but also the mapping of skills (with aspirations, level of expertise, etc.), interests or disinterest in a project/client, etc.
A planning management tool provides an exhaustive view of the elements necessary for planning, such as the availability of staff, but also the mapping of skills (with aspirations, level of expertise, etc.), interests or disinterest in a project/client, etc.
If you start planning, remember that you should always keep time for yourself and share your planning tools. This way you avoid procrastination and general stress in the company.
Our recommendation? Installing a planning software within your company and sharing it with all your employees, without exception. This is the best solution to ensure the development of skills in the use of the tool. And to standardise and streamline internal processes.
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