Lack of proper planning

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Every work effort, big or small, requires planning. This helps create a shared vision for all involved, which is essential for smooth collaboration.

If you skip this step—or if you think you can figure out the details as you go—you're setting yourself, your team, and the project up for failure.

Lack of proper planning leads to miscommunication, confusion about people's roles and responsibilities, and conflicting priorities (about project goals, about the level of effort, about how to prioritize this initiative versus other work, etc.).

In particular, if the initiative involves working with other teams or departments, you need to plan accordingly so that managers know how to help their employees prioritize this initiative alongside other ongoing work.

SOLUTION:

Do not begin any work effort until you have held a kick-off meeting to agree on the following:

Goals / Objective: What are we trying to achieve or what problem are we trying to solve?
Scope, timeline, budget/resources: What tangible or intangible product or service do we expect from this and what work needs to be done to achieve it? How long will it take, how much will it cost, and what resources (e.g. people, roles, skills, departments, etc.) will be required?
Success Criteria: How will we measure the success or failure of this work?
Stakeholders: Who has an interest in this work? What is their role, level of involvement, level of influence, etc.?
Standardized Process: What process or workflow will this initiative follow? What tools will we use to communicate, collaborate, and track our progress?
Internal and external dependencies: What conditions or growth of the overseas chinese in canada bottlenecks might impact the scope, timeline, and budget/resources of this initiative? For example, other ongoing projects, capacity of key resources, upcoming holidays or vacations, vendor/customer work, etc.
Sandeep Kashyap headshot

Medical history
Sandeep Kashyap , founder and CEO of ProofHub, shares his story of poor project planning and how the company overcame this collaboration problem:

"The biggest challenge for us was the lack of a single source of truth. Sometimes the designers would create a design, but the content team wouldn't find it at the right level for the message being conveyed.

They weren't following a common vision. Both teams were getting their instructions from different sources. The design team wasn't aligned with what the development team was actually trying to achieve. This was true in other departments as well.

So we created ProofHub . It became our central place for all project-related discussions, files, and edits. Now everyone on the team contributes and reaches one valuable point of contact before starting work."

3. Using unsuitable tools.
Email, spreadsheets, carrier pigeons - these are not the right tools for collaboration. First, these tools do not bring people together. Instead, they keep information and individuals in a highly disjointed environment.

They also encourage miscommunication (eg long email chains due to "reply all" or forgetting to hit "reply all" and leaving people out of the loop) and don't provide visibility into workload.

They are mostly just dirty (especially pigeons).

Think about it: The #1 issue that drives first-time buyers to purchase project management software is the need for increased transparency and accountability, followed by the need for improved collaboration and the elimination of silos.

SOLUTION:

First, invest in the right tools, then create a communication plan to use them.

Here's what we recommend to help you choose the right tool:

Assess your needs. What pain points exist with your current tools?
Determine what you need and what you must have.
Create a shortlist of products based on functionality and team requirements (you can use our catalog and filter the product list by the specific features you are looking for).
Offer demo products to end users and evaluate them against your tooling requirements.
Invest in the solution that best suits your needs.
The second part of this solution is creating (and enforcing) a communication plan and tool hierarchy.

What does this mean? Well, for example, you will never get rid of email. But you can create rules governing its use.

This means that if someone emails you about a project, ask them to forward their question to your shared tool so that all project-related messages are in one place. Save email for non-urgent or non-project-related messages.