The 4 biggest project management problems and how you can solve them with Zoho Projects

Planning, time, communication: these factors complicate many a project. We talk about the biggest problems, prepare you for them and show you how to avoid them with the help of Zoho Projects!

Make it your project – or it will end up being a thorn in your side!

Maybe new software needs to be integrated internally or an order from a customer needs to be processed? Many a well-known DIY store would be shouting out to you to “Make it your project” – with the requisite underlying euphoria, of course. But anyone who has ever been sucked into a project, or even courageously thrown themselves into it, knows all too well, it’s not always plain sailing. There are many small and large obstacles you might encounter in the course of a project, which can really get in the way of reaching your goal. They may even postpone entire project phases. Or drive you to despair. But thank goodness for the helping hand that comes in the form of technical support. A software that can shield you from frustration. Figuratively speaking, an application with a kind of superhero cape – Zoho Projects! We’ll walk the trail together along the biggest project management obstacles so you can prepare yourself mentally, and we’ll share with you just how Zoho Projects can be your saving grace.

“If you want to build high towers, you have to spend a long time working on the foundation.”

What the Austrian composer Joseph Anton Bruckner described so romantically can also be transferred from music to project management. The reason is quite simple. The construct surrounding a project is one that encompasses its planning, organization, monitoring, and control in order to efficiently achieve a specific goal or outcome. How can it be done? With structure! As a project manager, you are the conductor of the orchestra. You work with employees from different departments and are all working in unison to meet the individual wishes of the customer. You have to keep an eye on every move and keep everyone involved happy. All of this can only be achieved with a digital solution. There is a wide range of providers and applications on the market to help you with this. ​ The one that stands out the most is Zoho. That’s because Zoho knows exactly what you need before you do yourself.

Get to know Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is the 21st Century answer to project management: Digital, cloud-based and fully automatable. Yes, you read that right! When deadlines may seem to ambush you from behind, Zoho Projects is there to help you. It supports you with its various capabilities in all project phases, in controlling, and gives you a comprehensive overview – whether at your fixed workstation or on the go on your smartphone. Sound too good to be true? It is – especially because Zoho Projects learns from the mistakes that all project managers have made before you and takes the wind straight out of the sails of any potential problems. But enough rambling, now let’s get down to the nitty gritty and talk about the elephants in the project management room!

Main problem number 1: Inadequate project planning

Do you remember the words of Joseph Anton Bruckner? That foundation he’s talking about is and will always be your project planning. After you have compiled the wishes and goals of your departments or customers, the task is to summarize them in a detailed project plan based on the various steps. But what step do you take first? Which one makes the most sense? What are the tasks, who are the people responsible for them? You need to go through this colorful list of questions for yourself and create a plan based on them. Without it, there’s really no need – to put it harshly – to even start. After all, anyone who plunges into their project haphazardly rarely ends up with any result at all, let alone a satisfactory one. Zoho Projects has created a digital board for this purpose. In it, you can neatly enter your tasks together with the necessary information, priorities and, of course, the responsible team member. And even more importantly, you can create an organizational chart for the different statuses of tasks, according to which everyone can divide their to-dos into progress phases.

Main problem number 2: Tight schedule​ ​

Okay, the basics are in place, everyone knows what to do – but when exactly? As you will notice – deadlines are an equally significant factor within the foundations. It’s not uncommon for tasks to go undone without the proper assignment of end dates, especially if the project has to be worked out in tandem with day-to-day business. It’s easy to forget a to-do here and there. This may or may not be a disaster for the individual team member. However, for you as the project manager, it throws you more off track if this is something that happens more often. Therefore, it is important that you never forget the mantra: everyone sticks to the timetable! What may sound like a utopian idea is the supreme discipline of Zoho Projects. Because there is one thing you need to know: there is no way to avoid the deadlines and the notifications in Zoho Projects! Simply set a start and end date when creating the tasks. When paired with the priority level, urgent to-dos can be identified immediately. Those who manage to skillfully ignore the deadline anyway will be confronted with the escalation rules, which you can configure individually for your project. For each scenario, instructions can be designed for each stage and a variation of notification functions can be created. A deadline is in sight? If so, Zoho Projects automatically informs all project members via push notification or email. As mentioned before – from now on no one can miss a thing. And the best thing about it? You can monitor the progress of all tasks in a Gantt chart at any time:.

Main problem number 3: Poor communication​ ​

“What’s the score here?” “I gave you feedback on this, why didn’t you include this?” “I never received this info” – these phrases will come up again and again in project management bingo. Poor communication is the axe that can also bring down your project plan, no matter how well it is structured. If one employee doesn’t know what the other is doing, it’s hard to pull it together and accomplish your goals. The first rule here: create a communication channel to ensure that information does not get lost in all kinds of ways. Zoho Projects has created the perfect symbiosis for this. Under every task you create and deploy for your project, contributors can share updates and upload documents in the built-in commenting feature. Employees can tag each other in a comment, which can’t be missed thanks to the automatic notification feature via email and the push notification in the Zoho Projects screen. This means that it is not only the people responsible, but also you as the project manager who can trace the flow of communication at any stage and are kept fully informed, all the time. This can be helpful in the event of absences due to illness or a change of personnel within an area of responsibility, allowing you to keep your project moving forward continuously.

Main problem number 4: Overlapping cooperation

fferent departments working on a task and customers who want or need to be involved in the approval process. Welcome to the next project management hurdle: conducting across multiple orchestras. With Zoho Projects, though, you don’t have to start running around in circles. Specify the structural tone and Zoho will do the work with one single magical term: Blueprints. You can set up these Blueprints individually in advance according to your requirements and therefore secure standardized workflows and processes. You don’t want a task to move to the next progression stage until you’ve approved it? Tell your Blueprint! Is there a checklist of certain requirements that must be met before the task can be defined as completed? Tell your Blueprint! You set the necessary parameters yourself and can therefore ensure that all project members work together according to the same standards and, above all, with transparency. Speaking of transparency… there was something else. Exactly – this of course also applies to your customers! Ditch tedious, meticulous project reports for each step of the process and invite your contacts to follow along with your project. Via the user administration you can grant external users access to individual subtasks, tasks or entire projects and configure the customer role according to the respective permissions. You decide whether your customers are only allowed to read along or whether they are allowed to write comments and upload data. You are and remain the conductor!

Project work in 2023 – in cooperation with codafish

Digitized and clear – that’s the way we love project management! And it doesn’t just stop at one application: Zoho Projects easily connects with Zoho’s Connect and Cliq communication tools and integrates with other SaaS apps like Microsoft Teams. As you have read, Zoho Projects opens up unimagined possibilities and a wealth of features. Do you need a partner-in-crime to help you with this? Then get in touch with us! At codafish, we advise you on all aspects of project management, create a comprehensive project plan with you on request and completely configure Zoho Projects according to your individual needs. We have all the answers to the questions relating to structure, work-saving Blueprints and program additional functions in cooperation with Zoho to ensure your project management is optimal!