According to the annual Project Management survey conducted by Sinnaps, teams are keen to have suitable management tools. However, in 80% of the cases, it is executives who have to decide whether to purchase these tools. There is an evident need to improve engineering projects. A mere 17% of engineers have had a professional project management tool available to them for years.
Difficult as it may be to appreciate, there are many companies that still work without project management software in line with the real needs of the team leaders. A mere 17% of engineers have been managing their projects professionally over the years. What this means is that just a very small part of the engineering sector is successfully optimising their projects.
Knowing that, in addition, the team leaders are aware of this fact, then the problem is even greater, very much leaving the ball in the court of the executives. According to the data gathered through the annual survey by Sinnaps, some 54% of the engineers questioned note that it is the CEO who takes the decision on whether to purchase these tools. Likewise, some 80% of these engineers state that this purchasing decision is at the discretion of either Heads of Departments or the CEO.
This lack of support translates into significant time lost and a notable increase in costs. One of the specific primary functions of professional software is the optimisation of work paths and real-time project progress oversight.
This type of rapid and flexible tool, such as Sinnaps, also fosters online collaboration, another key area in ensuring a project comes in on time and within budget. The fact is most of those surveyed run a team of co-workers, something that is a determining factor in project success.
When can we identify a support problem on the part of Senior Management?
This lack of support from executives towards team leaders is hardly a new phenomenon. Rather, it is something that has been present in-company for decades. It is a simple inconvenience that can become standardised among work teams.
Following an analysis of the results obtained from the "Project Management: habits and app usage 2019" survey, this matter is once more front and centre. How should it be tackled? Firstly, it is important to identify whether there is a genuine lack of support from Senior Management towards team leaders. To help with this, Sinnaps has identified these main symptoms:
Lack of standardisation in the project management system;
Excess of documentation hindering rapid management;
Usage of unsuitable tools for the type of project and teams managed;
Work overload on planning that is out of consonance with the reality and available resources of the project;
Budgetary slippage and negative balances;
Insufficient integration of all the elements into a single management platform;
Loss of productivity among the work teams.
A constant change in management systems is a typical feature of many companies. This inhibits any standardisation in management processes. Most of the tools available on the market lack a flexible interface nor are they easy to use, something that requires extra effort when establishing a team. This, in turn, leads to a notable loss of productivity among those involved.
For this reason, Sinnaps notes that it is important to carefully assess whether the tool we want to choose really meets all the needs of our work teams. "Sometimes companies apply software that is excessively difficult to use to projects that simply do not need all the features available. This then confounds the collaborators and leads to significant financial losses," states Richard Balet, CEO and founder of Sinnaps.
A constant flow of communication between Senior Management and team leaders may help many companies improve their management processes, reducing financial losses significantly while increasing productivity and satisfaction among their engineering teams.
