Six challenges of big data project management

Analytics   |   
Published October 20, 2016   |   

Project management always comes with a set of various challenges. In the past couple of years, as businesses have significantly grown, project management has become even more complicated. On the other side of things, a variety of software solutions were created for easier project tracking and data management.
One of the dominating technologies that are currently very popular is big data. However, with new technologies, new challenges have emerged as well. The following are some of the challenges that big data project managers have to deal with.

Ensuring investments and getting the green light

Before you start of every single project, it is necessary to ensure that there is a good enough budget. Investors and board members are the first ones who are involved in the whole process. Only a couple of years ago, these decisions were made based on the managers’ presentations and uncertain predictions. Luckily, with easy project management software, it is possible to provide exact estimates and reports for clients, investors, and other important authoritative figures.
To ensure budgeting, every project manager has to have the right data and predictions about the ROI of the whole project.

Project overview

Big corporations are continually working on several projects simultaneously. Ensuring that several projects are worked on within the same time frame is quite a challenging experience. Fortunately, a project management tool provides great insight into the progress of every single project and whether the team members are working on the right tasks that are pushing projects forward.
This challenge is easily bridged with a project management tool such as ProProfs Project, which gives a perfect overview of all of the projects and their progress stages. This allows for better workflow within a company where deadlines for every single task are successfully met.

Task management

Overviewing multiple projects is a complicated task, but deciding who is going to be responsible for every single task is something much more challenging. Projects often require the completion of several tasks within the same time frame, so that there is always constant workflow without pauses.
For example, a majority of projects are split into several stages, where one cannot begin before a certain set of tasks is completed. When you add a deadline to the whole equation, task management becomes a very big challenge that has to be approached with an incredible amount of planning.
This is another situation where project management software tools are priceless. With great ease, project managers are capable of easily distributing tasks and following how each of them is progressing. If there is any delay, reassigning tasks to different people, or adding more people to a particular task is only a couple of clicks away, and people are immediately notified about the changes and what they should do next.
With the help of easy project management software, those responsible for project management can make this challenging task an easy assignment which can be dealt with in a few seconds.

Documentation and instructions

Ever since so many companies have become enormous international corporations, the amount of documentation involved in the whole workflow has drastically increased. Big data makes maintaining this documentation much easier, as everything is shared online. However, the challenge remains to redistribute and link the right resources to people who are involved with specific projects and tasks.
A project management software tool makes this whole process much less daunting, as it is easy to share documentation with people working on a project. This involves project plans, client’s conditions, rules of the company, the whole flow of the project and details regarding all the small tasks.
Managing all of this information is something that was incredibly hard to accomplish only a couple of years ago, but now that tools such as ProProfs are present, handling documentation in Big Data project management is much easier.

Saving Time

One of the most important things in the business world is time. The modern market is shifting at a fast pace nowadays, and being late in the business world race is something that can in some cases cost companies millions of dollars.
This is actually the biggest problem that project managers face on every single project. The deadline is always looming in the background and making sure that everything is completed in time is a very serious responsibility.
This is another area where project management tools are very useful. Time tracking is one of the very important features that these software solutions offer. It is possible for a project manager to exactly track how much time was spent on each individual task. On the other hand, saving time is also possible through the creation of task dependencies, where each task can be created based on its importance.
Combining all of these features supported by the ProProfs platforms, a project manager can be enabled to easily save a lot of time and finish projects by the set deadline.

Picking the right people for the job

This is another challenge that every project manager has to deal with. Working with smaller teams of people, it is easy for the manager to memorize the strengths of each team member. However, when teams count a much higher number of people, it is very challenging to keep track of which types of tasks are suitable for specific team members. Assigning the wrong type of task to someone can delay the project, and this makes it very important to pick the right person for every single task.
This is another part of the task management process where project management tools are of great use. Tracking the performance of every employee is made incredibly easy. A team manager can add personal notes and experiences regarding previous tasks, as well as evaluate the behavior of each individual.
Collecting this data is essential for future projects. The challenge of assigning the right task to a particular person becomes much easier and it makes the whole workflow much easier, more productive and more time efficient.
These are the challenges that big data project managers have to face time and time again. Including a software tool to help with these challenges is of key importance for companies who are looking to finish bigger projects without any complications, errors, and interruptions.