Project managers face a variety of problems every single day. Some are people-related, some are task-related, but all are headaches and can make or break the successful outcome of a project. With this being the case, what project manager wouldn’t look for new ways to decrease the likelihood of issues occurring? Luckily, Salesforce is here to help. Using Salesforce, project managers can minimize common day-to-day problems and focus more time on getting projects completed successfully. Here are 5 project management problems that can be solved using Salesforce today.

1. Lack of Communication

Lack of proper communication is a huge problem for project managers and their team members too. Clear communication channels are a must-have in order for team members to get the right information that they need and for projects to get completed effectively. In Salesforce, you can communicate in a variety of ways. In particular, Salesforce Chatter is a great communication tool. You can post messages on to records in Salesforce and tag relevant people so that they see the message. This helps ensure that everyone has been informed of the message. Also, you can ‘Follow’ an individual User so that you are notified via email or in your Chatter feed of their real-time actions like commenting or liking posts. This is great because project managers can be followed by all team members, ensuring that everyone is updated on any actions the project manager takes in Salesforce. There are many awesome Chatter features you can utilize for better communication today.

2. Unclear Expectations

Everybody wants to do a good job on their work, but if expectations are unclear, how can this be done? Oftentimes, a task may be completed incorrectly due to an employee not being on the same page as a manager when it comes to an expected deliverable or outcome. This can be frustrating for all parties involved and can waste a ton of time. With Salesforce, you can clearly identify task and record owners, directly creating a clear expectation. For example, a manager can create and assign a Task to a User, complete with all details regarding what needs to be done. Additionally, a manager can post a Chatter message on a record or even reference a record directly in an email, allowing a User to know exactly what needs to be done in relation to it. Salesforce can help add clarity to project expectations, increasing job success and decreasing frustration amongst team members.

3. Lack of Proper Delegation

One of the most challenging project management problems is Delegation. Giving up control over tasks can be tough when you know that you personally could complete the task successfully, but perhaps need to allocate your time elsewhere. The Salesforce project management app Inspire Planner can help here. Inspire Planner offers many different features that can be utilized to make delegation easier, including Time Tracking and a Gantt Chart feature.

With Time Tracking, you can compare Planned Project Effort vs Actual Effort for accurate project forecasting. With this feature, you can determine which tasks should be delegated to which team member based on the most accurate time. This will help you see who can complete what faster, as well as where you may need to project manage more. This also helps you to see what tasks may take you too long and if another team member may be a better fit.

Gantt Charts are great for helping to see how your delegated tasks are coming along and if there are any bottlenecks. They allow easy visualization of all tasks in a project so you can understand timelines and dependencies. If you see that one team member is swamped with tasks, you can delegate some of the work to another, helping to spread the effort across your project and ensure timelines are met.

4. Scope Creep

Scope creep is something that is almost unavoidable for project managers. Scope creep is when your project begins to have tiny bits of updates or additional requests that seem small at first but can ultimately cost you hours. One great way to minimize scope creep is to have a requirements plan laid out before starting the project. This creates a framework in which you work, and if something isn’t in the requirements document, it cannot be done. You can then use Salesforce files to store this document and even associate it to related records. This way, everyone has access to all of the information they need to ensure project needs are clear and scope creep doesn’t happen too often!

5. Responsibility of Ownership

Has a manager ever asked your team if a project or task has been finished and everyone looks at each other? Sometimes, the only reason something doesn’t get done is that it is unclear to the team that holds the responsibility. Salesforce can help make it clear to your team exactly who is responsible for what, ensuring that projects get completed successfully and on time. Most records must be assigned a record owner. Therefore, there is no questioning who is responsible for it! Be sure to create an understanding amongst your team that record owners are responsible for items related to the record too. Another way to increase the responsibility of ownership is through Groups. You can create Private Groups of Users and assign records to them. This allows the Users to understand what they are responsible for but gives them the freedom to delegate specific ownership amongst themselves.