The people challenge is a critical factor that effects the project management in any organization.

It
addresses putting together effective project teams, getting project teams up and running quickly by
establishing sound team processes, ensuring the project teams deliver the results through motivating and
managing the performance of team members and winding down the teams at the end of the project in such
a way that it is seen by all those involved as a positive move onwards and forwards (Bee & Bee, 2000).
Project manager (called the project leader in some organizations) to describe the person charged with
the responsibility of achieving the project objectives (Bee & Bee, 2000).
Project team to describe a team of people brought together to work on a specific project (Bee & Bee,
2000).
Project team is a collection of individuals who work together to attain a goal (Bee & Bee, 2000).
Storming stage, as the title suggests, a time of conflict and turbulence in the team, when previous
agreements often reached on a superficial basis during the first stage, are challenged. The resulting
consensus is usually more realistic and long lasting. It is a time when individual members begin to show
their personal agendas and push back the boundaries of acceptable behaviour (Bee & Bee, 2000).
Members will have to learn to challenge the right issues in the appropriate way, handle conflict in a
constructive manner, support and help each other, and manage change (Bee & Bee, 2000).
We believe that it is addressing and meeting the people challenge of project working that can make the
vital difference (Bee & Bee, 2000).
Challenges in the first phase (putting the project team together) of the project team
Forming effective project team in combination the pragmatic approach of who is available
possessing the right skills and experience with getting a balance of informal team roles
Identifying and clarifying the role of team leader drawing out the major distinctions in role between
leaders of project teams and leaders of stable teams
Selecting the right project leader highlighting the key characteristics of a project leader
Handling changes in project team membership during life of the project
Private sector project managers like to assume that their work is more demanding than projects in public
sector. They assume that their projects are more complex, subject to tougher management oversight, and
mandated to move at faster speeds. Although private sector projects can be tough, in many cases, it is
easier to accomplish results in private sector than in the public sector (Wirick, 2009).
In public sector, goals are more complex and fragmented. In addition, more stakeholders are allowed both
by public sector rules and political exigencies to have a voice in the direction of projects and agency
strategic directions (Wirick, 2009).

Challenges
Operate in an environment of often conflicting goals and outcomes
Involve many layers of stakeholders with varied interests
Must placate under political interests and operate under media scrutiny
Are allowed little tolerance for failure
Operate in organizations that often have a difficult time identifying outcome measures and missions
Are required to be performed under constraints imposed by administrative rules and often
cumbersome policies and processes that can delay projects and consume project resources
Require the cooperation and performance of agencies outside of the project team for purchasing,
hiring and other functions
Must make do with existing staff resources more often that private sector projects because of civil
service protections and hiring systems
Are performed in organizations that may not be comfortable or used to directed action and project
success
Are performed in an environment that may include political adversaries
Emerging challenges
Modest or stagnant economic growth
Globalization and the loss of the industrial revenue base and, increasingly, the service sector revenue
base
A decline in real wages and pressure for tax reform
Private sector practices that pass the cooperate safety net back to individuals, who may then look to
government for such essential security mechanisms as health coverage
Difficult in passing on the need for government revenue to tax payers and general loss of confidence
in government
Structural limitations of revenue generations
The redirection of scarce public revenues to homeland security and defence without the imposition of
war taxes
The erosion of public sector income as entitlement programmes drain revenues in response to an
aging population
An age imbalance, with fewer workers in the workforce to support an expanding number of retirees
and children
Longer life expectancy, which further burdens entitlement and health programmes
Increasing costs of health care well beyond the level of inflation
Long delayed investments in our national infrastructure, including roads, bridges and water systems
Additional challenges to public sector
Understanding of government processes
Political awareness and sensitivity (though project managers in the private sector are required to
understand organizational politics, they do not operate in an environment that so frequently contains a
direct opposition party that measures its success and ability to get elected, in part, based on the failure
of the party in power)
Managing employees without the ability to provide the types of incentives (and disincentives)
available to the public sector
Operating among a vast array of stakeholders, including the public, administration officials, and
legislatures
Understanding the process and operating in an environment of high visibility with little organizational
tolerance for failure and media ready to exploit that failure
Managing conflict with internal and external stakeholders to an extent beyond that required of private
sector project managers

101 project management problems
1. Personality type of the project manager
2. Habits of successful project managers
3. Individual contributor; not a team worker
4. Not knowing project managers responsibilities
5. Having no qualification or experience
6. Not choosing correct project management methodology
7. Developing and revising project life cycle
8. Identifying the project type
9. Manage short, complex and dynamic projects
10. Manage to balance PM practices with the high pressure
11. Simultaneously handling projects (multi project environment)
12. Balance day to date life and project
13. Stakeholder management
14. PM practices during the organizational process change
15. Play with new teams or new members
16. Limited resources (human and other)
Initiating
1. Reconcile competing and cross functional agendas
2. Establish a proper control when the project is huge
3. Initiate a project with new technology or new team
4. Projects having low priority
Team work
1. Organizing the team for a better outcome
2. Interact with low experienced team leaders/members
3. Make team members believe in PM practices
4. Keep team members focused without hurting morale
5. Implement PM practices without overhead increase
6. Build team work among geographically dispersed members (Page 95)
7. Cope with part time team members
8. Manage informal communication
Planning
1. Limit of delegation of authority
2. Managing huge WBS
3. Estimating of duration and cost (estimating and improve accuracy)
4. Manage progress during festival season/special occasions
5. Manage external dependencies
6. Balancing resources (within project component or several projects)
7. Manage project staff turnover
Execution
1. Avoid too many meetings
2. Keep tracking of project details
3. Best ways to communicate project status
4. Identify best PM communication technique for remote contributors
5. Surviving late project work bulge, ensuring both project completion and team cohesion

By definition, each project is different from other projects, so no specific solution for a given problem is
likely to work exactly as well for one project as it might for another (Kendrick, 2011).


Challenges (Bittner & Gregorc, 2010)
Create public interest in a project
Adopting foreign culture in overseas
Global multi project management
Taking on joint responsibility
Discovering improvement potential in the organization
Aligning a new team
Sustainable personnel development
A team, a group, a project team or a community is not sustainable in the long term without the willingness
practice, experience and learn together. Each individual must adapt and be able to fit into the team, but
must also bring along his/her own strengths and show personal commitment in order to shape the group
and keep it vibrant (Bittner & Gregorc, 2010).
Something many project managers often experience is the confrontation with a new country, a new
culture, new colleagues and a fundamentally new challenge, which have never before been experienced.
In such cases there is always a feeling of uncertainty, along with curiosity for the new and unknown,
which is to be managed (Bittner & Gregorc, 2010).

Different institutions along with industry experts have defined numerous processes and methodologies to
reduce uncertainties and risk involved in projects (Dawawala, 2009).
Every standard project management methodology or process urges proper risk assessment, understanding
of scope, aligning budgeted cost with schedule and resource availability prior to project initiation
(Dawawala, 2009).

Projects conducted in international settings share these sometimes embarrassing communications pitfalls
and others as well. They are subject to cultural, bureaucratic and logistical challenges just like
conventional domestic projects are (Dinsmore & Benitez, 2010).
Understanding the culture is the starting point for planning for the challenges that face international
projects. For an organization, culture may be more simplistically perceived as the guiding believes that
determine the way we do things around here (Dinsmore & Benitez, 2010).
The challenge in international project settings revolves around the fact that the projects are usually made
up of multiple organizations, thus involving multiple organizational cultures in setting that involve several
ethnic or country based culture. So the issues are actually cross cultural in nature and involve multiple
issues (Dinsmore & Benitez, 2010).
Functional redundancy means the duplication of overlap of certain functions or activities. This may
be necessary because the contractual agreement involving technology transfer requiring national
counterparts.
Political factors in international projects are a strong influence and are plagued with countless
unknowns. Aside from fluctuations in international politics, project professionals are faced with the
subtleties of local politics, which often place major roadblocks in the pathway of attaining project
success.
The expatriate way of life refers to the habits and expectations of those parties who are transferred to
a host country. This includes the way of thinking and the physical and psychological needs of those
people temporarily living in a strange land with different customs and ways of life.
Language and culture include the system of spoken, written, and other social forms of
communication. Included in language and culture are the systems of codification and decodification
of thoughts, beliefs, and values common to a given people.
Additional risk factors may include personal risks such as kidnapping, local epidemics, and faulty
medical care. Terrorism and local insurgencies are also critical risk factors in some settings. Rapid
swings in political and economic situations, or peculiar local weather or geology, are also potential
uncertainties.
Supply difficulties encompass all the contracting, procurement, and logistical challenges that must be
faced on the project.
Local law and legislations affect the way much of business is done on international projects. They
may even affect personal habits (such as abstaining from drinking alcoholic beverages in Muslim
countries).


Project management is a mass of contradictions. It has to create a comprehensive and detailed plan but at
the same time be flexible enough to deal with the unexpected. It has to keep the big picture view focused
on that final goal while taking care of the small but critical details that keep everything on track. And it is
needed the compassion and energy to inspire the project team and the courage to challenge the
supervisors when necessary (Managing Projects: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges, 2006).
Project managers discover different rewards in their work. For some, its the pleasure of solving the big
problem and the acknowledgement of an achievement. For others, the excitement of making something
out of nothing is the big payoff. And for others, working with different kind of people and developing
professional relationship provide the deepest satisfaction (Managing Projects: Expert Solutions to
Everyday Challenges, 2006).


It is cited the inadequate oversight of contractors activities as a factor of poor performance on projects
(Energy, 2003).
Furthermore the human capital challenges that exist an aging workforce whose retirement over the next
decade will severely deplete the knowledge and skills required to support project management (Energy,
2003).
Another challenge is the skill gaps in procurement and project management organizations and the
necessary technical and managerial expertise for adequate oversight of contractors (Energy, 2003).