Dealing with Your Project’s Problems

Managing projects often means dealing with the unexpected, which can be both exciting and nerve-racking. You’ll face problems that you aren’t sure how to handle—and sometimes these can threaten the project’s success.

Scope creep

One of the most common issues is scope creep. Your client or some group of stakeholders wants you to add new deliverables to the project. (In software circles, this phenomenon is sometimes called “feature creep.”) This is only human: once people see that you can probably accomplish A, B, and C, they begin thinking that D and E might be good as well. It’s why some homeowners set out to replace a sink and a counter-top and end up remodeling their kitchens.

As project manager, you have ...

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