Resources can mean funding, talented people, hardware or other equipment. Big challenges arise when organizations assign staff temporarily or part-time to an assignment. How do you keep your team motivated on your project when they have others to work on? How do you get the funding or equipment to perform your project?

Change, as they say, is inevitable. When it happens, how can you address it? Should you push back and if so, how much? If you do change, how do you make sure everyone is on board? Are there better ways to predict and plan for change?

Managing delivery deadlines for clients, leadership, and other stakeholders can be challenging. It’s common for a leader or project manager to be asked to deliver faster than expected, or to provide timing estimates that may be challenged or accelerated by clients.

Unexpected or unaccounted for risks are the surprise challenges that crop up throughout your project or as you operate and lead your organization. They may slowly emerge over time or manifest quickly and demand immediate response. Knowing how to plan for these and weighing the time and effort associated with this plan all hallmarks of good leaders and project managers.

A stakeholder is anyone who can influence your work or is impacted by it. Communicating with these stakeholders and managing their expectations is challenging yet rewarding when done successfully. Finding the right balance is key - balancing the amount of information, who and how many people to share it with, and how frequently to engage them.

Making sure the right people get the right information at the right time is one of the most difficult parts of running an organization, team, or project. As your team grows so do communication challenges. Some news needs to come from you as the leader. Some information sharing is more efficient if done directly between team members.

Managing work scope addresses the what of your project or work. For example, what will be the outcomes of the project? Or what will the system look like that you’re developing? One symptom of possible trouble is scope creep. This happens when additional requirements, functionality, or capability are added to your team’s effort or project.