The document discusses three project management taboos that professionals should break to improve their effectiveness. First, project managers should assert their authority over project direction rather than deferring entirely to stakeholders. Second, while teamwork and collaboration are important, project managers must also enforce deadlines and make tough decisions, and finally, they should employ flexible and creative management strategies instead of rigidly adhering to predetermined methodologies.

1. 3 Project Management Taboos
You Should Break

2. Project managers are doers and helpers.
They want to get things done on target, on
and on budget, with no excuses.
And part of that project manager
provide advice at all times

3. But sometimes, project managers give
each other bad advice—and that advice
enters the project management world as
an absolute, leaving no room for nuance.

4. Originally Published by Rachel Burger on Capterra’s Project Management Blog

5. In other words, there are definitely
project management taboos.
And you should be breaking them.

6. Taboo #1
Your stakeholders have the final say on
delegation and project direction.

7. Project managers make mistakes with their
stakeholders all the time. But to thus conclude
that stakeholders should always have the final
say on how a project is directed is nothing but
false.

8. You are the manager. You have full control
over your process.

9. The temptation here is that you should be
consistently in communication with your
stakeholders about how they would like their
project completed. The reality is that they only
determine the what and you, as the project
manager, have better experience and training on
how to complete a project on time.

10. Challenge the status quo. And don’t
be afraid to ask your stakeholders to
do your job.

11. Taboo #2
Shift all of your focus to teamwork,
collaboration, and communication.

12. “Collaboration” seems to be the buzzword du
jour in project management. For example,
example, when shopping for project
management software, most
people look for file sharing (51%), time tracking
(50%), and email integration (48%) above all
else.

13. In fact, our project management research
shows that software buyers notice the biggest
improvement in team communication above all
other benefits the software provides.

14. In other words, collaboration and
communication are certainly essential to a
essential to a successful project team.

15. But that’s not all there is to reaching a final
deliverable. There is such a thing as a
manager that is too sensitive to the needs of
their team members.

16. Project management does require
constant communication and
teamwork—but it also requires being the
enforcer, even if it makes you the bad guy.

17. Sometimes you have to be firm. Sometimes you have
to enforce the deadline, even if that means
ignoring a team member’s extenuating
circumstances.

18. And yes, doing so has the potential of affecting
team collaboration. But sometimes that has to go
on the backburner to get things done, now and in
the future.

19. Taboo #3
You should always play by the rules.

20. I’m not recommending that you should run around
burning things in your office and beating the life out of
life out of your office printer.
I’m talking much more about processes that project
managers fall into. I’m looking at project management
methodologies like Waterfall or Agile or relying on
templates.

21. Yes, methods are important to learning
how to manage people.
And templates tend to provide good
guidelines on how to handle certain
situations.

22. But it’s the lazy project manager who
exclusively relies on these tools. Project
management requires dynamic thinking,
creativity, and flexibility.

23. If you’re over-relying on a process made by other
people, you lose the opportunity to create and
execute a system that is best for your workplace and
your projects.

24. Being strict about methodology can not only be
irritating to stakeholders and your team, but also
damaging to the final deliverable itself.

25. Find out more project management tips and more
Here