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Things move fast in the world of project management. Goalposts shift, strategies evolve, and goals change. Trying to balance these challenges within your projects can be extremely difficult, often leading to something called Project Misalignment.
A serious issue for many project management teams. In fact, around 44% of projects fail due to project misalignment with crucial business objectives!
Luckily for you, dear reader, we’ve got everything you need to identify the early signs of misalignment in project management and stop it in its tracks. Uncover common causes, and how to fix project misalignment once and for all.
What is Project Misalignment?
Project Misalignment happens when the goals of a project and the team behind it do not align with the wider business objectives. Misalignment also occurs when different teams focus their efforts on varying or contrasting projects and tasks, misaligning the output and hindering certain goals from being achieved.
Ultimately, project misalignment is detrimental, creating huge setbacks that can have a financial impact on project teams, employee morale, and business growth. This is why it’s important to understand the causes, and how to prevent it.
As Zig Ziglar, an American Salesman and Author once said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” Emphasizing the need to take goal setting seriously. One of the major causes of misalignment in project management!
Why is Project Alignment Important?
Project alignment doesn’t just ensure the right goals are achieved. It helps justify project management expenditures, meet the demands of major stakeholders or investors, keep the business profitable, and make progress clear.
The benefits of good project alignment are also noteworthy. Not only does it improve employee engagement, but teams can make swifter decisions, refine resource allocation, and continuously improve.
In a nutshell, the importance of misalignment in projects cannot be understated. Especially given the high percentage of projects that simply never meet their intended goals due to this mishap.
What Causes Misalignment in Project Management?
Unfortunately for project professionals, there is no one root cause of misalignment in project management. From unclear business objectives to poor stakeholder communication, the list is long.
Maria Rosa Torres Sejin, a Global Portfolio Management Leader, shares pro tips on the root causes of misalignment in project management with the following:
“Approach the analysis with a holistic mindset, considering both internal and external factors that may contribute to the issue. Encourage open and candid communication among team members and stakeholders, creating a safe space for sharing diverse perspectives and insights.
Additionally, leverage data-driven approaches, such as quantitative surveys or qualitative interviews, to gather comprehensive and objective feedback.
By embracing a multifaceted approach to analysis, you can uncover hidden insights and root causes that may not be immediately apparent, enabling more targeted and effective problem-solving.”
Lack of Clear Business Objectives
Possibly the biggest perpetrator of misalignment in project management is unclear objectives! This often occurs when goals are set loosely.
This leads to team members and stakeholders that interpret business objectives differently, creating a conflict of priorities and efforts that can last months!
Project leaders must get this right and direct their teams on what is important through clear outlines, project briefs, and other forms of communication. This brings us to our next point, poor communication.
The issue with ambiguity in goal setting is teams make assumptions and take it upon themselves to decipher where they should drive their focus and efforts. It’s your job, as a project manager to put a stop to this with clear alignment between projects and business objectives!
Top Tip: Take a look at ProductPlan’s SMART Goal-Setting guide to help you better articulate key business objectives and areas for prioritization.
Poor Stakeholder Communication
Misalignment in project management is often driven by poor stakeholder communication. From senior professionals to project team members, everyone must be informed and stay informed of project goals and changes.
Poor communication has been a struggle for many businesses in recent years, especially through the rise of remote and hybrid work. Although less direct communication may not be too important for some businesses, for PMOs it sure is.
Partho Mukherjee, a Project Execution Expert says…
“In my experience, [project misalignment] becomes apparent from the feedback you get from the client and/or the stakeholders.” Emphasizing the need for stronger communication.”
New Business Goals Unaccounted for in Projects
Business objectives change and new opportunities arise. Unfortunately, these aren’t always accommodated in ongoing projects. This of course leads to misalignment in project management and must be addressed!
Project Manager Dmitrii Kalinin offers his wisdom on the matter, saying…
“You need to look at the goals first and compare it to the goals and views of your team/stakeholders. You need to find the main differences between these two lists and start to work on the problems.
For example – your project goal is to complete the project within 2 months. Sound ok, from the customer’s perspective. However, your team workload is so high, that they are not able to even think about the project deadline in 2 months.”
Pivoting has become a driving force for business transformation and success. Organizations that can change direction, grow, and prosper typically lead in their industries. The one thing these success stories fail to highlight is how project managers quickly respond to new directions, goals, and strategies in their projects!
Take Netflix, for example. If they hadn’t pivoted to streaming and Netflix Originals, the business probably wouldn’t be around today. This would have required exceptional communication and meticulous projects.
The truth is businesses can evolve and projects can maintain progress! So long as they are accounted for, revised, and communicated. Ultimately, the three major causes outlined in this section go together.
Our top tip for you to avoid misalignment in project management is to set clear business goals, communicate effectively, and always revisit projects to ensure alignment is precise, accurate, and results-driven.
Project Management Misalignment Red Flags
By grasping the red flags of project management misalignment, you can better steer projects in the right direction! Whether its mismatched deliverables, poor communication channels or lack of stakeholder engagement, let’s explore these all in more detail, shall we?
Mismatched Deliverables
Although projects are completed and comply with the original expectations, the deliverables may not meet be what key stakeholders were looking for. This should be your first sign of misalignment in project management.
In some cases, teams might focus their efforts too heavily on the requirements of a project, and not the value it adds. Simply fulfilling contractual agreements between the business and PMO, without consideration for results.
In other scenarios, mismatched delivered stems from a simple misunderstanding of the expectations either from insufficient stakeholder communication or other means. Ultimately, it’s about clarifying what is expected from who to avoid this.
Quick Fixes:
- Incorporate feedback loops
- Lead with clarification on what’s expected
Careless Stakeholders
Closely following mismatched deliverables is careless or uninterested stakeholders. This refers to colleagues who delay feedback, disrupting the smooth-running of projects, and cause inefficiencies at every corner.
To avoid project misalignment, you must acquaint yourself with these characteristics in your team members and recognize when disruptions like this occur. That way projects receive the right support from stakeholders.
Quick fixes:
- Set clear expectations and monitor accountability.
- Ensure strategic regular communication.
Poor Communication Channels
Finally, poor communication channels refer to ineffective means of exchanging project details, updates, and advice between teams and colleagues. As mentioned previously, this is essential for remote and hybrid teams who may be limited to communication tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Too often teams are reliant on tools that hinder collaboration and make communication complicated. This kind of inefficiency creates issues with project alignment, where people oft opt not to communicate as much as they should.
It can be hard to interpret exactly what someone is looking for via instant messaging or quick video calls, making some channels ineffective. Here are some quick wins to optimize communication channels!
Quick Fixes for Poor Comms Channels
- Centralize communication with better tools
- Set up regular catchups for project alignment
- Be clear, open, and ensure teams understand.
How to Fix Project Misalignment in Four Steps
So, how can we fix misalignment in project management once and for all? Below are four steps you can take to squash misalignment and ensure everyone is on the right path to project management success!
Step #1: Carry out a Root Cause Analysis
To truly identity why misalignment in project management occurs, you must first assess the root causes. This could be communication, mismatched deliverables, or any of the other points we’ve discussed earlier.
It’s about really getting to the source of the matter to avoid project misalignment in the future for your team and strategy. Speak to your team and analyze feedback with a fine comb to put the picture together.
Ask yourself, were stakeholders both engaged and aligned during the planning process? And what conflicting priorities did different teams have? These questions should help you reveal key mishaps in causing project misalignment.
Step #2: Begin Realigning Stakeholders
Once you’ve assessed the common causes of project misalignment, it’s time to bring everyone together and create better harmony. Organize alignment workshops to review and confirm updated project objectives.
Remember, all causes, whatever they may be are resolved with open discourse on the issue of project misalignment! Try using visual aids such as charts and graphs to emphasize project alignment during these workshops.
Finally, it’s important blame isn’t put on individuals or teams as to why project misalignment occurred. Fixing the matter without negatively impacting your team’s morale is critical at this point.
Step #3: Adjusting the Project Plan
Possibly one of the most important steps in avoiding misalignment in project management is adjusting your plan. This means revising the project and informing all key stakeholders of the changes made. Remember, some of the biggest causes of project misalignment spawn from miscommunication.
Update everything from the project charter to your scope statement, and the deliverables. These should reflect the new objectives the business wants to achieve. That’s not all that needs changing! Review timelines and budgets to accomodate to the new goals set.
These changes, and your newfound plan should be distributing across all your project management tools, and means of communication. Nobody should be left in the dark about, and everybody should be in the know. This allows for good project alignment moving forward.
Step #4: Actively Monitor Project Alignment
Now that you have fixed your project misalignment issues, it’s time to set up some active monitoring. That way, you can avoid the same mistakes, while saving your business money and headaches! Although we have covered many of these points through this guide to what is misalignment in project management, it must be heard and acted upon!
First and foremost, schedule regular check-ins with stakeholders to review progress, address any changes as they happen, and ensure projects are following the plan. This might be a monthly thing in the diary for several project managers to attend.
It’s also worth identifying key metrics that help you monitor project alignment. These are KPIs like completion rates, stakeholder satisfaction, or budget adherence. By analyzing these, you can determine if projects have fallen off their tracks or the alignment is still in place.
It’s also worth considering the various tools available to you! There are plenty of project management tools, analytic dashboards, and other collaborative software that can help you execute project alignment with ease! To explore this in more detail, head over to our article on Measuring Digital Transformation.
Finally, take an adaptive approach. Be open to change, and don’t shy away from evolving business objectives and goals. A great project is one that meets current needs. One that is flexible and can pivot successfully.
What Next for Project Management Misalignment?
Project misalignment can make or break success. It can derail your efforts and throw a spanner in the works for multiple teams. Not only does it cost the business in resources, but also financially.
It’s important to ensure everyone works in harmony on priorities set by key stakeholders. Projects must always align with business objectives. Without this, project managers are working blindly.
By now you should have learned the key causes, red flags, and our step-by-step guide for fixing project misalignment. But that’s not all we can recommend! It’s worth exploring tools and technology to deliver successful projects.
Tools like edison365, of course! Using our project management software, teams around the world have been able to plan, orchestrate, and deliver on all their projects, reaping the benefits of resource allocation, in-depth reporting, and more.
Not quite sure where to start with project management software? Don’t worry! Start by looking at our comprehensive guide to edison365 and Microsoft Project Online. Here we analyze the pros and cons of each platform.
Our handy guide to Smartsheet vs Microsoft Project can also be a great read for project managers looking for a new tool in 2025.
