Mistakes Made During Project Management That Cost Time

I once oversaw a 3-month implementation that our team executed exactly to plan. When the CXO finally reviewed it, he said bluntly: "This isn't what we need at all." I thought everything went exactly according to plan. The project was scoped, approved, and executed perfectly. Our team followed the direction the customer gave us. We hit every internal milestone. But in that moment, I realized how dangerous it is to assume that perfect execution equals success. The mistake we made was that we built out exactly what the POC had asked for, but never aligned with leadership on outcomes after the kick-off. This is one of the biggest traps in project delivery:  Teams often gather goals and direction from POCs without consulting executives and then realize late that leadership has entirely different success metrics.   That gap (between what the user wanted and what executives expected) costs us ~300 billable hours and a complete project reset. Now, we do things differently. We align with the right stakeholders early. We ask the leadership what reports and dashboards they want to see. Getting inputs on what KPIs they want to monitor is a big clue into what to prioritize and how to drive decisions through the rest of the implementation. We also ask questions like: “Six months from now, what needs to be true for this project to be considered a success?” And so, we resolve conflicting priorities before we touch the configuration. Because the only thing worse than a failed implementation… is a perfectly executed one that still misses the mark.

This mistake almost ended my career. Let me share a costly lesson from my engineering days. We built what we thought was a sophisticated distributed system. Multiple microservices, complex event handling, elegant design patterns, and advanced caching layers. It worked perfectly in testing. Then, it failed spectacularly in production. Debugging took days. Dependencies were unclear. New features kept breaking old ones. Team velocity dropped to a crawl. Onboarding new engineers became nearly impossible. The reality hit hard: we had built a system that impressed engineers but failed the business. Here's what changed everything: First, we made everything explicit. No magic, no clever tricks. Just clear, traceable flows that anyone could follow. Second, we embraced standard patterns. They're boring because they work. We stopped trying to reinvent solutions that others had already perfected. Third, we made it simple. Our new rule: if a junior dev can't understand it in their first week, it's too complex. The result? Half the code, twice the velocity, and zero 3 AM calls. Remember: Most systems fail not from bad code. They fail because of unnecessary complexity. Your job isn't to write impressive code. It's to solve business problems reliably.

𝗜 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻. We launched a campaign that took off fast. Within weeks: ✅ Significantly increased client inquiries ✅ Had media calling our experts for interviews ✅ The regulator started referencing our resources ✅ Projects quickly transitioned from RFIs to RFQs to closed deals The perfect outcome, right? Except I forgot to ask one critical question before launching: ⚠️ Can the various teams handle this demand? We stretched our experts thin. We overloaded our project teams. We didn’t anticipate the toll it would take. The lesson? 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵-𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀. Now, before every campaign, I ask: • Are all stakeholders aligned with the campaign’s goals? • How will the team handle an increase in demand? • Are we prioritizing high-impact activities? A campaign isn’t successful unless your team can sustain it. 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝗻. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿. Proud of what we achieved. Wiser because of what we learned. 𝗣𝗦: ♻️ Repost to help another marketer avoid this mistake.

My Failure - #1: Slow down so you don’t F up. When we kicked off our website refresh, my goal was clear: move fast and free up my CEO’s time so she could stay focused on the bigger picture. As VP of Marketing, I felt confident our team could handle the execution - easy right. Ha. Here’s the reality- no one at a company has a stronger pulse on evolving priorities than the CEO. By the time I looped her in, the work no longer aligned with her evolving vision. Deadlines were missed. Back to the drawing board. It wasn’t that the work was wrong—it’s that I skipped a crucial step. I thought I was saving time, but I was creating friction. What I learned: 1. Leadership isn’t just about driving strategy; it’s about aligning with key stakeholders. The CEO doesn’t need to be in every detail, but they do need to feel connected to the process. 2. A CEO’s input is less about tactics and more about ensuring the work aligns with the broader vision. Ignoring that early leads to rework later. 3. Moving fast without alignment isn’t speed—it’s inefficiency disguised as progress. Looking forward: • Stakeholder alignment is step one for every major project. Especially when it involves the CEO • Build processes that enable quick, meaningful check-ins at key points—this keeps momentum without losing alignment • Prioritize clarity over speed. A little extra time upfront saves a lot of time downstream. 👇🏻 This was a humbling lesson/reminder in leadership. I didn’t just learn how to avoid this mistake—I learned how to create better processes that continue to support the big picture. - - - - - - Hoping to be more vulnerable in 2025 and share mistakes publicly to force growth but also help show it’s sometimes the little mistakes that fuel growth. No judgement please as you start to see more of these from me :)

The first project I managed had an 18-month timing extension And it was because of me. 😱 In my first ever project, I made assumptions, based on other, similar projects, without taking into account the differences of THIS project. Because of this, we had: > An 18-month timing extension > A budget that doubled overnight > 2x as much work as was originally planned for I'd like to say that we found ways to save money and time. But we didn't. We couldn't. My mistake took a potential 24-month project and extended it to almost 4 years. Couple of key 🔑 points here: 1. Evaluate assumptions prior to a project - I didn't 2. Get sponsor approval on your project charter - I didn't 3. Report on progress for your project regularly - I didn't Any one of these would've saved me time and the organization 💸 So learn from me. It'll save you a headache later.