Project management is both an art and a skill. Effective
project leaders are worth their weight in gold. Weak project
managers create unnecessary angst, waste and churn.
A recent project post mortem at one of our growing high tech
clients reinforced that the best project managers consistently excel at
simultaneously managing results and relationships while meeting or
exceeding ever-changing stakeholder expectations. Are your project leaders and
project teams:
- Getting
high quality results?
- Forming
and maintaining meaningful relationships?
- Setting and managing expectations?
Getting High Quality Project Results
The desired results of any project must be clearly understood at
all times by the project team, the project sponsor, and all key internal and
external stakeholders. The more complex the project, the better the
project team must be at dealing with the inevitable changes in direction,
scope, resources and timing. That means quickly understanding changes,
communicating the implications and making wise decisions with those who matter
most.
Here are three warning signs that the desired results may not
be as clear, believable or implementable as they need to be to set you and
your team up for success:
- The
business rationale for the project is vague, tactical, debatable, or was
created in a vacuum.
- There
is some ambiguity between customers, management, project managers, and the
project team regarding what they want to accomplish and why.
- While
people generally know what the project is trying to accomplish, it is
unclear specifically how the success of the project is ultimately to be
measured.
Forming and Maintaining Meaningful Relationships
In this time of cross-functional, cross-cultural, and cross-global
teams, relationships are the heart of getting project work done. Because
project teams are usually made up of people with different skills, backgrounds,
agendas, assumptions, and reporting relationships, project leaders must be
adept at influencing others to agree on goals, roles, processes and conflict
resolution. Influencing a team requires solid preparation combined with a
willingness to use a variety of leadership behaviors based upon the
situation.
Here are three warning signs that your relationships may not
be as strong as you need them to be meet or exceed expectations:
- It
is unclear who all of the internal and external project stakeholders are
and what they care most about.
- Project
team members or stakeholders' responsibilities and jobs are unclear,
confusing, or shifting without explicit recalibration.
- Formal and authoritative sponsorship of the project is unclear or in name only.
Setting and Managing Expectations
Stakeholder satisfaction is directly correlated to how well you
and your team set and manage expectations along the entire project life-cycle.
This is accomplished by proactively maintaining frequent and consistent
communication with key stakeholders about project status, issues and
satisfaction to-date. Project team members need to know how and when to
communicate any changes, decisions or issues.
Here are four warning signs that you need to better manage
expectations:
- While
communication occurs, there is no formal strategy or plan to ensure that
information gets to the right people, at the right time in the right way.
- Internal
and external stakeholders are often confused regarding direction,
decisions, coordination, status, or information.
- Large
or small changes are often implemented without going through a formal
review process to determine the value or impact.
- Tasks are not consistently or clearly measured to ensure that the team meets cost, quality and time success criteria.
About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned
