Opening Day PM: How to Start on a New Project

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Communications Management   Governance  

It’s day one of the project and time to get the ball rolling with an introductory meeting. Perhaps the team has some familiar faces, with people who understand how you operate. But there are probably some new personnel that will get assigned to you, and it’s important for your project team to know what the expectations are of you and, of course, the project.

Starting a project is difficult though. Sometimes there is discontent already in place, and it’s important at an early point to create and maintain an environment where everyone is open to working together to and create an effective solution. At this meeting, a number of standards need to be established that teammates will buy into and trust the project manager to maintain throughout the course of the project.

It is important in the role of a project manager to establish who you are as a person in the beginning of the project, particularly with respect to how you will treat the project work and the individuals who will be involved in the process. There are a number of steps involved, many overlapping with each other--but all designed to help further the needs of the team and help the collaboration to create the final product.

Building Trust:Right off the bat, there must be steps in which a leader needs to generate feelings of confidence and expectations. A team should have the desire to …

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