Mind the Gap: Collaboration for Project Success

Projects and programs are collaborative endeavors. Effective collaboration among team members, as well as other stakeholders in the environment, is crucial to the success of a project and/or program. For projects with small sized teams, the project manager can have a direct connection with any of the project team members and direct visibility of the team’s collaborative behavior, which can guide the project manager’s efforts toward fostering better collaboration within the team. As the size and complexity of the project/program increase, the need and importance for enhanced and effective collaboration increase manifold and, at the same time, make it increasingly difficult for the project manager to gain visibility into collaboration issues/challenges in the project/program environment. Added to this mix is the possible involvement of third-party vendors,wherein  vendors’ and project tasks become interdependent, and collaboration takes center stage in governance. As a generic response to this challenge, the project/program structure, including relationship hierarchy and governance processes, are established to increase the rigor in monitoring performance and address collaboration issues across key players.

Although project/program organization structure and governance processes as defined are appropriate to the needs of the project/program …