Team Health: The Pulse of Team Management (Part 1)

Dr. Deepa Bhide, PMP is a physician and currently an independent healthcare IT and project management consultant. She has a postgraduate degree in Pediatrics and Neonatology from the University of Health Sciences, India. Deepa is an advocate of using project management in healthcare and related domains. She has worked extensively in the confluence of clinical medicine, IT and project management domains with hands-on experience in managing projects from conception to closure.

  Communications Management  

Effective and efficient team management is critical to diagnose project challenges and has always been a favorite with project management. According to The Standish Group’s Chaos report, failed and challenged projects alone cost U.S. companies and government agencies billions of dollars per year. The report goes on to say many of these projects could have potentially been rescued by better lines of communication among the project teams.

With such staggering numbers of losses due to project failures, one has to ignore the proverbial principle embodied in the three monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil! The project manager not only needs to be watchful and alert, but must also strive to develop a proactive approach to communication.

Using time-tested techniques from other domains is one of the "smart" ways to manage projects. Such cross-pollination has many benefits to offer, diagnosing problems and creating innovative solutions being one of them. Here is one from the medical domain: A systematic physical exam with its four techniques is a fail-proof technique in clinical medicine. It can be used to gauge "team health"--a critical component of "project health." In a step-by-step approach, a physical exam identifies a suspicious part and then delves deeper into the same to diagnose the abnormality.

The project manager is …

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