Collaborating Across the Divide

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   CRM   Stakeholder Management  

Collaboration is a tool that grows the project team and increases the abilities and skills of the people engaged in the project. In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Collaborating with your team is a natural part of teamwork, but collaborating with other teams—or your client or other organizations—can be a stretch if it is not part of the culture that envelops the project.

Unfortunately, it often is not part of the culture due to politics or organizational boundaries—or simply because it has not been done before. However, if you and your team can grow beyond the way things have always been done, it can be very exciting and rewarding to collaborate across the divide.

Engaging New Parties
When a project has been going on for a while or a project team has been working together on multiple projects, the people working on it can get stuck in a rut. There is nothing wrong with this; it is a natural habit of people and helps everyone stay comfortable with the work. In fact, if past projects have been successful, it can be important to keep working in the same manner and with the same processes that brought you success earlier.

However, there are many times when engaging new parties to be involved in the project can be very beneficial to the team: a new set of eyes on the problems or a fresh look at the information available to the…

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