Guidance for Project Managers

 

Recently I have been working on a turnaround project that needed some additional project management discipline and rigor. I have been providing come guidance to some of the junior PMs, that I wanted to share with the community here.

Guidance for Project Managers:

• Empathy and listening is key to being a successful Project Manager. Ask your teams “Where can I help?” and they will tell you.

• Teams do not communicate well. It is our job as PMs to make sure any mis-communications or delays in communication are beaten down.

• Be an escalation point for your teams to ensure that their open items and concerns are being addressed in a timely manner.

• Get your hands dirty. There is a lot of important work that no one team is assigned to do yet needs to be done for the project to be successful. (e.g. “herding cats”, action item follow-up, procuring additional software or resources, generating drafts of documents for the team to react to, etc.).

• Think strategically and think about the bigger picture. Someone needs to help guide and focus the team on “The Goal”.

• Keep a watchful eye on dependencies and their impacts on milestones.

• Stay focused on the Top 3-4 critical issues that could delay or derail the teams’ progress.

• Make sure the team takes time to prepare for key stakeholder meetings. Conduct dry runs if needed, but at minimum presentation materials should be reviewed prior to sharing with stakeholders.

• Shield the team from as much administrative work as possible.

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