Give Your Project a Home
From the Voices on Project Management Blog
by Cameron McGaughy,
Lynda Bourne, Kevin Korterud, Peter Tarhanidis, Conrado Morlan, Jen Skrabak, Mario Trentim, Christian Bisson, Yasmina Khelifi, Sree Rao, Soma Bhattacharya, Emily Luijbregts, David Wakeman, Ramiro Rodrigues, Wanda Curlee, Lenka Pincot, cyndee miller, Jorge Martin Valdes Garciatorres, Marat Oyvetsky
Voices on Project Management offers insights, tips, advice and personal stories from project managers in different regions and industries. The goal is to get you thinking, and spark a discussion. So, if you read something that you agree with--or even disagree with--leave a comment.
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Date
Have you ever been on a project where the team members and the project manager resemble migratory birds? This nomadic existence does not lend itself well to fostering project cohesion and direction. And without a cohesive project team, project performance can suffer.
In my experience, one of the more effective ways to produce cohesion and focus on a project is to have a central location that serves as its geographic and social home. To create such a home, project managers should build and operate a "project control room." The project control room is a gathering spot for a team to conduct essential project activities with a high level of productive interaction. Having created project control rooms in the past, I can attest they're a great method to increase the overall performance of a project team.
Here are a few aspects that make for a successful project control room -- and ultimately, a successful project:
1. Tell the story of the project. The project control room is a great venue to share an at-a-glance view of disposition of a project. This can be done by printing the key artifacts on large-format paper using a plotter and posting them on a wall. These would include, but are not limited to the overall project schedule, current status readouts, risks/issue list, deliverable lists and milestones status. If budget and time permit, project teams can create virtual "printouts" by projecting them on television screens, which also saves a lot of paper each week!
2. Enable collaboration. Design the project control room to foster communication and interaction between people. This can include items such as a group meeting area, private phone rooms, electrical outlets to plug in computers, speakerphones, good lighting, soundproofing and comfortable chairs. In addition, the project manager and at least one member of the project support team should be in the project control room on a recurring basis to support ad-hoc dialogue and meetings.
3. Offer a visible project destination. Use signage with the project name and objective to make the project control room visible to passers-by. Set the room as the location for regular project meetings. At the start of the project, communicate to project leadership that the project control room is the home for the project and its team members. To reduce expenses and mobilization time, the room could be shared across multiple projects; each team can claim a wall for project artifacts as well as set consistently recurring times to use the room.
4. Make every detail count. Even the smallest details can contribute to an effective project control room. For example, how many times have you reached for a marker to write thoughts on a board and found the marker empty of ink? Supplying the room with an abundance of office supplies -- such as board markers, notepads, large sheets of paper to capture action lists -- helps reduce administrative distractions. In addition, keep a stockpile of the project team's favorite snacks and drinks on hand. Everyone knows how project activities can consume a lot of energy!
Creating and operating a project control room goes a long way toward building the cohesion that allows teams to operate at a high level of performance without distractions.
Do you have any good tips for project control rooms? Maybe a recommended type of snack or drink that gets project sponsors to enthusiastically attend project meetings on a regular basis?
Posted
by
Kevin Korterud
on: September 10, 2014 08:53 AM |
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Comments (2)
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Jeremy Farrell
Digital Transformation Programme Manager| NHS England SCW CSU
Reading, United Kingdom
What you say here may hold true for some fairly basic projects limited to the same building or campus, but the rules of the ball game have changed dramatically since a project team space or even just the PMO was a physical space for all members of the team to gather. With the advent of Cloud, Mobile and Social more and more of your new generation of employees are going to be comfortable, and prefer, working remotely.
Yes, there is value in co-locating for intense periods of project planning or design, but there is a lot of execution that can happen from home, whether overlooking the beach or the lake or the city. Of course this depends on the maturity of the project team operating in a high performance culture, but in my experience it is entirely achievable. My current team works from Sao Paulo, Costa Rica, Budapest, Manila and Buenos Aires.
My fellow program leaders work out of Bangalore, Rome, Dubai, Barcelona, Vienna, Edinburgh, London and Boca Raton, while our executive is in New York.
With this kind of structure we have managed to deploy an HR Management System in MEA, Latin America, CEE, India, China and the Philippines.
So, yes, your recommendations are appropriate for a certain level of maturity of organization and team, but members must also anticipate learning extreme self-management and virtual coffee meetings on conference calls and Skype TV :-)
Luis Branco
CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª
Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Kevin
Interesting perspective on the topic: "Give Your Project a Home"
Thanks for sharing
Important point to remember:
"Creating and operating a project control room goes a long way toward building the cohesion that allows teams to operate at a high level of performance without distractions"
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