pmStudent

I have recently been tasked with taking over a project team.

When you are coming into a pre-existing team dynamic as an outsider, it's always tough.  If you are new to project management it can be a nightmare.  Let me share with you some of the things I am doing right away, and please offer your own best practices and questions in the comments.

One of the first things I did is made a list of initial items I need to know about:

• Who are the people on the project team?
• What are their roles?
• Who is my sponsor?
• Who are the key stakeholders?
• What are the relative levels of engagement and influence of the key stakeholders?
• Who are the key collaborators my team will work with?
• What is the current state of communication on the team? (meetings, status, etc)
• What is the scope and requirements of this work?
• What milestones are coming up on the schedule?
• What risks are we tracking, and are there any new ones keeping the team up at night?
• Do we have any current issues that need to be addressed?

In my environment, the System Engineering and Project Management is rather formal, so I had the benefit of being able to absorb material in Operations Concept documents, software design documents, and interface documents in order to get some basic knowledge of the technical context.

Over the next week I'll be meeting with the team members and implementing my standard process of structured, weekly one-on-ones and continuous feedback model.

So what do you think?  Did I ask all the right questions, or am I leaving something out?

Image by Kapungo via Flickr

Josh gives an example of how project team building can be done in a fun way, in a complex environment.

This is just one example.  How do YOU create fun activities for your project team? 

Share your examples in the comments.

Ty posted an interesting piece on leadership that I commented on, and am about to expound upon here.  He referred to successful project work being led, not managed.

I'm going to disagree, at least slightly on what may just amount to terminology.

Successful project-based work is led AND managed.

There is a false dichotomy between leadership and management that I often see. While it is true that you can be a leader without being a manager, and you can be a manager without being a leader, the highest state (for a project manager) to achieve is both simultaneously. As my former PM mentor and engineer Brian Bernhard used to say, it's the "genius of the AND".

A general, CEO, technical innovator, or scientist can get away with being a great leader and lousy manager if and only if they surround themselves with great managers. The general and CEO in that case rely on their vision and strategic capabilities, and the technical innovator and scientist rely on their ability to create movements through technical breakthroughs.

A team manager can get away with being a great manager and a lousy leader if the environment doesn't call for innovation or great leaps forward; change is infrequent and most of the activity is similar to the way it was the day before or last year. Here, you need a great manager who understands how to manage people effectively day-in and day-out.

For a project manager, you really need to aspire to having both qualities. With the change and constant need to generate and sustain momentum towards a common goal, you can't be successful for long without developing at least a minimum amount of both qualities.

 

Leadership is a sexy attribute that everyone wants to be associated with.  However, do not forget about the importance of effective management.  Frankly, I don't want to hire project managers who can not manage teams, stakeholders, and projects effectively.

To use a sports analogy, it's about blocking and tackling combined with inspiration and empowerment.  A good coach needs to be effective at both leadership and management, not one or the other.

We are project coaches.

How is lasting progress made?

I've asked myself this question many times in relation to my own professional and personal development. Reflecting on my own career and life, a pattern emerges.

At times I can get really gung-ho about a particular area. There was a time when I spent 2 hours every day at the gym when I was really focused on being physically fit. After a short time I came down with the flu.

I didn't go back to gym.

See, looking back I now understand that the level of commitment I had expected of myself was too high. When an obstacle appeared, it just became too daunting a task to go back to it at full throttle again. It wasn't a conscious decision either; it happened subconsciously as I continued to pay gym dues for months with good intentions of going back.

There were always the little excuses. I didn't have enough time (suddenly) or my neck was hurting, etc. Plus I knew how much pain I was going to be in if I did my regular work out after being out of commission for so long. As time went on, these excuses became more believable and it was easier to talk myself out of it.

Fast Forward

What Does This Have to Do with Me?

gung-ho about getting into project management, and I have seen quite a few get burned out very quickly. They might do almost nothing for a long time and then, feeling almost guilty about not working towards their goals, sign up for a "boot camp" or short training class. They finish it over the course of a week or so and don't want to hear about project management again for a long time.

Whatever your career goals are, plan them out into the future and decide what you'll need to do to acheive them. Plot those tasks out evenly along the course of time as you move towards your goals. Take 15 minutes a day, every day, and do something that moves you forward. I broke up my pmStudent e-Learning courses into short lessons of 10-20 minutes each on purpose, and advise students to set aside a quiet time each day when they can focus on one lesson at a time, instead of saving it all for the weekend and have to spend several hours. If they do the latter, it's likely they will never finish the course.

Kaizen

Another great application of the Power of Low Expectations is in organizational change management. Dramatic change usually doesn't stick in the organizations I've worked for. If you try to implement a new project management methodology over the course of a few months, there is little you can do but try to force it on the staff using role power and formal authority. You may get compliance, but you won't get commitment.

How many "big changes" have you experienced in an organization that were supposed to make things better, and 6 months later...

"Hey, wasn't Project XYZ supposed to fix this problem? Whatever happened to it?"

"I don't know. I think they announced the "new process" was in place, but we didn't like it so we just kept doing things the way we've always done them."

Perhaps you have a story like this you'd like to share in the comments? Come on, you know you want to!

The better way to implement lasting change is to describe the desired state in the future and formulate several stages through which the organization will pass to reach the goal. Small changes over time will yield big changes if there is a continuous march towards improvement.

It is just as important to take time between any transitional changes. This allows you time to get everyone who is impacted by the change engaged and use their creative energy to come up with great ideas and move towards the goal as a group. When people are involved and contributing to the iterative cycle of planning and execution, their voices will be heard and you can garner commitment. Long-lasting commitment.

Now get back to it.

But don't push yourself too hard.