Someone from one of the project management groups I belong to on LinkedIn asked this question today:

"what 3 common core competencies to a project manager should apply to every new project to take good start."

Here is what I could come up with while trying to limit it to 3.  What do you think?

Planning - in this order with iteration: 1) Why 2) What 3)How 4)Who 5)When

So many people running projects tend to get these things out of order.  If you are opening up MS Project before you know Why, What, How, and Who you are doing it wrong.

Relationship building, relationship building, relationship building

Building relationships with your team, stakeholders, customers, and management is key.  You are going to need strong relationships to get through tough times and just to keep everyone on the same page and headed in the right direction.

Leadership- through facilitation and communication; trust and empower your team; do not rely on role power/formal authority even if you happen to have some.

In my experience, far too many project managers try to make people do things on the basis of formal authority.  Sometimes they really do have role power, and sometimes they've just fooled themselves into thinking they do.

I've always had the best results when I make the assumption that my team WANTS to do a great job, and is capable of it.  As a project manager, I see my major role as facilitation.  I'm helping eliminate obstacles, greasing the wheels of the project, and gently guiding as part of the team with a common goal.  I don't want fame and glory; I don't want to be the one with all the good ideas.  I want those things for my teams.

What do you think?

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