Voices on Project Management

By Peter Tarhanidis, PhD, MBA

The COVID-19 pandemic, political and racial division, unemployment and other serious issues are casting enormous shadows across the globe. 

On top of these stressors, many of us have isolated ourselves from each other in order to lessen the spread of the virus and combat the pandemic. As such, we’ve adopted new behaviors and virtual ways of working to rightfully ensure our health and safety. And yet, these same efforts to maintain connectivity with each other have created more virtual isolation for many of us. 

Especially for those working in isolation, it is critical to stay connected. While tacit interactions drive human behavior and develop relationships, what can leaders do to re-create and sustain team members’ engagement?

Below is a list of ten action items that can help project leaders improve working relationships and performance during these tough times:

1. Display compassion for colleagues and create a supportive environment.
2. Listen to colleagues’ professional and personal needs, and provide support to help them maintain their best selves.
3. Make it a point to meet and greet new colleagues.
4. Arrange introductory sessions for new colleagues to support their onboarding. 
5. Communicate the organization’s unique cultural attributes that bind teams and drive performance.
6. Recognize colleagues’ small wins to provide encouragement and motivation throughout these trying times.
7. Celebrate the track record of wins to recreate your company’s “flywheel.”
8. Identify development and training opportunities to undertake new challenges.
9. Ensure working parents have time to be successful at both home and work.
10. Take time off to recharge, stay healthy and be there for those who rely on you.

What actions would you add to this list to benefit our community and colleagues?

By Emily Luijbregts

During project retrospectives, one of the biggest issues I often hear is inadequate communication. Perhaps the project manager did not communicate correctly, at the right time, in the right manner—or simply did not communicate at all!

Excellent communication skills are critical for project success. In this blog, I’ll share six ways to   improve your communication skills and become a better project manager in the process.

1. Understand your team and stakeholders.

Whenever I enter a new project or organization, I like to use a notepad to write down any relevant or important information about the team members with whom I’ll be working. This includes information about the location of the team, where the team members come from, if they have taken any personality tests, what type of resource they are, etc. I normally complete this by the first stage of team development, but I make sure that I add updates as needed or when new people join the team. This also includes stakeholder analysis. I make a note about where stakeholders are from, the best way of communicating with them and which language is the most appropriate.

2. Seek out collaborators.

How often do you have your communications reviewed by relevant experts or a second pair of eyes? In my projects, I’ll have a project subject matter expert (SME) or team lead review any technical communications before they’re released. I’ll also have a project coordinator or SME review other standard project communications to make sure that they’re clear, easily understood and relevant to the communication group or stakeholders receiving the communication.

3. Create a communication plan.

An effective communication plan can make or break a project. This plan does not need to include the type of communications that you’ll deliver during the project, but rather who needs to be informed and in what frequency. I also like to include other information, such as:

• How would each stakeholder like to be informed? Are presentations, emails or face-to-face communications preferred?
• What times or days are best to discuss or deliver information? This is especially relevant for international or remote teams.
• How should communications be handled during urgent or critical periods?

I also recommend sharing your communication plan with everyone on the project. I put ours in a shared document repository and ensure that everyone on the team knows where to find it.

At its core, a communication plan will also ensure that you’ve identified all of the relevant stakeholders within your project. Without identifying all potential stakeholders, you run the risk of miscommunication, misalignment and potential issues at a later point in the project.

4. Delegate.

When it comes to communication, clarity is key. It’s for this reason that I delegate specific communications to SMEs and technical leads. I want every communication that leaves my project to  bring value to the receiver; therefore, it’s critical that anything remotely technical or outside of your knowledge area is handled by someone who understands the topic thoroughly and knows its current status. As the project manager, I then can support the preparation and delivery of the communication and ensure that it meets the best practices of communication delivery (as outlined in the communication plan).

5. Assess your delivery methods.

In your communication plan, you’ll set out what you will communicate and how you will do it. I recommend managing expectations specifically on the “how.” For example, you cannot afford to have individual calls with a dozen stakeholders delivering the same message, simply because they are in different time zones. To solve this, you can look at grouping regions together and having a maximum of two to three calls, depending on the location of your teams.

If you’re working with remote teams, consider the use of video or having a local leader give the presentation, if appropriate. For example, on a previous project we decided to have joint technical leads bridging three locations globally. Each lead would deliver their update in their time zone to the team (perhaps even in the local language) and ensure that the other leads were informed if anything important arose or needed to be added.

I also recommend regularly recording meetings for anyone who can’t attend and making these recordings available on the team’s shared site, so that anyone can review the communications at any time and provide feedback.

6. Learn from others.

Does your organization have a lessons learned repository? Utilize it to learn from past project mistakes and ensure that your project communications do not run into the same issues. I’ve found lessons learned repositories to be an invaluable source of information about the organization and the pitfalls to avoid.

Becoming an effective communicator is not easy. It takes practice, and you will make mistakes. But if you can devote time to understanding what you are communicating, ensuring that you communicate effectively and providing value to the project, you are on your way to becoming a successful project communicator.

How do you ensure that you’re a successful project communicator? Share your favorite tips in the comments below.

By Soma Bhattacharya

Agile teams are being tested. The world has changed, and many teams—no matter what their structure was prior to the pandemic—are working from home, on top of dealing with increased COVID-19 challenges. While the demand for deliverables and work continues, the roles, responsibilities and efficiency of agile teams come into question. 

An agile team can, in most cases, work around the uncertainty and still get things done. To keep your agile teams moving forward, implement these six strategies:

1. Focus on the planning.

Yes, everything is subject to change, but planning is essential. This exercise (release planning, grooming or sprint planning) allows team members to understand the upcoming work and ask the right questions on time. Additionally, it’s a great way to train team members to provide estimates after going through the requirements in detail. This allows for better planning, wonderful execution and timely delivery instead of spillovers. Teams can use a variety of platforms available online to get the training done. Tools aren’t as important as the interaction itself. 

2. Track team health.

I always think the organic way to look at team health is through the consumption of buffer percentage. It is simple because during planning, your team assigns hours to tasks and you get the total hours you will need to complete the user stories. You also know the team’s total capacity (availability of the team during the sprint). Create a team buffer of about 10 percent and then plan for the sprint.

If during the course of the sprint your team consumes the buffer and still has spillover, you can increase the buffer. Track the consumption of the buffer percentage and determine if the team is estimating correctly, and if they are clear about the user stories. Buffers can let you know the team’s performance and, with it, the trend of the team’s deliverables. 

3. Prioritize retrospectives.

Teams must have a growth mindset, and nothing is better for fostering one than the ingrained cultural habit of retrospectives in agile teams. There are creative ways of conducting retrospectives during these times, even if they require workarounds. For example, perhaps instead of just focusing on the work and aligned data, retrospectives can include personal challenges as well. This not only allows the team to gather and feel seen and heard, it also allows teams to evolve and see if there are ways to reduce personal challenges. 

4. Encourage leadership.

Leadership shouldn’t be limited to just a coach or the leadership team. In fact, team members should be trained to make decisions when it comes to work or conflict management. I have always found that when the team lead or management encourages an open mindset for teams, teams take up challenges or new learnings because of the support they receive. These teams always perform better in the long run. 

5. Determine the happiness index.

Apart from other team data, there should be an insight that allows you to understand how a team is doing emotionally. In a 2013 Harvard Business Review article, Rosabeth Moss Kanter explains that a happy team can better handle complex problems. Finding the happiness index is one of the most revelatory exercises you can do with a team. Simply ask everyone to rate their happiness working with the team on a scale of 1 to 5 and why. Keep it anonymous so people share honestly, and you will be surprised what comes out. These are all hints that can lead you to identify unresolved conflicts, build retention and discover serious issues. 

6. Take action.

Many of us have good intentions. But unless there are actions that follow, trust falls apart. Be careful in committing too much and always follow up, whether it involves actions required from the last retrospective or something that has come to your attention.

What are some ways you keep your agile team on track? Share in the comments below. 

By Kevin Korterud

Managing the dynamics of stakeholder engagement is an essential component of successful delivery. Stakeholders offer direction and support, and enable key strategic and tactical decisions needed for delivery progress.

Especially early in our careers, we tend to think about stakeholders as being two-dimensional entities that have an equal say in delivery directions. For those of us who have completed several project, program or product delivery initiatives, we know this equally representative model of stakeholders does not practically exist.

At one time or another, we’ve all had a demanding stakeholder. True demanding stakeholders tend to be standouts from the traditional body of stakeholders in several dimensions.

Demanding stakeholders are almost always well-intended. They seek a path to delivery results and are not focused on gaining political capital for their own personal benefit. However, their dominating professional presence, business/technology domain knowledge and sense of urgency can be intimidating.

Project, program and product managers early in their careers often make mistakes in working with demanding stakeholders. Many of us tend to misinterpret their high level of needs as a liability. In fact, the opposite is usually true with demanding stakeholders. With a proper connection, they tend to be one of the most valuable assets for effective project, program and product delivery.

Below are three techniques for re-thinking the way you interact with demanding stakeholders:

1. Recognize their unique strengths and skills.

There is no mistaking what a demanding stakeholder needs from a project, program or product delivery initiative for success. In addition, their needs are made very clear as to what success looks like from the delivery team. 

Demanding stakeholders typically possess strong business and/or technical knowledge, which gives them a highly capable foundation from which to quickly enact the best possible slate of improvements. They understand these processes end-to-end and typically have an external view of how other companies execute the processes.

Demanding stakeholders are also often efficient communicators who can phrase their needs in the minimum amount of words. In addition, they can readily visualize and demonstrate to others the required elements and outcomes from prospective improvements.  

Leveraging these skills, demanding stakeholders can readily align their improvement ideas with organizational strategy. This alignment is key to realizing the maximum amount of value from a project, program or product solution.

By doing so, the demanding stakeholder—by having the best interest at heart for real results—is a key factor in true delivery success.

2. Practice setting boundaries, and use “not now/yet” vs. “no.” 

The size and scale of a demanding stakeholder’s needs may at first seem daunting. In addition, there often doesn’t seem to be enough time to meet their needs. The demanding stakeholder realizes that there is typically a limited opportunity to enact high-value change, so they try to maximize what can be done—even if it means running over schedule and budget. 

When interacting with demanding stakeholders, start by setting the boundaries for the size, scale and duration of improvements that are possible. Mutually agree that these boundaries are solid and can only be revised with a change control process. By setting these boundaries, you can enable the next step in optimizing demanding stakeholder needs. 

Saying “no” is not an effective path for progress. The approach should be to set a grouping, ranking or other priority-based construct that can be used to determine the relative order of stakeholder needs. By using more of a “not now/yet” approach, you create clarity into the relative importance of needs, while building the bridge for future enhancements.

3. Become a demanding stakeholder yourself.     

One of the most effective approaches for working with demanding stakeholders is to become one yourself. For a project, program or product manager, this is quite straightforward due to the disciplines already inherent in the work that we do on a daily basis. 

To increase business or technical knowledge, put yourself in the role of a demanding stakeholder. Seek opportunities for business or technology immersion through training, shadowing the stakeholder’s subordinates and visits to company sites or customers to fully appreciate their position.

With any stakeholder engagement, such as a working or status meeting, devote additional time and effort to preparations. Role play and predict the likely set of questions or directions that would be provided by the demanding stakeholder. Leverage your team members to assist with demanding stakeholder dialog.

Demonstrate the ability to make fact-based and data-driven decisions in a quick and decisive manner. In addition, clearly communicate acceptance criteria, timing and desired outcomes to team members. Pay strict, unwavering attention to the scope, scale and time boundaries. Finally, fully support the demanding stakeholder with any change control effort needed to revise scope, scale and duration boundaries.

By exhibiting the core behaviors of a demanding stakeholder, you will gain the respect of that stakeholder and let them know they have a willing and capable partner in creating value for the company.   

What are some ways you’ve successfully collaborated with demanding stakeholders?

by Dave Wakeman

My mind has been so focused lately on the leadership failures we’ve seen during the pandemic that I often forget to think about ways that we can help our project teams move forward right now. That got me to thinking about something we often struggle within any situation: simplification. 

I imagine most of us feel like we’re managing teams of complex individuals working on complex projects, with answers and solutions that are also complex. If you catch me at the right time, I’ll tell you everything is complex. 

Over the years, one thing I’ve learned that adds value—for all my stakeholders—is the ability to take the complex and make it simple. 

Case in point: A friend of mine asked me about a branding project his organization was focused on. He asked if I could sprinkle some of the “Dave three-point simplification” on his marketing challenge. I joke, but the ability to simplify projects and decisions for our team members can help steer us towards success—if we do it well. 

Here are three points to keep in mind:

1. Focus on the essential.

When we’re working on something, we can go down the rabbit hole pretty quickly, running through all of the minor details, dead ends and roundabout ideas that don’t actually matter.

To be fair, most of us and our team members have a lot of knowledge, and we want to share our relevant experiences. But in many cases, we allow this abundance of knowledge to get in the way of just focusing on the key ideas or tasks. Instead, think through the essential details, actions or points that need to be made. And stick to those. 

2. Cut the lingo.

I’m sure you’ve experienced this: people using a crazy language of acronyms, shorthand and code that only makes sense to those within the field. Even if they’re confused, a lot of folks don’t want to speak up and say, “Hey, what does this jumble of alphabet soup and buzzwords mean?” 

To make sure we’re getting our points across, we have to step back and focus on using simple and clear language—even if it might seem too basic. When you’re talking and sharing instructions or feedback with a stakeholder, don’t assume they understand every definition, acronym or idea familiar to you. 

Take the time to define concepts, frame ideas and make sure the point you’re making is getting through—even if you sound like a first-year business student. 

3. Lean on visuals and metaphors. 

When we’re focusing on simplifying a topic, we need to consider the fact that everyone learns in a different way. Some folks like to learn by reading, others by listening or through imagery. And in most cases, learning is aided by actually doing something. So as you’re working on simplifying and coaching your team, don’t be afraid to use visuals or metaphors that draw distinctions or illustrate your point in a different way to help others better understand the information.

For me, simplification is a great tool. And even though I know I don’t always get it right, I’d still much rather be known for talking at too basic of a level than as an out-of-touch bore. 

How do you use simplification on your project teams? Let me know what you think in the comments below!