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Viewing Posts by Dmitri Ivanenko PMP ITIL
Pick Your Commitments
| When we work on a project, we commit to tasks that work toward the grand result. You have these tasks because at some point in time in the past you have committed yourself to doing them. Taking on many commitments can make you feel powerful at times, but not delivering on the expected result is a total loss of that power. Here are some tips for managing your commitments: 1. Get really clear on the particular project requirements and what role you play. 2. Clear your plate of any commitments that do not contribute to the project's end goal. 3.Commit to your role within the project. 4. Commit to the number one task: always delivering on your commitment. 5. Ask yourself daily: What did I commit to doing today? Am I in a position to deliver on those commitments? It's best to break a commitment ahead of time--leaving you free to execute exactly what you need to be doing. How do you manage to commit only to what you know you need to achieve? In the future I will discuss more about how to break commitments not in line with your goals. |
Building a Great Project Team
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| I've worked on a number of great project teams. And I've noticed five key factors that led to us working well together--and to successful project completion. 1. Communication Tools Good communication is a team commitment. We used tools that worked for everyone on the team. For quick communication and reports, we relied on e-mail, but chose personal visits, phone conversations or conference calls when immediate responses or further clarity was required. And for document exchange, storage and update tracking, we turned to a shared web-based tool. 2. Role Clarity Teams work best when everyone can just work on what they know, rather than trying to figure out what they're supposed to do, and whether or not someone is covering other parts of the project. Clarifying roles in the beginning of the project helps teams steer clear of conflicts. Making sure team members focus on their specific work definitely helps keep the focus on project deliverables with a higher rate of success in the end. 3. Professionalism No matter how odd we may feel about something that someone says or does, we have to keep our cool. It allows us to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Handling matters professionally doesn't mean teams are perfectly aligned at all times or that a team member can't make a comment about someone being late on delivering a task. But what helps teams stay together and focused on the prize is the ability to evaluate a situation and correct whatever requires correction--whether it's a communication breakdown, badly handled process or missed deliverable. 4. Fun When appropriate, joking around and bonding outside of work can help team members get to know each other and break the barriers to communication and collaboration. 5. Authenticity and Integrity Although two items, they work hand in hand. And they are the basis for trust on a team. Integrity includes: keeping your word, committing only to work that you are qualified or can complete in time, keeping private discussions private, sticking to the confidentiality clauses and believing in team members. Being authentic to yourself and others is paramount. It also means keeping others accountable for the work they do, raising concerns, and listening to the input of others. What are some of the keys to great project teams you have seen? |
Setting Your Project Resources Straight
| Getting things done is easiest when responsibilities are clear. Because when it comes down to it, there's no special formula for project success other than being clear on key parameters such as requirements, scope, deliverables and resources. Take team members as an example. We need people with specific skills to execute project activities well. And knowing what's to be delivered and roles that are required to deliver those results creates for the team a picture of how the project will be completed. In project-based organizations, many project team members are not carrying out day-to-day functions. Team members often are brought in for a specific project with a specific role to fill. That role is not always as well-defined as, say, someone's role in auditing, marketing, operations management or human resources. As the project leader, figuring out and clarifying everyone's role and their responsibilities often comes from spending time on the project, asking questions and consulting project definition documents. Setting expectations of what is required of team members before the project is in full swing should be standard practice. One way to set expectations would be to clearly identify each role with its set of responsibilities and accountabilities within the project definition documents. Include an RACI chart--a matrix of all the activities or decision-making authorities undertaken in an organization set against all the people or roles--for areas such as communication, deployment, quality assurance and testing. When describing the role of a particular team member, it's also a good idea to distinguish his or her on activities that may not directly relate to the project, but may be required within the organization. What challenges do you face when doling out team responsibilities. |
Defining Your Project
| Project management may not be all about document management, but it's a necessary and important part of the job. And it all starts with the project definition documents created in the planning phase. As the name implies, these documents outline the details of a given project, such as business goals and requirements, scope, budget and project management plan. Project definition documents should include: Basic project data: Goals, objectives and any business issues to be resolved Project execution parameters: Definitions of project boundaries, key policies and procedures that are specific to the organization and that must be followed to integrate the project work and its result into the organization during and after the product delivery Required project management methodology: Governs how the project is planned, how each phase is executed and what's required to move from one phase to another And don't forget any other information that might be helpful to anyone who wants to know about the project. What's great about A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) is that it offers project managers an idea of what should be included in the project management plan. Project managers can then create various project definition documents that best the the project at hand. What tips do you have for putting together project definition documents? Are there certain processes you always follow? |
Setting the Real Schedule
| Effectively planning a project timeline starts with gathering the appropriate inputs to develop schedule process. And spending the time to carefully plan the activities, sequence them, define durations by gathering this data from performing resources, build resource calendars and get estimates is critical to the project. It ensures a great start, good data and estimates that are better than just an educated guess. But, I often find many holes in the scheduling exercise. You have to deal with a lot of details about the activities being planned, the maintenance windows, resource availability (or unavailability), the timing and sequencing of activities, the amount of detail we have vs. the amount we actually need, etc. I find it helpful to map out key activities on a wall, with the critical path being set and clear. Then I break the activities down and put the similar chunks of information together. You don't always get a complete picture of the schedule--it's a progressive process. And you sometimes you miss some things when you don't visualize all the steps that you have to go through. But it fleshes out the dependencies and the risks. Of course a lot depends on the project itself, how much information is already available and how much knowledge the person who does scheduling has about the technical side of the project itself. Many project managers tend to bypass this process or minimize it and leave it to the day-to-day "figuring out" process, rather than planning the scheduling sessions with the team. That reduces the quality of the overall plan and forces the project to go through more changes than it has to. Controlling the project schedule is a process that is done a lot easier when the upfront work is done. Coupled with accurate reporting on project status, the schedule can be easily adjusted and kept up to date and relevant, without constantly re-baselining the schedule. |