Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Project Adjournment for Virtual Teams
Categories:
Teams
Categories: Teams
| While project managers often talk about building a virtual team, they rarely discuss disbanding one. I recently adjourned the virtual team I'd led for the past four years. As a dispersed team, we initially experienced some issues around cultural differences. But we came together eventually and produced the expected results for the organization. When the time came to close the project and disassemble the team, a different kind of challenge arose. The first issue I encountered was that some team members didn't want to leave the team. Over the life span of the project, we'd built a strong bond. And there was another layer of complexity as team members' cultural traditions and values informed how they expressed their disappointment. As I helped the team to reach closure, I discovered the more "face-to-face" time, the better. I tried to reduce the distance that separated us with video conferences. During these meetings, I would explain that team adjournment wasn't a loss, but rather an opportunity to meet new people and take on new tasks. With some team members, an impromptu call before the adjournment meeting worked fine. With others, I scheduled a conference before and after the meeting to ensure they would be okay. The second challenge was preparing team members for their next project assignment. During the transition process, it was important to see their reactions, so video conferences were helpful here as well. I also tried to keep the focus on how team members could leverage their experiences in our project for their next assignment. Finally, I introduced some team members to project managers in need of skilled resources. Two of my former team members joined projects this way. In the end, the team members understood that our strong bond wouldn't end just because the project did. We're always just an e-mail or a phone call away. As a virtual project manager or team member, what challenges do you face during team adjournment? |
Tailoring Communication for Top Stakeholders
| Given the amount of work involved, most of your project communication efforts should focus on the stakeholders crucial to the success of your project. And this requires answering two key questions: Who are the most important stakeholders, and why are they important? Determining who's important is usually straightforward, based on an assessment of the stakeholder's power and involvement in the project. Understanding why each "important stakeholder" is important helps you define the type of relationship you need to develop for effective communication. Enter the mutuality matrix, a useful project communications tool that starts with two dimensions:
These assumptions create four quadrants for categorizing each of the important stakeholders:
Once you understand the mutuality matrix, the way you communicate with each of the important stakeholders can be adjusted to ensure both parties achieve a satisfactory outcome. For example, the time and effort saved by minimizing communication with intractable objectors can be invested in building relationships with your key suppliers. Keep in mind that each stakeholder will also be either supportive of or opposed to the project. Important stakeholders against the project — typically competitors and objectors — usually need nothing from the project and your communication should be focused on minimizing the objections. Similarly, important stakeholders who need something from the project are usually either passive or supportive, and your communication should be focused on building robust relationships. How do you identify and communicate with important stakeholders? |
Integrating Project Communications into Lessons Learned
| Lessons learned sessions typically focus on project deliverables and budget. But I'd recommend adding project communications to the agenda of elements to review. Take a hard look at the communications plan and how well it worked. This process should include evaluating the stakeholders listed, the way the tool was manipulated throughout the project life cycle, or even the categories listed on the communications plan, such as audience, frequency and deliverables. Then discuss other communications documents — status reports, issues lists and risk registers — and how to make them more worthwhile. Consider the frequency with which these documents were published and the need to develop communications tools specific for each of your different audiences. Finally, look at your communications with team members and executives. How you communicate with team members is different from how you communicate with management, so these should be separate areas of discussion. Yet for both groups, keep in mind how time zones, language barriers, leadership style and working relationships may have affected communications. When examining your team communications, here are a few questions to ask:
When looking at your communications with management, keep in mind that this probably required less day-to-day communications than you had with the project team. Management's interest is in the big-picture, milestone items, such as presentations on status, the budget and the go-live date. When looking at your communication with executives, ask yourselves:
One last thing to keep in mind: As with any topic in a lessons learned session, be prepared to discuss unforeseen issues. Some project communications mishaps that I have heard about include not bringing in the data owner, issues reported too late or misalignment of user feedback with a requirement. How do you evaluate your project communications in lessons learned? |
A Project Management Wish List for 2013
| Another year for project managers has come and gone. And while this is the time for all the usual year-end activities (budgets, status reports, etc.), it's also a good opportunity to look toward the future. To project managers around the world, I wish you health and prosperity. I also thought I would share a few other dreams I would like to see come true in the New Year: 1. Talking project plans. From GPS systems to smartphones, just about every device offers a verbal communications mode nowadays. The same technology should be applied to project plans. They could alert you to urgent issues: "Your resources are overloaded" or "You need to add more tasks." A talking project plan could even present an entire status report without you speaking a word. Think how much fun your meetings would be when the project plan says, "Just go home because your project will never make its projected end date." 2. Project issues that solve themselves. Project managers know that early detection of project issues is the key to staying on schedule and budget. We hold resolution meetings. We collaborate with leadership to craft brilliant solutions. Yet every so often, it would be great for issues to just solve themselves. For example, say your project is over budget. Then suddenly you get an e-mail from your project sponsor that grants extra funding due to your company's outstanding performance this year. A project manager can dream, right? 3. Resources ready, willing and able to jump into the action. We spend a considerable amount of time identifying resources and negotiating for their availability on a project. And still, we see our schedules fall apart when they're pulled away by other demands. Just once I'd like to have a project where everyone is fully dedicated, with no other distractions to threaten the schedule. It would make me very happy to hear a project team member turn down a meeting with the company president to work on my project. 4. No change requests. During the early phases of a project, we work to create the most accurate set of requirements possible. We consider it all — the many functional needs and the hidden complexities. After all that work, wouldn't it be nice if everything remained precisely the same throughout the life cycle of the project? Think of the time you could save by canceling those painful weekly change-request meetings. 5. Give back all contingency funding in the project. We typically reserve contingency funding to guard against unforeseen events. Imagine the sheer joy of having no project risks that required budget or schedule relief. Just think of the satisfaction of telling your project leadership "We have no weather, people, software, hardware or network risks, so we are returning all contingency funds!" What's your project management wish for 2013? |
The Basics: Skills for a Successful Lessons Learned Session
Categories:
Lessons Learned
Categories: Lessons Learned
| Project professionals wear many hats. As writers, you prepare the project's charter to initiate the project. As leaders, you manage project teams. And as an accountant of sorts, you control the project budget. With the many skills you must possess to oversee a project, you should also be cognizant of the basic skills you'll need when conducting a lessons learned session: 1. Time management The session should be arranged with a specified meeting start and finish time. Team members will have other projects and tasks to work on, so it is imperative to respect the time they give you during the session. Start on time and keep the meeting moving. Pay attention to the clock to control the lengthiness of the discussions. This way, the meeting ends when it was arranged to end. To keep the meeting on track, you may have to tell team members when to close on a discussion point or ask them to discuss it more in-depth at a later time. If needed, schedule an additional meeting to talk about that point, or add it to the meeting notes and solicit feedback when you circulate the document. 2. Ability to engage As the facilitator, you must be able to persuade everyone to participate — from team leads to database administrators. You should also detach yourself from ranking attendees by their titles. After all, the goal of a lessons learned session is to collect details and feedback on a project's activities and decipher what may or may not be relevant to the next project — no matter the team member's position. 3. Shared vocabulary Many times, project teams use jargon that only they know. For example, the word "call" could refer to a programming term or simply to describe a customer service method. If you have not been a part of the project all along, make a point to familiarize yourself with some of the terms that may have been used on the project or may be mentioned in the discussion. What other basic skills do you use for conducting effective lessons learned sessions? |