What do i do when a teammate is purposely reporting wrong progress data? Should i confront him personaly about the problem, or simply contact the manager about it?
Just hypothetically wondering. Being new in this area of knowledge, i think i should find out first of all how to deal with small but problematic situation, like team trust issues, after that, i will learn all by myself how manage almost all kind of circumstances. Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
I would approach the team member one to one and make him aware of what he is doing wrong and try to understand why before going to his manager. Saving Changes...
Lenka PincotChief of Staff to the CEO| Project Management InstituteParis, France
Sorry to hear that Valentin, I was in this situation once and it ended very bad. However hard it seems, I would recommend to do something about it because such a thing brings very bad light on the whole project and may cause significant lost of trust from management and stakeholders. It does not matter that you reported progress correctly, from the management perspective you were part of the team.
However, before jumping to conclusions, the first thing to verify would be to check if the teammate understands the reporting method properly, the definition of stages of the work you do, definition of what is considered to be done. You may even present it to the PM this way that you believe a common understanding may not be in place rather than suggesting that someone is reporting wrongly on purpose. Saving Changes...
If you are the PM or a Project Co-ordinator (the data collection in-charge), I would recommend you to have a one on one with the team member to understand his purpose of reporting wrong data. The logic & purpose behind collecting the project progress data needs to be explained clearly and monitor his improvements regularly.
Escalation will be your next step if the team member continues to do the same and his intentions are something due to his disinterest in the project. Saving Changes...
Dinah YoungProject Manager / Software Asset Manager| Prince William CountySpringfield, Va, United States
It is usually better to approach a person directly about a situation before escalation. Give them a chance to correct the behavior before bringing others into the situation. Saving Changes...
If you go directly to their manager, the manager's first question will probably be, "Have you spoken with them about this yourself?" Saving Changes...
Pench BattaEnterprise Lean Agile DevOps Coach /SAFe Program Consultant (SPC6)| Capgemini, Inc.Bentonville, Ar, United States
Good communication always provides better alignment. Having the conversations with the team member would be the right approach. Try to find out what is going on and what made him/her to give the different progress and try to resolve the issue. If it happens again and again, then time to report to appropriate authority. Saving Changes...
Sromon DasSenior Project Manager| Mara ConsultingHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Progress data shouldn't be subjective. the metrics strategy needs to be defined in a way that there are no two ways to report a given data point.
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Oct 22, 2018 12:32 PM
Keith Novak
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It is very difficult to have a perfect set of data where there is no subjectivity. It's often the job of the PM to interpret imperfect data. For example, you can have a large number of items that are slightly late, but not on the critical path, and will have little to no impact on the project outcome. One significant late item on the critical path can seem minor by comparison unless you understand what the data means. This is where PMs become much more than trained monkeys who can pull data and put it on a chart.
Progress data shouldn't be subjective. the metrics strategy needs to be defined in a way that there are no two ways to report a given data point.
It is very difficult to have a perfect set of data where there is no subjectivity. It's often the job of the PM to interpret imperfect data. For example, you can have a large number of items that are slightly late, but not on the critical path, and will have little to no impact on the project outcome. One significant late item on the critical path can seem minor by comparison unless you understand what the data means. This is where PMs become much more than trained monkeys who can pull data and put it on a chart. Saving Changes...
Beth ZuckerProject Manager, ITCranford, Nj, United States
I agree with what many others said. Approach the person first. Ask him\her how he arrived at those conclusions and compare it to your data. If the issue persists, then you may need to escalate, but meet with the manager and the person. Saving Changes...
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