How should a Project Manager communicate to his team about project failure?

Communications Management Lessons Learned

Dr. Deepa Bhide Hyderabad, Telangana, India

As is generally noted, project teams are engaged in the project to meet its objective. However at times, for reasons not in control of the project team, projects fail. How should a Project Manager convey this to his team? What should he be mindful of? How should he ensure he retains the trust of the team?

Posted: Dec 22, 2018 11:41 AM (Updated by author: Dec 22, 2018 11:45 AM)

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Dr. Deepa Bhide Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Dec 23, 2018 8:56 AM

Replying to Md. Rahman

...

Thanks Deepa for the posting such an issue. I need to learn more about making project successful.

On my experience, I found that many project fail because of proper monitoring and verification by Project Manager. The ways it happen are:

- PM does not understand the power of project team member
- PM does not understand the minimum level of subject matter of the project deliverable.
- Project Members can't estimate task volume and delivery schedule individually.
- Too much dependency only on a paper based project status report.
- Does not want to verify a completed work with the acceptance criteria.
- Always want to have works done by others even when a micro level task is to be done by
PM.
- Error in communication plan.
- Error in stakeholder management plan.

Lack of expert judgement of all the team members is a reason for project failure.

Rahman, agree with the examples. The issue is around communicating this to the project team and the challenge lies there.

Posted: Dec 25, 2018 5:37 AM

Ravindra Gajendragadkar Director| PMSoft Consultancy Private Limited Pune, Maharashtra, India

One of the greatest challenges in managing project team is maintaining the cohesiveness. Generally the PM has to use more influencing skills since he/she lacks adequate authority. In such a case the PM should focus on strengths of individual team memebers first and NOT on his weakness or vulnerabilities (In corporate world it happens otherwise). The divine law is 'whatever you focus on - It will expand' So to develop trust and confidence the PM should project the team strengths and ensure that they are less exposed to their vulnerabilities. Based on the trust built in such a cohesive team, it is good to tackle the project failure with a straight approach, analyse all the details, lessons learnt, try to bring all members on the same page and carry on with the next project with equal or more zest...

Posted: Dec 31, 2018 11:06 PM

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How should a Project Manager communicate to his team about project failure?

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