It is important for a project to have a specific culture. It is the culture of a group that determines what we think is essential and how we interact with others. It’s how we do thing around here.
But not all individuals like the same culture. People have preferences. Some like plan-driven approaches. Some like pure agile.
Three things determine the acceptance of the project culture:
No threat.
The new way of doing things should not threaten your position. If you don’t produce much, but manage to fly under the radar, unnoticed, you are not happy when radical transparency is introduced.
The difficulty comes when Agile starts to create transparency and accountability. Most organizations are not used to that, and will go through many “growing pains” that will either slow down or completely stop an Agile adoption effort. When the Project Manager starts pushing more decisions onto the sponsor, and more accountability onto the project team, things can get awkward and frustrating.
Make sense.
The “way of doing things” should make sense. It should be perceived as being useful. Some company policies can make no sense, and enforcing them onto the team can be a source for resistance. We all have experienced these kind of situations.
A friend of mine told me once … “On a project where I was one of several PMs, weekly progress reports had to be written and send to all other Project Managers. After a while I got the impression that no one was actually reading these things, because of the kind of questions I was getting – answers were all in the reports. As I was not fond of reporting just for the sake of reporting anyway, I started little irritating experiments like issuing identical reports with different dates, adding nonsense risks, just to see if anyone was paying attention. As you might have guessed, no responses what so ever.”
Right group.
We, Project Managers, radiate to the outside world our icons like Gantt Charts, two-digits precise risk assessments and large documents that seems to cover every little aspect imaginable. If you are a member of our group, you ooze control. We also have a specific language that sets us apart from other mortals. By adopting our symbols, our rituals and speak newbie PMs try to affiliate themselves with the group called Professional Project Managers.
If you want to be affiliated with a certain social group, you have no problem what so ever, in adopting the rules of engagement associated with that group.
I really do think we need to break away from the group culture and become an organisation culture. I say this because if one does not fit-in with the group culture the Project Manager will always remain an outsider no matter how wonderful and professional they are in Directing and delivering projects. These small group cultures usually go back many years, where people usually stay with the same organisation - what the formal policies and procedures state is just on paper, what happens in reality is something completely different. God help the Project Manager that is responsible for the project and resources and yet he or she is made to feel powerless by group culture. This is wrong, people at the top are fully aware and strive to move forward to be one organisation by eliminating the old school. If the old school does not change the organisation will replace them one way or the other !
As for the project culture everyone should work within a structured environment, governance, process that the organisation has implemented. Sending weekly reports to all the other Project Managers is a waste of time, they are not interested in whats going on with your project unless there is a key dependency between their project and yours. It is all about agreeing up front the temporary organisation, agree who should get the reports and so on.
A central depository where PIDS, Mandates, Weekly reports can be hold for educational purposes and specifically the Lessons Learned would be of benefit to other Project Managers.
Very interesting and wide topic.
Vasoula Saving Changes...
Hans RobbersSenior Director| SalesforceVlissingen, Netherlands
Bas
Interesting question. I do think the project culture needs to reflect the organisational culture as well. And thereore I do tend to agree with Vasoula.
Projects bring changes and therefore they are treated special and is the organisation in a lot of cases reluctant to accept the change. By making the organisation work for you the level of resistance will reduce and therefore some form of blent in is required.
This does not mean that your second statement make sense shoudl be ignored. I fully agree non-sense making activities shoudl be stopped however as you point out shoudl be investigated first
Interested to hear other views
Hans Saving Changes...
Project and teams can take on a life of their own; I guess a specific "culture" as you have stated it.
Sure, no threat, make sense, and rightgroup are appropriate but I'd suggest "Add Value" should be the underlying theme.
Projects should have leaders who apply leadership (PM and Sponsor), structure (governance) and promote team synergy (collaboration). Just like any effort, these things take time to develop but the underlying foundation is the organizational culture.
Projects should not have too much "groupthink", or hand picked over standard methodologies, or resistance to project /organizational processes. Innovation should be advocated to help the team achieve peak performance. Internal processes like reporting sometimes don't make sense but we all have a boss or hierarchy to report our performance to unfortunately. We are the reason they have a job; it's accountability. Make sure you're accountable, you keep your sponsors informed and make your boss look good.
Project Manager's should develop their emotional intelligence and recognize individual team strengths, weaknesses and motivations. A project manager's time is spent well to provide guidance, coaching and mentoring to aid in developing a high performing team.
Great remarks. Sure one should be careful with project cultures that are too far off with the organization. Too much bonding creates exclusion from outsiders, the bullying of deviants, resistance to change and a strong risk of groupthink.
More trouble than worth it.
Perhaps, I am more looking for diversity. Diversity creates different viewpoints, different ways of problem solving, other ways of looking at the world in general. This clash of perspectives produces creative solutions.
So in that respect different from the main organization.
