Jayson ReadProject ManagerEden Prairie, Mn, United States
I work in an IT department with somewhat disparate project managers. There's no PMO and no real governing body that regulates or enforces standards across projects and teams. We all pretty much work within siloed teams that are aligned with the different modes of the business.
In February of this year, I started a Project Manager Roundtable to start bringing the PM's in the IT department together so we can start buiding a community of sorts rather than everyone running and doing separate things. We have started meeting once every other month and there seems to be a high level of interest from those involved.
The last thing I want is this to trail off and start losing its steam. I'm looking to my fellow ganttheads to give me advice on how to structure this and tips to keep this moving so we all keep getting benefit from it. Saving Changes...
Bruce LoflandSoftware Developer| SprintLenexa, Ks, United States
I suggest having them more frequently. Maybe monthly. Collect agenda items from everyone on what they would like to discuss. Brainstorm on this at your next meeting and get people to sign up for it. Troubleshoot each others projects. Discuss your organization's culture and how it affects your projects in a common way.
Vic WilliamsConsultant - Coach - Trainer| A Process CoachVancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'd also look at how other groups maintain vitality. For example, corporate Toastmasters clubs survive 13-18 months. Mostly they dry up, few incoming member and (key) shortage of new incoming ideas and activities.
If part of the schema has interesting incoming bits - maybe business inputs, new success patterns, teamworking, agile ..., then a freshness is maintained. Saving Changes...
Can you get external speakers in ? They could be from other areas of your business, or completely external. Not necessarily for *every* meeting, but every so often ? Saving Changes...
Get buy-in from the top! What you are doing is very good, however it is informal sharing ideas, opinions, suggestions is all good stuff, to standardise the governance and methodology you need a senior sponsor[s] e.g. IT Dirctor ! Saving Changes...
Matt GriffithsDirector, Principle Project Manager| Avondale Project Management LtdBradford, United Kingdom
I've found that frequent (weekly), very short, informal meetings seem to work best. Everyone gives a quick update on project progress followed by a general discussion. Once the coffee's finished the meeting's over. It's surprising how much information is exchanged once everyone gets used to the idea of talking openly about their projects and experiences with like-minded others. If a topic becomes 'hot' it's best to take it outside the regular sessions and run it under a separate stream to maintain the focus of your roundtables Saving Changes...
John HUGHESSenior Lecturer Project Management| UWBSTelford, United Kingdom
This is an excellent idea, and they can be kept as informal coffee sessions, but might run out of steam after a while. If bringing in people for part of each session is not possible what about a specific area to be covered by each member - maybe something particular in their skill set, eg mindmapping, or EVA, or some other software or information sites they have recently tripped over to introduce to the others, and yes, also brainstorm say 1 problem each session Saving Changes...
Ken BensonProject Manager| Acxiom CorporationConway, Ar, United States
A couple of ideas to increase the interest in your meetings:
Not only would I discuss the barriers, problems, corrective action, etc, I would discuss the Best Practices. An idea is to send out any Best Practices or create a SharePoint site or common drive area where members of your team could post those Best Practices and Team Members have time to review them before the meeting. This would be a time saver. Another topic could be the monitoring and control mechanisms (i.e, measurements used, reporting and tracking, etc. Saving Changes...
Jayson ReadProject ManagerEden Prairie, Mn, United States
Thank you all for the thoughts and ideas! I've started a portal and will be polling the group to find out the best ways we can utilize the portal. It has discussion board features so hopefully we'll be able to use that to fit in with everyone's schedule and use it as a sounding board like this.
I'm reaching out to our local Toast Masters group and other groups to get thoughts on how they've managed to keep afloat. We're starting out with presentations done by each of the members so we get some joint ownership of the group so everyone has some skin in the game, so to speak. Luckily, my boss is a direct report to our CIO and I've already communicated the existence of the group to our managers so the upper level awareness, at least, is there.
Keep the ideas coming, I appreciate every one of them! Thanks! Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
How about a speaker from the local PMI chapter? If you can't get external speakers, how about they each take it in turns to present their work or project? And food. Food always makes people come to meetings. See if you can get management to contribute for some cakes or a sandwich lunch. Saving Changes...
If you want to keep people attending this meeting (which I personally find a great thing to do by the way!), you should focus on helping each other out regarding concrete issues. Share you knowledge and bring something new in every time you meet. Talk about how the last meeting and proposals helped solving a particular problem, or similiar.
The most important thing for me would be, that any tasks or further clarifications that are written down during the meeting, will really turn out with a result until the next meeting. If you don't do this, people won't care about the meeting anymore, because there's no outcome beside when you all sit together.
Personally I think that it's more important in such meetings to exchange about challenges/problems of every one project manager, rather having everybody just talking about the latest progress of his/her projects. Saving Changes...
