·How to explain to a specialist / expert that the project manger is the only single point of contact between project team and other stakeholders? ·How to stop direct communication between experts on my project team and the experts on customer’s team when they (experts) make different agreements between themselves without consultation with me (project manger)? These agreements sometimes affect scope, cost, schedule etc. ·Is there some good book / article / web describing the need for the single point of contact? Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
The tendency to stifle communications is not the solution. People need to be free to collaborate. The real focus is to enforce sharing of decisions on discussions with you the PM and other team members. Make it known that decisions affecting schedule, scope and budget must be approved. At weekly status meetings be sure to solicit information from team members on that subject. Now, how to handle those who ignore the rules. Formal reprimands, updates to their personnel record, memos to their supervisors and when all else fails removal. Keep in mind that any project is the company's project. Not yours, not a specialists, not even the CEO's. Sidebar agreements should be dealt with using a very heavy hand otherwise your projects will get out of control. Let the communications flow. Just make sure that you stay in the loop. Saving Changes...
I hear ya. Nothing worse than having to explain to the team or senior mgmt the importance of project management. And that sounds like a issue you might be facing.
When I'm in the situation where the org has committed project management to the role of schedule nag or cat herder, rather than quote chapter and verse from some project management book like Rapid Development or PMBOK, I apply the law of Costanza (Seinfeld anyone?) and do the exact opposite, i.e., rather than scream, point fingers, and try to justify your existence, I try to adapt the methodologies and style to fit the project.
"Understand, then be understood." I'd suggest a dialogue with those team members and try to understand why they are not including you on the communications, what are their issues, and ask how you can help them. If the current established channels of communication does not work for them, maybe those channels need to be changed.
Downside of Single Point of Contact One defect with single point of contact is the "hit by the bus" concept. If you hold all the info and you run off to Maui tomorrow, or win the lottery, or whatever and are not in the office tomorrow, who's screwed now? Additionally, there are the occasional personality conflicts that detract from the value of single point of contact.
So, remove the "person" from the single point of contact: Create a intranet site with all the project details, schedules, requirements, risk mgmt plans, issues/fire drills, action items, agreements, mtg notes, etc. If possibly, create a message board or email alias for the free flow exchange of ideas. And update it religiously, daily. Drive traffic to it daily. Point the team to it, point Sr. Mgmt to it, point the client to it (maybe?). This provides one killer element: visibility. If all eyes are on the site, and team members find it valuable, then when someone doesn't follow a detail that is agreed upon or makes a decision that isn't on the site, the egg will be on their face. That's not the goal, to shame others, but it works without you looking like the a-hole schedule nag.
And there's always the baseball bat methodology, but someone else always has a bigger piece of lumber.
Project teams differ and not one PM methodology will work for all. Good luck. Saving Changes...
