Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
I'm trying to build an internal community of project managers which is going to be very informal as we don't have a corporate PMO and the business is very devolved, with project activity happening all over the place, often with people doing the role of project manager as part of their day job, and sometimes as their day job, without the job title.
I've set up some webinars but I'd like to do more. What training and community-building activities do you do in your companies? I'm looking for ideas for things that are preferably free as we have no budget, so we can't bring everyone together for a big off-site networking day, for example. Thanks! Saving Changes...
Lt Col L Shri HarshaConsultant - Business and Change ManagementBangalore, Karnataka, India
Wherever there is this informal and unstructured style of working on projects, it is very critical to document and share experiences on a regular basis. One technique which I have used successfully is to enforce documenting the lessons learnt on a weekly basis, something like writing a professional dairy. It works like this.
Fix a pre determined time slot of just one hour an any one day in a week and insist that all members of the team independently document what all they did that week.
Next they should document it they feel whether they could have done something better and if so why.
Compile this every week and review this document with the entire team. The awareness that it creates amongst the members is phenomenal.
First, they realize the importance of interacting within the teams and other functional groups. Second, they actually get down to thinking before they act routinely.
The moment you have got them thinking, you can go and sleep and be rest assured that things will go on smoothly.
This is the greatest training that you can give them, because they are developing themselves, in their pace and creating their own style, without getting stereotyped.
This is a standard military practice which we call "Maintenance Parade" done twice a week. Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
We had our first training webinar today, and not as many people joined as had said they would, so that was disappointing. Although our speaker was excellent. I will survey people and find out what they thought and what else we could be offering as a learning and development exercise, but I'll probably leave it until the next webinar is done. Thanks, everyone! Saving Changes...
