Hi, I'm new to PM and need a little guidance. I supervise 6 IT Analysts, but not the DBA. The Analysts and the DBA had a huge falling out before I came, so they stopped communicating. Since my arrival, I've instituted weekly meetings with the Analysts, the DBA and other folks involved in our many projects to facilitate communication and it's working - sort of. I require each to submit a status summary prior to or during the meeting and our agenda is to discuss projects/tasks that affect the entire group. We round-robin the status reports, discuss anything that needs discussion and break. There are positive results but the meeting seems rote. Boring. Except for the few things we've caught that would've otherwise fallen through the cracks, the meetings would be a total waste of time. I also have a decided lack of trust/respect issue between the Analysts and the DBA, but we are working through it.
So, mentors, here's what I need: Is there a way to effectively communicate the status of a million little details without boring everyone to death? I've considered email or online communication, but we really need the face-to-face time to break down some of the hostility and get back to working as a team.
Start with these meeting guidelines attached below and keep the meet duration under an hour. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
You are on the right track by having the status meetings with all the right folks and keeping it to an hour. Unfortunately until there are major issues, this will probably be boring. However if you do cutesy things to make it interesting, you risk losing respect.
Having said that consider: -Bringing project discussion items (I have brought emails where only a few people have been involved in making a decision so the rest of the team can hear some of the back and forth. If the issue is one where the DBA is working on a technical issues, it might increase the respect from the analysts) - Bring food to reward accomplishments - Share the joy/plan of taking minutes - include organizational readiness (in my org, this is typically an analyst thing that most techies don't understand the issues/importance - Plus it might help the DBA understand the business issues) Saving Changes...
Thanks for your comments, they are helpful and confirm I'm on the right track. I did some soul-searching over the weekend to locate the root of my dissatisfaction and think I've found it. Tom's response helped put it in perspective when he suggested the meeting have a "purpose." I re-examined the purpose of the meeting and discovered it wasn't really what we needed. The old purpose was to provide a status report from each person or area with the goal of improving communication across various departments. While that is desirable, my real hope is to identify all the little things that fall through the cracks (the hot spots) so we don't get barbequed by our end-users and improve our services. So I changed up the meeting yesterday and will try out our new and improved focus on Monday. I already feel better. I'll let you know how it turns out.
But you've got me thinking - what's "organizational readiness"? Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Organizational Readiness- That's the term my companies uses for things like user training, broad communications to everyone that will be affected by the project, etc.
It's things like when the "Mail Room" changed it's name to "Distribution Center" because they were no longer handling just mail and they become a major part of the business process by distributing work/information. The techies didn't really care as long as the new name could fit in the field. However it was a major organizational change that helped make the IT application successful when it was rolled out.
Another example - the application was changing the way work was to be performed - some of the jobs/job title that had been needed were no longer needed. However the people (with their knowledge) were needed for new jobs/job titles. Did they want to make that switch? Could they? One problem that came up was that some of the employee had not used a computer before or had vision problems with using a standard monitor. These were identifed as issues and handled through isue management. Saving Changes...
