I'm project managing a small team of developers (7) rolling out a data warehouse. My boss provided some feedback today where it was emphasied that I need to be spending more time managing up (stakeholders) and across (peers) rather than down. His rule of thumb was to spend approximately 80% of my time managing up and across and 20% managing down (1 day per week with the team). I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on this issue? Do you agree or disagree? Saving Changes...
Sort By:
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Anonymous, different projects can require different communications. The 80/20 rule of thumb your boss gave you might very well be appropriate for your project and your environment. While "rules of thumb" can be helpful especially from a boss, I would seek to develop and execute an effective communication plan and have it be the "rule of thumb" of the balance you need between managing the team and "managing up". The communication plan and project team procedures can be used to define how you plan to go about communicating with stakeholders and peers. This can and should be part of the project management planning process, not an ommission or best effort activity. Should this activity require 80% of your time for your DW project, so be it. Lay those activities out, get input and approval from your boss, and then execute. But 80% seems a bit high don't you think..! Cheers. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Appreciate your insights. I believe that the communication plan is a great idea, even if it's not a formal document but an agreement between myself and my boss as to how I will manage up and across.
The 80% does seem high to me in light of the fact that the entire team are all contractors, have never worked together, are new to the company, and are required to use the company's SDLC Model that has resulted in the need for 60 formal documents that need to be reviewed by peers. Naturally, the training we receive in this process, unique to the company by the way, was 1 hour which was basically where everything is stored on the intranet site. Throw into that a management change in the Program Office that basically invalidated all the templates (we were told not to use them because they need to be re-written). The team was a little lost and needed guidance to build the DW.
Live an learn as they say. I've now seconded a "side kick" to help me write some of the documents and take some pressure off so that I can manage up and across. I still need to protect my one ETL developer and two ReportNet specialists from the system so that they can actually build something that the customer wants, the DW, as opposed to all the documents. Saving Changes...
Mike Cooper PMPPrincipal Project Manager (retired, sort of)| New England Project ServicesWestford, Ma, United States
This is good advice that you appear to be actioning, well done! "It depends" is the most common answer I can give to questions from project managers, and that certainly applies to how much effort to devote to external versus internal communication. However, most project managers look inwards too much, and don't communicate enough with stakeholders outside the team they are managing. In that sense your boss may be overdoing it to make a point. I tell project managers all the time that it is not good enough to do a good job, you have to be seen to do a good job. This is not to get pats on the back for a job well done (although that's always nice), it's important so that others have insight into what is happening. People will often assume the worst if they don't know what is happening.
If it helps, I have a template for a really simnple communications plan (and the fundamentals really are simple) as part of the project plan template you can get for free from my website, www.neprojectservices.com.
