Tag: Communication

All too often project managers settle for kick-offs that fail to set the stage for optimal project performance. This is because they do not address the “softer side” of the project, the interpersonal relationships and communications issues.

It is also because they see kick-off as an event rather than a process that may include several kick-off meetings with various groups of stakeholders and ongoing refinements of understandings, particularly as new people join the team.

Develop the Project Team

The PMI PMBoK® Guide does not define kick-off and has no indexed reference to it at all. Though, it is implied in the Develop Project Team process under Human Resource Management by “improving competencies, team interaction and the overall team environment to enhance project performance.” The objectives of developing a project team are to improve knowledge and skills, improve feelings of trust, and to promote mutual understanding and agreement among team members. Overall the objective of team development is to improve performance.

Project team development begins during the initiation of the project and continues across the life of the project and, in many cases, across multiple projects. Kick-off is the process of getting things started. A kick-off meeting is a critical part of it. Its objectives are to make sure that everyone’s understandings are aligned regarding objectives, procedures, and plans (including roles and responsibilities) and to begin or continue the team development process.

Kick-off Meetings

Kick-off meetings take place at the beginning of the project and at the beginning of major phases, for larger projects. As new people join the team, they must be “kicked-off” into the project. Depending on the size and structure of the project team and other stakeholders there may be more than one kick-off meeting. The core team may be involved in a one to three day or more, workshop in which they validate the project charter, begin the high-level planning and address team building and communication issues through discussions and exercises. Other groups may have kick-off meetings at which key people present project plans and objectives, seek feedback and get commitment regarding roles and responsibilities, objectives and processes and procedures. These mini kick-off meetings may also be workshops to address the kick-off of sub-projects and large complex activities.

While it is ideal to have the team co-located for the kick-off event, virtual meetings using web based conferencing or video conferencing or, as a last resort, teleconferencing can be effective if they are well planned and facilitated. Synchronous meetings are strongly recommended as they are far more likely to make an impact and enable the team to address complex and sensitive issues quickly and candidly.

Project performance is improved when we consider both the left brain, analytical aspects of the project – objectives, roles and responsibilities, designs, procedures, etc. – and the right brain, feelings oriented aspects, such as interpersonal relationships, emotional intelligence, diversity awareness, conflict management, etc. The team environment that is characterized by trust, mutual understanding, respect and harmony is likely to promote success even in the face of “less than perfect” planning and execution. Even the most accurately estimated, well planned and meticulously controlled projects, however, are prone to failure when the project environment is unhealthy. Use the kick-off process as a means for ensuring a healthy team environment.

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At one time the notion of a communication plan in project management consisted of whatever the project manager was willing to share with you. Back in the days when project management was synonymous with project scheduling and the primary industries that used project management were construction and defense, and heavy industry, the project manager’s word was law and whatever he (or she) decided to report, that was it. Output from the scheduling department might be a simple list of key target dates or perhaps a summary bar chart written by a draftsman and annotated all over the page.

Of course those were also the days before cell phones, email, faxes and the Internet.

Project management in today’s world is expected to be as extensive as possible, and technology can go a long way towards making the project manager’s life a whole lot easier.

For new project managers, they might not have even thought of doing a communication plan but some preparation before your project gets going can save you enormous suffering later.

Start by identifying who will need to be communicated with. Project stakeholders is an easy way of saying everyone who has some interest in the project but these might include: The executive sponsor, the client, the project management team, the leaders of resources included in the project, sub-contractors, prime contractors, the end users and, of course, the project team.

Next think about what you might need to communicate with these people about. I tend to divide this by: period, by incident, by key milestone. For example, you might need to talk to your team about your weekly project meeting. You might also set up informing the executive sponsor about project progress at a summary level on a monthly basis. Those are per-period type of communications. You might commit to updating the client and a steering committee about status at a stage-gate point, such as at the end of a phase or you might do a team project review at the end of each major deliverable. Those are per milestone communications. Finally, you might commit to communicate with the executive sponsor or the client if the project exceeds threshold levels such as more than 10% late or more than 15% over or under budget. Those are per-incident communications.

This can be done on a simple grid on a spreadsheet. There are plenty of examples on the Internet.

If you’re thinking that’s already a lot of communicating, fear not. Technology can now play a hand to make a huge difference in executing that communication.

Email of course is a great way to get information from one person to another and also provides some audit of communications delivered. These days many business people are reading their emails from smart phones on their hip, so if the information is urgent or if it requires a rapid response, email is the obvious choice.

A lot of reporting however can be done through one-to-many communication tools. Setting up a Google Group takes a couple of minutes and provides a place to store documents and make short announcements, and even provide a place for people to update you with comments such as a review of a draft design document. Google is hardly the only service to provide such group setups but it’s free, comes with several gigabytes of storage and can be kept private by defining the group as by invitation only.

Keen to go a little further? Both Google and Microsoft offer Application areas that are either free or available at very low cost. They typically include a place to make lists of things, store documents and display calendars for the participants, to which they can subscribe. Users can usually also set up alerts for new information posted to either a Group or Application area which will then appear in their email.

In some environments, one tool that has become more and more popular is setting up a blog from a key team member such as the project manager or a key developer. The blog is closed typically, but it’s a great way for team members who might not be located nearby to keep up with short news about how the project is progressing from that person’s perspective, and even to comment on developments as they occur. Blogs can be set up in dozens of places but blogspot.com and wordpress.org are common and free destinations. Blogs can also be set-up internally with almost no technical effort at all.

When there is a lot of technical information that must be documented and the documenters will be a varied group, then creating a wiki is an excellent choice. Most of us have stopped by Wikipedia to look up information at one time or another. Wikis, however, aren’t restricted to that one site. The technology can be installed or used as a free service from dozens of locations. What makes a Wiki interesting is that a shell of subjects can be created by a central authority and then anyone with the appropriate rights can contribute to the actual content. Imagine, for example, that you’d like to create a document of best practices for the new application you’re writing. You create a private Wiki and put as headings the functional menu choices of the entire application. Now Beta Testers, Documenters, Developers and ultimately the end users and clients can contribute their thoughts to the Wiki and enrich the entire user community with practices, tips and techniques that have been learned. We’re doing something like this ourselves for our own product TimeControl right now.

When it comes to meetings most of us enjoy using video conferencing from people like GoTo Meeting, WebEx or others and sharing our PowerPoints while doing so. There are, however, some great technologies for making meetings more effective. Instead of a static one-to-many PowerPoint that everyone speaks to from their speakerphone, how about using a more dynamic online screen that includes the agenda, commitments that were made at the last meeting along with who made them, decisions that are taken at this meeting and documents that everyone can see at the same time. I know that the free version of Windows SharePoint Services that comes with Windows Server has a template exactly like this which can be activated when you create a “worksite” to a recurring calendar item. People’s jaws usually drop when I show off this free feature and they’ve had it available to them before I even arrived.

Having chosen whatever technology is appropriate for your organization, your communication plan can be rounded out by creating some templates for regular communication in advance, so you don’t need to invent it on the fly when under the pressure of a project that’s underway.

Whatever your communication plan and the tools you’re going to use to deliver it, set expectations of the stakeholders before you start. If people know and agree on a frequency of a certain kind of communication long in advance, it can save a tremendous amount of grief and misunderstanding later.

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Chris Vandersluis is the founder and president of HMS Software based in Montreal, Canada. He has an economics degree from Montreal’s McGill University and over 22 years experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of both the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and is the founder of the Montreal Chapter of the Microsoft Project Association. Mr. Vandersluis has been published in numerous publications including Fortune Magazine, Heavy Construction News, the Ivey Business Journal, PMI’s PMNetwork and Computing Canada. Mr. Vandersluis has been part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Partner Advisory Council since 2003. He teaches Advanced Project Management at McGill University’s Executive Institute. He can be reached at [email protected].

Five Steps to Success

Any study on project failure will list poor stakeholder communication as one of the top three reasons for a project’s demise. This brief case study discusses the steps I took to revive project stakeholder communications and move a group of stakeholders from intense distrust to frequent (and pleasant) collaboration.

Background: This web application redesign project for the military had petered to a low level grind, characterized by tersely worded emails, accusations and entrenched opinions. Project status meetings were held monthly, and sometimes skipped. There were no other recurring communications.Following please find key steps I used to shift this group to collaboration.

Step 1: Perform a Gap Analysis on As-is and Should-be Communications

The PMBOK version 4 now includes a Stakeholder Management Plan, which should be used by every PM. Many of us PMs were already doing something similar with the communication plan. The key here is to recognize that the PMBOK does have tools that, when used, will actually help you. I used the Communication Matrix and RACI chart to scope out all the stakeholders Just the process of interviewing stakeholders to fill in the RACI chart surfaced mis-conceptions about roles and responsibilities that proved to be the source of many an argument.

Step 2: Use Your Ability to be Impartial as Long as You Can

When you are a brand new PM on a contentious project, you have a window of opportunity in which you are perceived as impartial; you just haven’t had time to form opinions yet. Use this time to your advantage. I decided to talk to the customer, the armed forces personnel, first. I wanted to understand how they perceived my team before my team could influence me. I knew from my stakeholder review in Step 1 that their experience with each other was based on the lack of clear role definition from the start. I also used this time to clearly understand the client’s perspective on scope, time and cost.

Step 3: Establish Credibility by Responding to Your Action items Right Away

After my initial set of meetings with stakeholders, I came away with a list of action items. These became my priority. In an environment where trust has been broken, it takes many demonstrations, over time, to regain trust. But you can start off on the right foot by simply responding quickly. Distribute meetings notes right away, do what you say you’re going to do, but do it sooner than expected. If you can’t do it, communicate why and explain when you can.

Step 4: Set up Recurring Meetings Right Away

The first thing stakeholders are going to do when they stop trusting each other is to stop meeting. My job as PM was to get them back in the same room again, stay calm and not take sides. The first few meetings were not stellar. But, I knew that the point is that they actually get face time, even begrudgingly, on a recurring basis.

Step 5: Don’t Get Sucked into the Vortex

In stalled projects, people can behave badly. They will say things that are hurtful and don’t move things forward. Many times I made the conscious choice not to get sucked in. I knew that it took history for negative feelings to develop, and I didn’t have that history. As the new person, I had to be impartial and mature – at times it was a huge struggle to do so. When problems do surface, focus on the problem, not the people. Shift the group to problem analysis, not people analysis.

Result: Within six months of recurring meetings, reestablishment of credibility, slowly introducing proper roles and responsibilities and keeping my mouth shut when I wanted to scream, this group of about 20 armed forces personnel, civilians, and contractors have become re-energized, meeting weekly for a Change Control Board that is effective and collaborative.

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Michiko Diby is a collaborative, goal-oriented professional with an excellent track record of leading projects in both the public and private sector. Ms. Diby is Principal with SeaLight, LLC www.sealightllc.com a consulting firm she founded to provide project conflict resolution services. She is a leader in the Washington, DC Project Management community, serving as PM for the 2007-2009 International Project Management Day, and 2008 AVP for Community Outreach. She holds a Project Management Professional credential (PMP) and a MS in Conflict Resolution. Ms. Diby can be reached at [email protected]