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Thank you, if you were able to share your experiences in response to the question posed in the last briefing. There is clearly a growing body of insights related to resolving project problems, a selection of responses is included in this briefing.
Do you have a communication plan for your organisation or project? What steps did you take to develop it and who did you involve?
Please take a moment to email your answer.
Who influences your project's success?One of the most common causes for a project stalling, or experiencing significant variances, is a failure to identify and involve stakeholders appropriately.
Research and project experience within the biomedical sector show that successful projects involve these people right from the outset. When this doesn't happen, the project team typically find themselves trying to sell the project solution to an audience who resist buying in; often resulting in revision of project objectives, scope or requirements at a late stage in execution, with consequent unplanned costs and over-runs.
Before deciding how to involve people that can influence your project's success, you need to identify who they are, find out their interests in the project and how it might impact them. This analysis consists of three steps. (shown below). Here are just some of the ways analysis can help your project;
* Identifying the main assumptions and some key risks to project success,
* Enabling early collaboration with people who will significantly influence project success,
* Ensuring that the project design reflects the needs of key players.
Click here to read more.
Your experiences...Last issue, I asked the question "When you encounter roadblocks or issues with a project, what actions have you found work to resolve or remove them?" Here is a selection from the many answers received;
"Run working meetings, with specific tasks/questions to be resolved, not just meeting to discuss. This has helped me keep the work on target, it also keeps everyone coming to the table even if they have to travel a distance to do so."
"One thing that I have seen for sure not to work is 'acceptance' when the roadblock/issues are in the project team dynamics, relying on the PM to use his role wisely in reducing frictions. In such cases the best response is typically; open up all communication channels and get to the root of the issue quickly to then dispel all bad feelings and restore the team's morale."
"Whenever we spent several hours working together on a specific issue, we evaluated our performance as a team. The first time we did this, the majority of the team felt that we were in conflict mode. But, some members were shocked to hear this. We then spent some time talking about our perspectives on the situation. The impact was amazing. After just this first discussion, the performance of the team started to improve because team members better understood each other."
"With many teams, using a problem solving tool helps them to step back from the emotional aspects and be more objective. If you have a tool that the team is already comfortable using, that is a good place to start."
"Specifically, Goldratt's Evaporating Cloud."
Click here to see some more examples.
Don't forget to let me know how you went about developing a communications plan for your project or organisation. Take a moment to email your experiences.
As usual, your comments are welcomed and appreciated, particularly with regard to what you'd like to hear about in future editions.
Matthew Theobald
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