In previous articles I have emphasized that ultimate success is not determined by weather the project was completed on time, within budget, or according to specifications, but whether the customer is satisfied with what has been accomplished. Customer satisfaction is the bottom line. Bad news travels faster and further than good news. For every happy…
Tag: Management
Outsourcing Project Work: Why, How, When?
…being a good partner has become a key corporate asset. I call it a company’s collaborative advantage. In the global economy, a well developed ability to create and sustain fruitful collaborations gives companies a significant competitive leg up.—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor It is rare in today’s flat world to find important projects…
7 Easy Ways You Can Rejuvenate Your Project Team
Over the course of a long project, a team sometimes drifts off course and loses momentum. The project manager needs to swing into action to realign the project team with the project objectives and step on the pedal. What options are there for the project team? There are both formal and informal solutions. Informal actions:…
Virtual Project Team: Challenges, Solutions, Success
Building a high-performance project team among a mixture of part-time and full-time members is a challenging task. Consider how much more challenging it is to build a team when members cannot engage in face-to-face interactions. Such would be the case for a virtual project team in which the team members are geographically situated so that…
Managing Conflicts Within the Project
Disagreements and conflicts naturally emerge within a project team during the life of the project. Participants will disagree over priorities, allocation of resources the quality of specific work, solutions to discovered problems, and so forth. Some conflicts support the goals of the group and improve project performance. Effectively managing conflicts within the project is critical…
Do You Encourage Functional Conflict?
The demarcation between functional conflict and dysfunctional conflict is neither clear nor precise. In one team, members may exchange a diatribe of four-letter expletives and eventually resolve their differences. Yet in another project team, such behavior would create irreconcilable divisions and would prohibit the parties from ever working together productively again. The distinguishing criterion is…
Manage Dysfunctional Conflict Easily Using This 5 Step Framework
Managing dysfunctional conflict is a much more challenging task than encouraging functional conflict. First, dysfunctional conflict is hard to identify. A manager might have two highly talented professionals who hate each others guts, but in the heat of competition they produce meritorious results. Is this a pleasant situation? No. Is it functional? Yes, as long…
Managing Project Reward Systems
Project managers are responsible for managing the reward systems that encourage team performance and extra effort. One advantage they have is that often project work is inherently satisfying, whether it is manifested in an inspiring vision or simple sense of accomplishment. Projects provide participants with a change in scenery, a chance to learn new skills,…
How to create a Project Shared Vision
Unlike project scope statements, which include specific cost, completion dates, and performance requirements, a project shared vision involves the less tangible aspects of project performance. It refers to an image a project team holds in common about how the project will look upon completion, how they will work together, and/or how customers will accept the…
How to Establish a Team Identity
One of the challenges project managers often face in building a team is the lack of full-time involvement of team members. Specialists work on different phases of the project and spend the majority of their time and energy elsewhere. They are often members of multiple teams, each competing for their time and allegiance. And so,…