When does scope creep mean you need to redefine your project?

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Bob McGannon and I talk about when project scope changes might trigger the need to revise your project definition.

Creating a positive project environment

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You’ve probably heard “the leader sets the tone.” This tone is all about the environment you create for your project team. Here are things you can do – TODAY – to make your project environment a positive one.

Promote the sharing of news, good and bad. Task completions, delays, stakeholder conversations, new ideas, and conflicts are all changes in status – and you’ll hear about all of them if you support your teams. Whether updates are positive or negative, thank people who share status information. That way, you can respond to project issues, rather than react without time to think.

Build a team. Even for a short project. Come up with a team name — not the project business name. (Nobody wants to work on the Amalgamated Velcro Production and Efficiency Management Project…but they might enjoy being on the “Better Rip and Stick” team!). Act as if YOU are part of the team and promote teamwork to get tasks accomplished. Share accountability and celebrate little victories. You’ll get dedicated team members who will want to work with you…now and in the future.

Ensure team members know the business relevance of their tasks. A WBS doesn’t convey the relevance of tasks to your team members. Ensure they understand how their deliverables fit into the big picture and will improve the business. You’ll get better deliverables and more dedication from your team.

Help team members feel like they belong. Having a diverse team is good, but that’s only step one. Include all your team members in decision-making and planning your project. Beyond that, help every team member feel they belong by caring about them.

Share the business’s impressions of your project. Often, the best thing you can do is shield your project team from business stakeholders, especially when business pressures cause wild reactions to status changes or preliminary project change ideas. However, you should share how the business views the project and how its outcomes will be put to use. This helps the team understand the project and builds motivation to produce results on a difficult project.

For more on building your project team, watch the Manage Team Resources movie in my Project Management Foundations course.

Make projects goals achievable

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Want to make project goals achievable? Make sure they’re clearly articulated, supported by key stakeholders and involve available skills. That’s no guarantee though, because other conditions can impact their achievability. Here are items to help ensure your project goals are reasonable and motivate your project team.

  • A fully understood product approach. Goals become achievable when team members understand what is expected of them. Team members are more confident when they use familiar approaches to produce  project deliverables. But businesses must innovate to remain competitive and that introduces unfamiliar approaches that team members must embrace. This requires time and specialized resources to develop and practice new approaches. To support innovation and achievable goals, include funding and time in your project to help the team assimilate new approaches.
  • The tool to measure success is understood. Project goals are achievable when management and the team understand how success will be measured. There are two aspects to this. First, with clear measures of success, the team can identify incremental improvements. Second, understanding metrics supports innovation, because measurement can highlight improvements that help achieve project goals.
  • Applicability to business processes is understood. Project staff is more likely to understand project goals when they’re specifically tied to existing business processes. That understanding helps them focus their project effort and improves the chance that project goals will be achieved. What if new products or processes aren’t associated with existing processes? To help the team understand these items, draw parallels between existing processes and the new product and processes. Where that isn’t possible, early work to develop new processes helps teams understand the direction they need to take to achieve defined goals.
  • Practical timelines. Project team members are more likely to support practical, non-arbitrary deadlines. A practical deadline means the timeframe reflects durations like those for prior projects. However, a tight deadline due to a legitimate need for the business can be reasonable, as long as management gives the team permission to use new approaches to meet the deadline. Review the rationale for proposed timelines with team members to make aggressive deadlines believable to motivated teams. (Think Apollo 11 landing on the moon prior to the end of the decade!)

To learn more, check out my Project Management Foundations course

Where’s my team anyway? Managing Projects Remotely

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Managing projects is challenging but managing a remote (virtual) team includes some nuances.  Surprisingly, you can use these to your advantage.  Here are techniques you can leverage to help your remote resources work as part of a productive team.

  1. Have frequent short meetings. Bring your remote team members together. Hold regularly scheduled meetings 3 times a week for just 15 minutes.  This provides a quick opportunity to understand the “pulse” of what’s happening.  These are like water-cooler conversations you have when you’re co-located with your team members.  During these meetings you can discuss work-related items or check on how your team members are doing.  This is time well spent!  These discussions identify problems early so remote team members don’t get stuck trying to solve problems on their own.  These meetings can be with small groups or 1-on-1 depending on the number of people you have and their role on your project.
  2. Celebrate wins together.  If you’re celebrating onsite, do something to acknowledge remote team members.  Send them a gift package or tickets to a local event. They’ll feel included and motivated.
  3. Insist on good video conference capabilities.  Phone calls are good, but video conference meetings are better…when the technology works.  Seeing someone gives you a better understanding of how meetings are going and enables you to connect with remote team members.  This approach recognizes that non-verbal cues are just as important as your discussions.  If you can’t access video conference capabilities, make sure your speaker phones work properly.  Nothing is worse than being remote and not hearing discussions or being unable to contribute because you can’t be heard.
  4. Give analytical assignments to remote team members. Sometimes your remote team members can be more productive as they have fewer distractions. Giving remote members assignments that benefit from quiet, uninterrupted work time can enhance your productivity.  
  5. Schedule meetings at different times.  Consider the time zones and schedules of your remote team members. Impacting your local team on occasion is worth the inconvenience to demonstrate consideration for your remote team members.  This sends the message that everyone’s time is valuable and remote team members shouldn’t always be the ones attending meetings outside business hours.

Because many projects have remote team members, these techniques will enable all of your team members to be productive and work together effectively.  Leverage remote members to your team’s advantage – there’s no reason for remote workers to be a disadvantage to your project!

Defining Proper Project Objectives

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Initial project objectives can vary from precise to vague. It’s important to ensure objectives meet the sponsor’s expectations and fit the needs of the business and key stakeholders.

Many project managers use SMART objectives, which stand for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-constrained. But SMART objectives are only the beginning. Here are other considerations for appropriate project objectives:

  • Aligned with strategy. Strategy is implemented through business change projects, but that doesn’t mean all projects are strategic. You can ensure that your project is viable and its project objectives are appropriate by understanding your organization’s strategy and by making sure that your project’s objectives and the way you achieve them don’t detract from that strategy. For example, don’t fall into the trap of using old, “reliable” technology to implement a project when the strategic direction is to use more powerful, future-proofed tools. While it may take longer, supporting the organization’s strategy is probably more important in the long run.
  • Scheduled mindfully. While SMART objectives address achievability, that doesn’t mean the objective is appropriate given the current workload your critical project team members are handling. Other projects and operational responsibilities may create excessive expectations for team members. To determine what is truly achievable, you need to identify the current demand for critical team members along with the demands your project will place on them.
  • The right approach. As project objectives can vary, the approach for achieving them varies as well. Having well-defined requirements that are unlikely to change and needing to support specific milestones indicate a waterfall approach is more appropriate. Conversely, loosely-defined requirements and tight deadlines indicate that agile approaches may be best. Ensure your project objectives are realistic by creating plans to deliver your project based on available staff, required timeframes and the nature of your requirements.
  • Mindful of change management. While businesses need to move fast, people are limited in the magnitude of change they can successfully manage, procedurally and emotionally. Monitor the degree of change you are expecting of your business to ensure your objectives are realistic and achievable.