Building quality steps in the schedule adds a certain amount of effort and cost to the project. However, these incremental costs will be rewarded with shorter timelines and reduced costs throughout the life cycle of the solution. Examples of the cost of quality include: …
In some cases, such as a government project, periodic audits may be called for as a part of the overall contract. This “outside party” could be any qualified person outside of the project manager. In some cases, your organization may have an internal project audit specialist. It is possible that the Project Director or the Project Sponsor could also perform this audit. The outside party could be an outside contractor or consultant, but they do not need to be. …
Scope change is not inherently bad or good. However, the team can react to changes in positive and negative ways, depending on the state of the project. A typical reaction from most project teams is to just go ahead and make the approved changes. However, there is another reaction that can be more problematic – the team may not want to make any more changes. This is the scenario for this column. This situation could occur for a variety of reasons. …
Provide Leadership to Implement Critical Change RequestsRead More »
Gather Subjective Metrics with Client Satisfaction Surveys
Gathering metrics is important because it allows you to see how you are performing against the expectations of your clients. If the world were perfect, all of the metrics you collect would be factual, relevant and accurate. However, in many cases it is impractical or cost-prohibitive to try to gather exact and quantitative numbers. …
One of the hardest jobs of a manager is to take an employee down a path that may ultimately result in termination. It is hard enough for most managers to provide performance feedback to begin with – even when the employee performance is good. When the employee performance is not where it needs to be, it is even harder. …
Escalate a Performance Problem with a Formal PlanRead More »
Topic 1. Overcome Team Resistance to Project Management
It’s one thing to build a Project Charter and the schedule. It’s another thing to effectively manage the project. If you could issue the plan and the work assignments and have everyone complete his activities on time, your life would be much easier. However, the process of managing the team and the schedule becomes complicated because of the people element involved. …
Project managers need to be leaders. Leadership can be easy when things are going well; everyone will follow you then. However, when times are tough, leadership can be hard, but it is also more vital than ever. Here are some things to keep in mind to lead your team through the difficulty.
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Professional salespeople love negotiation, but many soloists are more comfortable doing their job rather than negotiating about it. Here are nine tips for improving your negotiation skills.
As a proposal strategist and writer, my job is to get my clients shortlisted with the opportunity to negotiate for an important project or contract. During many hours spent burning the midnight oil together, clients become friends, and I usually end up caring about the outcome almost as much as they do.
By keeping tabs on the progress of some very long post-pitch negotiations and seeing the tactics employed by some exceptional salespeople, I have picked up some great tips for improving negotiation skills that will help you navigate this important, but nerve-wracking, part of the sales process. …
Small Projects
Whenever a project manager has team members on the project, he needs to recognize the needs of managing human resources. However, these small projects will probably not need to worry too much with formal people management processes and techniques. First, if it is a small project the project manager does not have to acquire much staff (if any). The project team is most likely assigned by a functional (staffing) manager. There is not much opportunity to develop the team members since the project is probably short. There is also little opportunity to formally manage people other than making sure the team members know the work they are responsible for and making sure that the work is completed successfully. Similarly, a small project is normally not going to run into many people problems. …
Have you ever been on a project team that had everything going right? The team members all got along; they all had the right skills; everyone worked hard and pulled together to get the project done.
Those are just some of the characteristics of a high-performing team. High-performing teams can sometimes form by themselves, perhaps even in spite of a manager that gets in the way. However, it is more typical that a manager helps a team become high-performing and facilitates them through a process that leads to the team becoming as effective and efficient as possible. …
The role of the project manager normally does not include providing formal performance reviews to team members. This is usually a responsibility of each employee’s functional manager. However, there is no question that a project manager does need to provide performance feedback to team members to let them know how they are doing and whether they are meeting performance expectations. This includes recognizing when team members meet their commitments and providing feedback to them when they are not meeting your expectations. …
Understand the Characteristics of Quality for Your Project
It is hard to define product or service quality at a high-level because the term “quality” is vague and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the client’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. …
