Managing differences in project environments

With the current trends in business and technology, the odds that you will manage a project consisting of stakeholders from the same culture, located in the same environment, and representing a common business function decrease as each day passes. In the past, these more complex project situations were assigned to proven, experienced project managers. Today, you are likely to deal with cross-functional, cross-cultural, or virtual environments (or combinations of these three) in your initial project management opportunity. Thus, it is important to review key aspects of managing differences in project environments.

Five Key Principles

No matter the situation, there is a common set of principles that you can apply to better manage any project where there are significant differences in the composition of the team. The differences can include location, business function, or cultural aspects. Let’s take a look at the five fundamental principles that will guide your efforts in any of these situations:

1. No new management techniques  required - The first principle to understand is that it does not take additional or new management techniques to be effective at leading these types of projects. These project situations just place more emphasis and importance on the project management fundamentals reviewed in earlier posts. In particular, these aspects of project management become essential:

• Well-defined and properly planned project
• Effective project sponsorship
• Buy-in and commitment on success criteria
• Well-managed expectations
• Clear roles and responsibilities
• Effective communications
• Effective risk management

In addition, the discipline to properly document plans, meeting minutes, decisions, and issues is generally more important due to the need to ensure proper and clear communications.

2. The right leadership approach - The best project leaders in these situations are ones who possess the right mix of communication, facilitative, interpersonal, and expectation management skills to
accomplish the following:

• Instill confidence in the stakeholders that he can lead them to the accomplishment of the project objectives.
• Take the perspective of each stakeholder group to ensure each group believes they are included, understood, valued, and “heard” in the project process.
• Create alignment around the project goals and concentrate the team’s focus on what unifies them (the common ground).
• Help each stakeholder group understand how their piece (work process, interests, and needs) fits into the overall puzzle.
• Take a flexible approach by maintaining focus on the major project priorities and an understanding that everything else is just a means for getting there.

3. Effective communications -  Effective project communications are a bedrock aspect of project management. Specifically, in these types of project situations, here are the key points to keep in mind:

• Use communication mechanisms that are accessible to everyone.
• Use project collaboration environments and techniques that are accessible to everyone.
• Develop a project vocabulary. Be willing to use their terms and terms they understand. Be mindful of any confusion over terminology being used.
• Plan on frequent touchpoints to compensate for the lack of face time, especially in virtual project team settings.
• Document project communications, especially anything discussed verbally, to ensure mutual understanding and agreement.
• Ensure each team member is clear on the following at all times:

1. Project goals
2. Team members’ roles and responsibilities
3. Team members’ assignments
4. Project schedule
5. Project collaboration environments and tools
6. Chain of command and reporting relationships 

4. Verify understanding - In these project situations, more time is necessary to verify that you are being understood and that you (your team) accurately understand the other stakeholders. A few specific things to be mindful of include the following:

• Be wary of any assumptions.
• Ask the extra question to make sure.
• Establish and clarify team norms and procedures.
• Explain project processes and the value they serve.
• The larger the project, the more effort to get through requirements definition and review cycles.
• Requirements gathering needs to use multiple methods to ensure completeness and understanding.
• Take the time to walk through their current processes.

5. More project management effort - This is somewhat implied by the first principle in this list, but it is important to understand that the project management component of these type of environments is more significant (as a rule). There can be a wrong perception that the effort to leverage these latest technologies and business trends to gain efficiency and to accomplish projects faster also means less project management effort. Incorrect. The effort to lead, facilitate, ensure understanding, and build teamwork in these situations is at least equal, and in most cases much greater, than the effort to do the same with a collocated team.

With the prior principles understood, let’s review a few proven tips and techniques specific to leading cross-functional projects:

1. Ensure proper project sponsorship and governance - Any time a project’s scope addresses more than a single business function, it is critical that the project sponsor have jurisdiction over all the business functions affected. If the sponsor does not have this jurisdiction then a process (often by a senior level committee—steering committee, change control board) needs to be established up front to deal with any territorial issue or change request that affects the cross-functional environment. 
2. Designate functional leaders - As part of your project organization and your role-responsibility matrix, include functional leader positions as the primary representatives from each distinct group. These roles are instrumental to facilitating the project process and to reducing your workload. 
3. Acknowledge the importance and value of each group - Although you might serve as the ringmaster and steadfastly communicate the vision and process approach for the project, you should be quick to acknowledge the importance, value, and role that each group contributes to the success of
   the project. You don’t have all the answers, so you need to facilitate the execution of the project and instill a sense of ownership into each of your functional leaders.
4. Get commitments from respective resource managers - As part of the collaborative approach that is needed for these types of projects, make sure to work closely with the various resource managers who are responsible for assigning the appropriate personnel to the project. In many cases, the resource managers are the bosses of the individuals who will serve as your designated functional leads. Invest the time with them. Review the project definition with them. Include them on the review and acceptance of the project plan, especially the resource plan and project schedule.
5. Ensure project alignment - In case you were not involved in the project definition process, make sure your cross-functional project is aligned with the other projects underway or planned in the enterprise. There is nothing worse for team spirit and commitment than to start a project that has an
   obvious conflict with other initiatives.
6. Focus on workflow process -To add more value to the project, to better serve your role as facilitator, and to help you make better decisions, invest the effort early to understand the complete workflow process that is affected by the project. In many cases, your functional leaders will have silo outlooks and will not fully understand how they get the inputs they do or how their outputs affect the rest of the operation. 
7. Kickoff meetings are essential - Kickoff meetings are always excellent tools for setting expectations and communicating the same message to the key stakeholders. On cross-functional projects, where multiple departments or business units are involved, this type of event is critical to getting the project started correctly and to improving the chances for success. 
8. Resolve issues aggressively - On cross-functional projects, you are likely to see issues occur that do not have a clear owner. It is imperative that you take an aggressive attitude toward finding resolutions to any issue to protect the project’s critical success factors.
9. Look out for dysfunctional relations - Now, you would think that since the various functional areas are all members of the same, common organization that it would be one big happy family. Well, people are people, families are families, and dysfunction is always close by. Just understand that in many organizations, there can be historical disputes between functional groups or individuals within the group that affect your project’s performance.
10. Invest time on communications planning - Communication is key to project success. For crossfunctional projects, you need to invest additional time in planning your project communications due to the heightened importance they will have in this setting and to the increased number of stakeholders that need to be included.
11. Invest time on requirements definition - The requirements definition process is often the source for missed expectations. This is especially true with cross-functional projects due to the increased breadth of scope, the number of stakeholders, and the team dynamics that can come into play. In addition, as mentioned in the fourth principle in managing these types of projects, more effort is needed to verify understanding. The key is to plan adequate time and effort for a thorough requirements definition phase, so you can avoid the common problems that contribute to insufficient requirements definition, including the following:

• Reluctant signatures - Stakeholders who approve requirements without a real understanding or buy-in. Be especially cognizant of stakeholders who are quiet, susceptible to peer pressure, or who offer no nonverbal signs that the light bulb has gone on.
• Misunderstandings, assumptions, and unstated expectations - Use multiple requirements gathering methods, leverage visual models, ask extra questions, and focus on change impact.

Now let’s review a few proven tips and techniques specific to leading cross-cultural projects:

Be respectful - Take time to consider the effect that the different cultures, time zones, holiday schedules, and work-day schedules will have on the project. Common impact areas are terminology, risk management, communications planning (including best times for status meetings), and
the project schedule.

Potential culture impacts - Understand potential cultural effects on project communications and team interactions. Specifically, be aware that due to cultural differences, others might not be as assertive or willing to speak up to the degree you would expect. In addition, review any conventions that you plan to use for status reporting. Make sure the conventions do not convey some unintended meaning and that everyone is comfortable using them.

Listen for understanding - Even with a common language (in most cases, English), the use and the sound of the language can vary dramatically. The key here is to kick your active listening skills into high gear and focus on understanding. Don’t let yourself get distracted or tune out because of accents or the irregular use of certain words. Stay engaged, be patient, ask questions, clarify terms, and don’t stop until you are comfortable that you’re on the same wavelength with your cross-cultural partners.

Plan on more formality - To reduce the impact of cultural differences and to ensure mutual understanding, cross-cultural projects are more mechanical, formal, and by-the-book. You just need to plan on this and realize that project management shortcuts are not as likely in these environments.

Techniques for Leading Virtual Projects

Any project that consists of team members not collocated in the same physical location is a virtual project to some degree. The more geographically dispersed the team members and the more interaction that is done with non–face-to-face communications, the more virtual the project is.

With the continued advances in communications and information technology, and the common everyday use of mobile phones, remote network access, email, web mail, pagers, and instant messaging, the ability of people to productively collaborate on common work is increased dramatically. And, of course, the reduced office costs and the increased ability to leverage outsourcing options are very attractive to most organizations.

However, these potential productivity gains and cost reductions do not happen automatically, especially in the demanding environment of most projects. There is a tremendous amount of energy needed to plan, coordinate, and manage a virtual project team. Let’s review a few key tips and techniques specific to leading virtual project teams:

Get some face-to-face time - If there is any way possible to get face time with your virtual team members, do it as face-to-face interaction is instrumental in building trust, developing relationships, and jump-starting project momentum. The following scenarios are recommended for your consideration:

• Get everyone together for the project kickoff meeting.
• Try to collocate the team for the first stage (or as long as you can) and then let team members return to their remote locations.
• If none of these are possible, try a mini-kickoff session that focuses on the work planning and identifying risks.
• Depending on the project phase and the nature of the work, look at split work environments (such as two days on-site, three days remote, or one week on-site every month).
• If it’s available, look to leverage video conferencing as much as possible. If not, consider creative use of digital pictures.

Establish team norms - Facilitate the rules and procedures that will guide team interactions and productivity with the team. Key items include the following:

• Core hours everyone needs to be available (online)
• Access to team members during non-core hours
• Preferred team communication and collaboration mechanisms
• Preferred meeting times, especially important when members are in different time zones
• Reporting status
• Project repository
• Contingency plans for network or phone outages
• Team directory

Responsiveness is the difference-maker - The key to successful virtual project teams is  responsiveness. If people are easily accessible and respond quickly, most organizations couldn’t care less where people are working. These environments do require team members to be professional and
mature.

Set up protocols for virtual meetings -Virtual meetings are the lifeblood of a virtual project team. Here are some key reminders to make these meetings more productive:

• Use technologies that are available to everyone.
• Use technologies that are reliable for everyone.
• Use technologies that meet the security requirements of the project and sponsoring organizations.
• Ensure everyone understands how to use the technologies.
• Make sure to send agenda and reference materials in advance of the meeting (or just post to the project repository and send a link to it).
• Review protocols for asking questions.
• Keep discussions focused on items that pertain to all participants. For other items, take them offline. Stop the discussion and assign an action item to schedule a separate meeting with those involved.
• Instant messaging conferences might be appropriate for core team meetings.

Establish clear time zone references - This might not be as much of an issue, but in this age of multiple time zones and daylight savings time, take the time to review and clarify time-zone designations and conventions. This goes a long way to avoiding meeting time conflicts. There are two recommendations here:

• Use the newer time zone references, such as Eastern Time (ET) to refer to whatever time it is on the East Coast rather than Eastern Standard Time (EST) or Eastern Daylight Savings Time (EDST).
• Reference city or state to clarify the intended time, such as Chicago time, London time, or Arizona time.

Verify productivity early - To ensure that the virtual work environment generates the expected level of productivity needed for project success, pay close attention to initial work efforts. The fundamentals of work assignments apply the same here, but they’re even more important:
• Invest time to clarify work expectations and completion criteria.
• Provide all necessary resources.
• Keep work packages small—less than the standard reporting period.

Use preferred communication methods of customer and sponsor - Either as part of your initial communications planning or as an observation you make during the project, make sure to communicate with your sponsor and your key customers in the manner they prefer and in the manner that best fits their learning style. If this is in person, meet them in person. If it is via phone at 7:30 a.m., call them at 7:30 a.m. If it is email at the end of the day, email them. The two important things to note here are the following:

• The communication mechanisms you use for the core project team might likely be different than what you use for sponsor and customer communications.
• Use the methods they prefer, not what you prefer. This approach leads to fewer miscommunication and expectation management issues.

Here I am ending today's post. In the next post we'll review vendor management

Special situations related to project team performance

There are going to be project situations in which you won’t have a stellar, high performing team. There might be times where you have just the opposite situation to deal with. In either case, you still need to get the work done. It’s in these situations where your goal is to get “better” team performance. Let's examine some special situations related to project team performance that you are likely to encounter and offer a few helpful recommendations in each case:

Poor performers - Poor performers generally fall into two categories: unacceptable work results or unacceptable behaviors. In many cases, the poor performance is a result of unclear expectations. If faced with this situation, keep these action items in mind:

• Verify expectations - On first occurrences, don’t overreact—verify the expectations that they had and take responsibility for any lack of clarity.
• Provide feedback - After you have proper information, provide specific feedback to the team member as soon as possible in a private setting. Focus on the behavior or result, not the person.
• Enable success - Do everything that you can do to enable each team member’s success. Provide resources. Knock down obstacles. Provide every opportunity for his or her performance to improve.
• Initiate backup plans - At the same time, you cannot assume their performance will get better. At the first signs of performance issues, start thinking about what you can do to mitigate the impact to the project, if you do need to replace the team member or if the performance does not improve.
• Cut your losses - Assuming you’ve done everything we’ve mentioned so far, there comes a time when you’ve got to cut your losses. The main reason why a poor performer needs to be removed is the effect it can have on the performance and morale of the rest of the team.

High-maintenance staff - This group of team members includes those individuals who have a reputation of either being difficult to work with or possessing unusual personalities. In most cases, these are the people you need for your key critical path tasks—of course. From experience, here are
my two key recommendations for these situations:

• Check for yourself - Don’t assume the reputation (the perception) is totally true. Verify for yourself. I have found that in many cases, these individuals are unfairly labeled. These labels often say more about the people who are uncomfortable working with individuals who are different from them than anything else.
• Treat them the same - Use the same approach with them as you would any other team member. Work to understand their motivators, clarify expectations, avoid surprises, and help them to be successful.

Schedule developed without team - I know we emphasize the importance and the value in developing the detail project plan and schedule with the team. I also realize this does not always occur in the
real-world (shocking I know). If you find yourself in a situation where either you or your team is asked to take responsibility for a schedule that they did not help develop, you must take the time to review the schedule. You need to get a buy-in from the team members before continuing. Two
important items for consideration here:

• Understand the schedule assumptions - In many of these situations, team members totally dismiss the merits of a schedule because they are not aware of the assumptions that serve as the foundation for the schedule. Key assumptions include those about resource ability and quality level of work product (completion criteria).
• Identify risks - If there are gaps between the schedule assumptions and project reality, or if you cannot get commitment from the team, you have some new project risks, if not outright issues. Follow your designated risk and issue management procedures to handle it.

Here I am ending today's post. In the next post we'll review key aspects of managing differences in project environments.

Proven Techniques for better project team performance

In this post we'll look at a few proven techniques that generally lead to better project team performance:

Conduct team kickoffs - Conduct separate kickoff meetings with your core team at the beginning of each phase. This is an excellent way to reset expectations on project context, project goals and priorities, team member roles and responsibilities, team member assignments, project schedule, and
team procedures.

Collocate - This is not always possible, and it is becoming more uncommon as project work becomes increasingly distributed. However, results speak for themselves. When project team members are physically located in the same area, it is much easier to build relationships, share ideas and experiences, collaborate on assignments, develop answers to problems, and increase team synergy.

Use meeting time wisely - To communicate both respect and value for individuals’ time, and to help team productivity, have a definite purpose or need for any team meeting and confirm that this purpose is understood by all team members. At a minimum, conduct a general team status meeting each week to share knowledge and lessons learned, and to provide gentle peer pressure accountability. The need for formal meetings varies depending on how the team is naturally collaborating, the composition of
the team, team productivity, and on the list of outstanding issues.

Develop a team charter - To align individual expectations with desired team behaviors, develop a team charter that defines the guidelines, procedures, and principles by which the team will operate. The important thing here is not whether you take the time to document this, but it is the act of working with the team to develop these guidelines and procedures. This way, much like the overall project plan and schedule, it becomes theirs.

Set standards - Especially on projects where multiple individuals might be doing the same type of work or when work is outsourced, develop and communicate the standards the work must meet to be accepted. This helps clarify expectations, reduces rework activity, improves quality, and
leverages expert knowledge.

Leverage expertise - This is an invaluable method to improve team performance and to improve the skills of multiple individuals. Especially in cases where the project involves newer technologies, the primary resource pools do not have adequate skill levels, or the organization needs to avoid allocating their most senior, sought-after talent on a single project.

Resolve conflicts right away—High-performing teams do not let intra - team conflicts or project issues linger because they can adversely affect team productivity, if they do. As the project manager, you need to facilitate resolutions quickly. This does not mean that you do not listen and make rash judgments. It means that you “deal with it”—don’t avoid it. In all cases, it is very important that you stay objective, treat all sides with respect, place your focus on potential solutions, and seek out win-win scenarios.

Prepare for client interactions - To better manage client expectations and to avoid unproductive issues, prepare the team for direct client interactions. Make sure they understand the project from the client’s perspective, the expectation the client has of the team’s abilities, specific actions to take if they need assistance when they are with the client, and any talking points to either avoid or emphasize.

Set up project repository - To help facilitate team productivity, share knowledge, and protect project assets, set up a common repository that is accessible by all core team members to store project work products and project management deliverables.

Set up team collaboration environment - To encourage and to make it easy for the team to work together on project work items—especially when the team is distributed or virtual in nature—set up the appropriate collaboration tools and environments. This normally means setting up one or more online tools to provide team members the ability to do one or more of the following: discuss topics (group chat), facilitate team meetings (web conferencing), view and edit a common work product, and track changes to a work product.

Develop team rituals - To help build team unity, develop specific rituals that engage the entire team. Examples include going out to lunch together on a certain day each week, sharing breakfast together on a certain day each week, celebrating individual birthdays or anniversaries, and so forth.

Effective task assignments - We’ve talked about this one in various ways many times already, but the point I want to emphasize here is that you can’t just assume a task assignment is understood and will be done because it appears on the schedule and there is a person’s name beside it. The keys here are the following:

• Instill a sense of ownership on assigned tasks. Look for modules or domains that specific people can have lead responsibility over.
• Verify that the person assigned the work is clear on task completion criteria. This will avoid the need to micro-manage your team. Ensure that one person is primarily responsible for a task and that you have buy-in on that responsibility.
• Ensure that the level of schedule detail is appropriate to effectively assign and monitor work.

Plan for orientation - For any new team member joining your project, there is an introductory orientation period. Your goal is to streamline this period and to have each team member at maximum productivity as soon as possible. The four specific actions I employ are the following:

• Protect your schedule - Do not assume the new team member will be 100% productive on day one. The length of the ramp-up period will be specific to the project, work assignments, and previous work experiences.
• Prepare an orientation packet - Put yourself in the new team member’s shoes and think about what you need to know in order to get a solid understanding of the project environment.
• Setup work environment in advance - In any project environment where team members need specific equipment, tools, or access privileges to do their work, do whatever you can to get this set up before the team member starts. If you can’t, account for this in your schedule.
• Invest the time upfront - Plan on spending time with any new team member upfront. By investing focused attention with any new team member, you can better communicate your energy for the project and the expectations for the project, their role, and their contributions. As an avid follower of the Pareto principle, this is a clear case where spending a little extra time up front avoids the need to spend a lot more time on down the road on team productivity issues.

Plug-in - To help facilitate the performance team, you must stay connected with the team. Keys here are to stay visible, use the same communication channels the team is using, take time to meet with each team member one-on-one, and make sure the team knows you are there to help them be productive.

Share leadership responsibilities - To help team members develop leadership skills and to help build commitment to the project, look for opportunities to share leadership responsibilities. This is natural on larger and cross-functional projects.

Ten key management principles to guide team’s performance

From the previous post we got a better sense for what a high-performing team looks like, let’s review ten key management principles that are paramount to our efforts to guide our team’s performance:

Adapt management style - Although as a rule, a collaborative, servant leadership management approach to leading project teams will be the most effective in most situations, you might need to adjust your style depending on the project phase, the needs of your particular team, and the project environment.

Get the right people - Whenever possible, personally select the members of your core team. You should have the best understanding of the skills, abilities, and behaviors that are needed for project success. In particular, get people who have a track record of success. As any successful project manager will attest, having the right people is 80% of the battle.

Plan as a team - A major component of modern-day project management is the idea that planning is a team activity. This was a heavy emphasis in our planning chapters. Why is this key? If the team develops the project plan, it becomes “their” plan and “their” schedule. With this comes a much higher level of commitment, buy-in, and accountability, and much less time spent battling the issues you get when this is not present.

Keep the team focused - One of the most important things a project manager can do is to make sure each team member is simultaneously crystal clear on the “big picture” of the project (mission, objectives, and priorities) on one hand and focused on his immediate task on the other. To focus, not only must each team member have clear work assignments and roles, but the project manager needs to be an “umbrella” for them. As an umbrella, the project manager protects the team from the politics,
noise, and other factors that distract them and slow their progress.

Set clear expectations - To encourage maximum team productivity, nothing is more important than making sure each team member understands what is expected from him or her in advance. This applies to both work assignments and team protocols. A key aspect of this expectation-setting activity is to review the completion criteria for any work assignment up front. This step alone goes a long way to avoiding rework and increasing productivity.

Facilitate productivity - Continuing our productivity theme, the focus of the project manager should be on doing everything she can to enable each team member to be as productive as she can possibly be. What does this mean? It means the following:

• Ensure work assignments are clear and understood.
• Provide the tools, resources, and procedures to facilitate team collaboration.
• Provide all resources that are needed to accomplish the work in a timely fashion.
• Facilitate resolution to any issue impeding work assignment completion.
• Anticipate issues that might affect work productivity and take action to mitigate or prevent them (risk management at the work task level).

Improve marketability - A key goal for every person on the team is to improve his marketability through his experiences on the project. In the end, the only real job security one has is to always be “marketable”—and to continuously improve one’s marketability. Look for ways to improve skills, build résumés, and to help each person make progress on his career goals. This mindset is key to both how you assign and “sell” work tasks.

Leverage individual strengths—An extension of the previous principle, this one has three primary components:

• Look for the strengths that each person brings to the table, but understand their weaknesses. This approach keeps you positive and is especially important when you have not personally selected your team or when you have been given a team member with a “reputation.”
• Understand what drives each person, her motivators, and what she cares about. Not only will this help you position people to do better, but it will also enable you to reward and recognize them more effectively.
• Align project roles and responsibilities with each team member’s “sweet spot” as much as possible. The sweet spot is the combination of natural strengths and personal motivators.

Recognize and reward—This principle has three primary aspects:

• PR agent—Pretend you are the public relations agent for each one of your team members. In addition to providing timely feedback and appreciation to each person personally, make sure the “right people” (especially the people who influence their career advancements and compensation) know about the excellent work your team members are doing throughout the project. Don’t wait to do all this at the end of the project or at annual review time; it is much more effective and meaningful if it is communicated as it happens.
• Celebrate—Take the time and make plans to celebrate interim milestones along the way. This forces you to acknowledge the efforts to date and helps to build team momentum.
• Rewards—There are two key items here: First, look for ways during initial project planning and throughout the project that will allow the team members to share in the rewards (profits) if the project accomplishes certain goals. Second, if the project team or specific team members are asked to perform heroic efforts, set up an incentive that will both reward, and acknowledge the special efforts.

Facilitate team synergy - Especially early on in the project, use methods to help build the cohesiveness of the team. Most teams naturally go through the traditional “forming, norming, storming, and performing” stages, but there are things you can do to be a positive influence on this
process. Depending on how much the given project team has worked together before and where they are physically located, the specifics will differ, but as a guide, you want to focus on the following:

• Build relationships - Set up team-building outings, team lunches, team meetings, and so on that will enable relationships to begin and grow.
• Foster team collaboration - Set up the tools that make it easy for the team to work together regardless of work locations; look for opportunities to have multiple team members work together on a single assignment to encourage knowledge sharing and reduce risk around “isolated pockets of expertise” in addition to improving overall team performance.
• Setup team procedures - Determine what rules, guidelines, and protocols are needed to help establish team productivity (such as modes of communication, core hours, standard meeting times, work standards, work processes, and administrative procedures).
• See progress - Structure the project approach so that the team can get some early, visible progress. Not only does this create enthusiasm for the stakeholders, but it does the same for the core team, too. In addition, track the team’s progress and accomplishments in a very visible fashion. This helps build enthusiasm, but also encourages pride and accountability in project efforts.

Here I am ending this post, in the next post we'll take a look at a few proven techniques that generally lead to better project team performance.

Expectation Management

Although managing stakeholder expectations speaks to the essence of project management and is a key objective of all project definition, planning, and control activities, it is often ignored in introductory project management books. There are two main reasons:

1. Many consider it to be an advanced project management topic.
2. Many people do not know how to manage expectations and thus just lump it with other project management activities.

It is very difficult to isolate strict expectation management activities or to talk about managing expectations without discussing other aspects of project management, there is tremendous value in taking a concentrated look at this:

Expectations are a critical success factor - Although scope, budget, and schedule are core elements of managing expectations, there is more and if you ignore it, the odds for real project success are greatly diminished.

You can make a difference - Because expectations deal with perceptions and often get into the “art” of project management, they can be less tangible, which makes it more challenging to offer guidance.

Sign of project management maturity - Nothing says “experience” and “I’m not a rookie” more than a project manager who understands the importance of guiding stakeholder expectations and who constantly focuses on this aspect of their project.

Let's explore the critical aspects of expectations, the key components of successfully managing stakeholder expectations, the common mistakes to avoid, and the essential principles and techniques that will guide us in any project environment.

Critical Aspects of Expectations

For expectations, there is one key concept and four critical components that need to be understood for effective management.

1. Balancing Reality and Perception

The key concept is that expectations are shaped by both reality and perception. In an ideal project, both the reality and perception of project objectives, performance, targeted results, and expected impact are aligned upfront among all stakeholders during project definition and planning, and then remain this way throughout the project. However, this ideal situation is elusive. Even when expectations are aligned during planning, there are many influences and factors that can alter expectations during the course of the project. This relationship is depicted in the figure shown below:

It's a challenge for project manager  to guide the actual “real” performance of the project while simultaneously aligning and balancing the perception of each stakeholder. This work is a dynamic, ongoing venture that is only complete when the project is closed.

2. More than Scope Management

There is more to managing expectations than just managing scope. There are four critical components of expectations. Each expectation element is important to the success of the project and is subject to the natural push and pull between project reality and stakeholder perceptions as shown in the figure below:

Let’s review each expectation component in greater detail-

1. Critical Success Factors - This aspect includes the traditional measuring rods of scope, schedule, and budget. In addition, it includes any additional acceptance criteria that you established with your key stakeholders during project definition and planning. The heart of project management is focused on managing expectations around these elements, but the key tools are a solid project definition document, a realistic schedule, a baselined budget, early detection of performance variances, and disciplined change control.
2. Project Impact - This component highlights the "change" impact of the project output (results, solution, work products). It accounts for any work, process, or organizational change experienced by any stakeholder as a result of the project outcome. This aspect is commonly neglected by less experienced organizations and project managers. The key here is to think (and plan) with the end in mind. With this clarity, you can better communicate a common vision of the project outcome and help stakeholders prepare for the changes that will affect them.
3. Work Products - This category covers things such as "that's not what I asked for," "that's not what I meant," and "oh no, you gave me exactly what I asked for." This could be considered a part of project scope, but depending upon the level of detail in your scope statement, it may not be adequately addressed. This category deals with the detailed expectations surrounding the individual work products that each stakeholder has. At a minimum, it focuses on requirements management, quality management, and overall project approach. 
4. Project Execution - This final component deals with the day-to-day execution of the project. While not as critical as the other aspects, a lack of attention to these elements will certainly create situations that can easily lead to under performing projects, and then to major expectation management activities. This category deals with the efficiency and effectiveness of the project team, and with the confidence the stakeholders have in them to successfully deliver the targeted solution and in you to lead them there. Common elements in this group include interactions between team and client stakeholders, clarity of roles, responsibilities, work processes, and work assignments.

The key principles to remember are:

• Make sure team members are prepared for their interactions with stakeholders; 
• Do not assume stakeholders have a clear understanding of project processes and their work assignments; 
• Always look at the project from their perspective; and proactively review (with a gentle touch) key  asks and targeted completion dates.

The success formula for each aspect of expectation management is relatively straightforward:

• Get real - Set realistic expectations; get initial agreement (buy-in) from affected stakeholders; review assumptions and constraints; talk about it; address it; get clarity and understanding.
• Keep it balanced - Manage changes; align project reality with stakeholder perceptions; proactively communicate; educate; constantly validate and affirm perceptions; regularly assess performance; reset expectations as needed
• Follow-through Deliver; honor the agreements; get the work done; "under-promise, over-deliver."

Principles of Expectation Management

Let’s look at the seven master principles that drive all expectation management activity:

1. Get buy-in - Whether it's the critical success criteria, resource and time commitments, or individual work assignments, invest the time and energy to gain their trust and to make sure you have genuine buy-in from the affected parties. This is why effective planning is a must.

2. Take care of business - This is the "blocking and tackling" fundamentals of project management. Set your baselines, manage to them, and properly handle and communicate any variances.

3. Communicate the "big picture" - With the end goal in mind, clearly sell the vision on where the project is going, what the targeted solution will be like, and why each work assignment is important. People want to know "why" and understand the importance of their role.

4.Listen and be alert - If stakeholders are not "on the same page" or have "unstated expectations," there are always cues and signals. Look and listen for them and make it a priority to deal with them quickly.

5. Take their perspective - This ability is a mainstay for effective expectation management, and it will empower you to anticipate the needs and concerns of your project stakeholders. It will also drive a "flexible" mindset that allows you to adapt approaches, plans, and specifications to best meet the situation at hand.

6. Never assume - A key principle that needs constant attention. Many don't realize the assumptions that are working under until it is too late. To help you avoid assumptions, keep the following in mind:

• Err on the side of over-communication
• Always set context for all of your communications
• Constantly confirm understanding
• Clearly communicate what is expected from each team member
• Continuously reset expectations
• Verify that you have the correct solution to meet the project's objectives (rather than just validating documented requirements)

7. Understand priorities - There are always many stakeholders, often with their own distinct views of the world and sets of priorities. While you always aim to find compromises that will appeal to entire group, it is important to understand the decision-making process and whose voices have greater influence and priority. In particular, always be very clear on who controls the budget for your project.

Essential Elements of Managing Expectations

Following are the essential tools and techniques that are available to the project manager to effectively manage stakeholder expectations:

A. Project Planning and Control Elements

• Project Definition Document
• Scope Statement
• WBS
• Project Budget
• Estimates
• Assumptions and Constraints
• Project Schedule
• Project Plan
• Project Organization Chart
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Communications Plan
• Responsibility Matrix
• Project Approach

Essential Control and Execution Elements to Manage Project Expectations

• Kickoff meetings
• Status reports
• Change control
• Quality management
• Risk management
• Issue management
• Requirements management
• Completion criteria
• Formal sign-offs
• Reviews
• Milestones and checkpoints
• Requirements trace-ability matrix
• Team charter

Leveraging Kickoff Meetings

Kickoff meetings are a simple but powerful tool to help manage expectations. In general, a kickoff meeting is simple. Get all of the targeted stakeholders together to officially review the project and get it underway. Kickoff meetings are invaluable for accomplishing certain things related to expectation management, and many people either do not do them properly or under-utilize them.

1. Primary Goals

The three primary goals for any kickoff meeting should include the following:

• Give official notification that the project (or project phase) is underway
• Achieve a common expectation baseline for all stakeholders
• Start the relationship-building process between project team, customers, and other stakeholders

2. Key Recommendations

With these goals in mind, here are some key recommendations for better kickoff meetings:

1. The meeting size, length, and logistics will vary depending on organizational culture, project size, number of stakeholders, project methodology, and project importance. Plan your kickoff meetings accordingly.
2. As a rule, don't try to do too much or cover everything. Use follow-up, mini-kickoff meetings with focused groups or specific individuals to cover the details.
3. For general kickoffs, get everyone there if possible, especially the executive sponsors.
4. Set context for everyone. Focus on the "why." Review project purpose, objectives, and value to the business.
5. Clarify the priorities, target goals, and the critical success factors.
6. Paint the picture. Enable everyone to visualize how the final solution will look, how it will impact them, and how all the pieces fit together.
7. Get to know each other. Start the relationship-building and teamwork processes. Introduce everyone.
8. Review roles and responsibilities and project team organization. Emphasize each person's role, expected time commitment, and value.
9. Establish your leadership and the energy for the project. Set the tone; generate enthusiasm and motivation.
10. Review important project plan items:

• Scope and major deliverables
• General approach (methodology)
• Critical milestones
• WBS
• Schedule
• Estimated effort and budget
• Review key assumptions, risks, and constraints
• Review key project communications processes
• Review process/procedures for monitoring project performance

11. Whenever possible, hand out team memorabilia at the beginning of the project. It helps to build team unity and project awareness.
12. Ask for feedback. Clarify any confusion now.
13. Ensure people know what to do first/next (short-term). They should be clear on their next steps.

Requirements Management

A large percentage of expectation misunderstandings have their origins in the requirements gathering and requirements management processes. The frustrating thing about these situations is that most of these can (or could) be avoided. While the subject of requirements definition is a field of study itself, we will leverage the Pareto principle here. We will focus our attention on addressing the common requirements-related problems and the key principles and guidelines that will make the most difference in your future requirements definition and management efforts.

1. Common Problems to Avoid

Let's take a quick review of the common problems with gathering and defining requirements:

• Not well-written - Requirements are ambiguous, inconsistent, too high-level, or not clear.
• Incomplete - List of requirements is not complete to properly define the solution.
• Unstated expectations - The list of requirements does not accurately reflect all of the expectations held by the stakeholders for the targeted solution.
• Inflexible process - While specifications do need to be agreed to and finalized at certain points, defining requirements is an evolutionary process and things do change. The system for managing requirements must anticipate this reality.
• Inadequate definition process - The age-old problem with language. Using statements to describe a targeted solution creates many opportunities for misunderstandings and wrong perceptions. In most cases, you need to employ other techniques and methods to verify that you are defining the "right" solution. Techniques that help stakeholders visualize the final work product or solution are especially helpful.
• Lack of education - Often, the stakeholders who are defining the solution requirements don't fully understand the entire requirements process and the significance or impact of their decisions.
• Ineffective review process - Some examples include using a process that is not a good match for the reviewers’ natural working method or schedule; using a process that does not ensure reviewers are engaged; or using a process that does not make it easy to see what changed from the previous version.
• Using the wrong tool for the job - In addition to the challenges with leveraging the right techniques and methods to elicit requirements, the wrong tool is used to capture, store, and manage the documented requirements. In many situations, a requirements management tool that uses a centralized database foundation is what is needed to properly handle the needs of the project, solution, or organization versus the document based approach.

2. Principles to Remember for Better Requirements Management

To help you develop better requirements and to improve your ability to manage both requirements and expectations throughout the project, let's review the following principles:

• Requirements definition is an evolutionary process. Plan your project approach and requirements management tools accordingly.
• Requirements definition process should consist of a combination of gathering techniques. The specific techniques chosen should be based on risks and characteristics of the project.
• Requirements should describe what, not how.
• Requirements should avoid any unnecessary constraints.
• Requirements should be complete, explicit, realistic, and understandable by all parties.
• Requirements should be linked to the intended solution.
• Requirements should be prioritized.
• Listen. Do not pre-judge or draw conclusions too quickly.
• Strive to convert expectations into requirements.
• Educate appropriate stakeholders on the requirements process.
• If requirements are for an enhancement, change, or addition to an existing solution, update the original requirements artifacts that define the total working solution versus relying solely on new, specific, separate artifacts for the requested change.
• Use a tool to manage requirements that meets the needs of the project, solution, and organization.

Guidelines for Better Requirements

To avoid the common problems identified earlier and to greatly increase your requirements definition prowess, note the following guidelines:

1. Focus on user "experience." Understand how the user interacts with the targeted solution.
2. Understand the user's workflow.
3. Understand the user's work environment.
4. Always ask "why?"
5. Include other non-language exhibits/models as part of the requirements definition
6. To drive out unstated expectations, understand the following from each user representative:

• What are biggest problems now, and why?
• What functions or features will be the most useful, and why?
• What aspect of the new solution are you most anticipating, and why?
• What are your quality and performance expectations for the final solution, and why?

7. To help make better design decisions, define requirements in both present and future needs whenever possible.
8. Identify each requirement with a unique ID.
9. Document any accompanying assumptions.
10. Use a quality checklist to improve the effectiveness of your requirements.
11. Monitor and control changes to requirements.
12. Use a requirements traceability matrix (RTM) to link each requirement to one or more aspects of the final solution. This is a powerful tool to ensure that every requirement is accounted for and to better control "gold-plating."

Here I am ending this topic. In the next topic we will review the common characteristics of high-performing project teams, explore the management principles and techniques that foster better team performance, and offer key advice on how to best handle challenging project team situations frequently encountered by project managers.

Best practices used by effective project communicators

In this post we’ll look at general communications management, status reports, conducting meetings, interpersonal skills, and the best use for the common communication media.

General Communications Management - the best practices of general project communications management are:

• Assign a point man - To ensure quality and consistency in project communications, make sure to assign specific project team members accountable for official project communications. On most projects, you (the project manager) will serve as the communications point. However, on larger  projects, you might need to delegate responsibility for certain communication items or for communication to targeted stakeholders. This might include working closely with the company’s human resources, marketing, or corporate communications departments.
• Leverage natural strengths - Although you will always need to leverage many communication forms and media, take advantage of any natural communications strength you might possess and use the other methods to support those strengths.
• Perform stakeholder analysis - As part of your communications planning, perform a stakeholder analysis. This analysis should provide insights into the needs and motivations of each stakeholder. In addition, use this assessment to validate what type of project communications are needed to properly support each stakeholder audience and manage their expectations.
• Use push and pull - Effective project communicators use both push (send it to them) and pull (make it available to them) communication methods. With the advent of central project repositories, the pull method has experienced growing popularity. Although the use of this method is excellent for anytime, on-demand information needs by stakeholders, do not rely on it for important or urgent project communications. Make sure to send (push) any important, urgent project communications directly to the targeted stakeholders. In addition, if you are using team collaboration technologies (such as SharePoint), you can leverage both push and pull methods simultaneously by having stakeholders subscribe for alerts that notify them automatically (push) if there is an update to a given artifact. The alert contains a link that the stakeholder can use to access the targeted artifact (pull).
• Make it easy - If you want to score big points with your stakeholders, make it easy on them to understand what you are sending them (provide summaries) or asking them to do (provide context and purpose). Don’t make them search for things (include referenced items with your
  communication). Your stakeholders are busy with many tasks and priorities, and they don’t enjoy feeling confused and unsure. Any efforts you make that enable them to quickly understand what you’re delivering or what you’re asking them to do will always be appreciated, and these efforts will increase your value to the overall project.
• Keep the information flowing - A simple but powerful service provided by many effective project communicators is to make sure the right people have the right information to perform their roles. In many organizations, information tends to not flow easily from one group to another. An effective project manager looks for these bottleneck points and simply acts as a conduit for better information flow.
• Take communication decisions seriously - Consider your relationship, the message content, and available media options when making any communication decision. In general, certain communication options are better for different types of situations, and effective communicators choose wisely.
• Confirm technology and user training - Always ensure that the technologies to be used for your particular communication are working properly and that the affected stakeholders understand how to leverage them correctly.

Communication methods

Given the organisational and geographical diversity of project teams – it is important to consider all methods of communication. Today’s enhanced technology allows us to communicate easily where ever the team members may be. A communication strategy should be conceived at the project planning stages, so key is its influence on the success of the project. Communication methods can either be active or passive.

ACTIVE communication methods being those used to communicate in the here and now, for example the use of:

• Face to Face meetings 
• Video conference, meeting – one on one, or group
• Telephone conference, or voice only web conference
• Webinars, becoming increasingly popular for the delivery of presentation based activities
• Telephone – good old fashioned call
• Stand up presentations in person

PASSIVE communication methods would be those which recipients can adopt in their own time, for example:

• Pod cast
• Web cast
• Email 
• Intranet bulletin boards
• Blogs
• Website
• Project newsletter – paper based
• Table top presentation

Always ensure that a mix of active and passive methods of communication are used to compliment each other. This should be considered as part of the overall project management communication strategy. To best manage project communications, you need to understand the strengths and limits of each option, so that you use the medium that is most appropriate for the type of relationship you have with the targeted audience and for the content of the message. The right choices can improve project
productivity, facilitate open communications, and build stronger stakeholder relationships. The wrong choices create misperceptions, confusion, and weaker stakeholder relationships.

Status Reporting

The best status reporting practices of effective project communicators include:

• Be consistent - Provide progress status reports on a consistent, regular basis as defined in the project communications plan.
• Target reports - Provide the appropriate level of detail for the targeted audience.
• Use bullets and numbered lists - Use bullet points and numbered lists to summarize key facts; keep it short; enable the reader to quickly gauge the state of the project.
• Employ visuals -Because most people are visual learners and most senior management types need to get a thorough understanding of project status and/or the project issue quickly, look for opportunities to provide information in a visual format.
• Use color-coding - If not defined for the organization, establish three general threshold levels for key project metrics and critical success factors. For each level, associate the appropriate stoplight color: green, yellow, or red. Then use these colors to communicate the health of each key project metric on the status report. This enables senior management to get a quick reading on the project’s health.
• Leverage exception-based approach - Use the main (first part) of the status report to highlight any exceptions or variances to the project plan. Then provide details in the appendix section. This format should enable you to provide one status report that meets the needs of most, if not all, of your key stakeholders.

Meetings

The best meeting practices of effective project communicators include the following:

• Know your game plan - Determine the overall goal and objectives for the meeting; invite the right people; structure the meeting appropriately; determine what preparation is needed by the meeting participants to make the meeting useful.
• Post an agenda - Whenever possible, post an agenda in advance of the meeting. In either case, make sure to review the agenda at the start of the meeting and check whether any modifications are needed.
• Facilitate - Be the meeting director. Review and set meeting context; review meeting ground rules upfront; keep everyone engaged; keep the meeting flowing; solicit feedback; summarize key points; seek consensus.
• Stay on track - Keep the meeting on topic; set time limits (timebox) for agenda items; watch out for trying to solve problems in meetings, schedule follow-up meeting instead.
• Leverage conferencing tools - When some people are participating virtually, leverage combinations of audio, video, and web conferencing tools to improve meeting quality
• Take notes - Delegate someone to take notes of meeting decisions and action items.
• Attain closure - Before adjourning the meeting, review all actions items (including responsible owners and targeted completion times), summarize meeting results, schedule any necessary follow-up meetings, and thank attendees for their active participation and time.
• Post minutes - Distribute (post) meeting minutes to meeting participants and affected parties within 24 hours of the meeting whenever possible. If action is required from non-attendees, seek their commitment before distributing minutes, or note items on which they have not been consulted.

Interpersonal Skills

The next set of best practices are likely the most important because they impact the quality of all your project communications—the formal and the more frequent day-to-day interpersonal communications that occur between the project team and the project stakeholders. The following list notes the key
interpersonal skills demonstrated by effective communicators:

• Listen with a purpose.
• Be humble.
• Think before responding.
• Take their perspective.
• Don’t be judgmental.
• Be interested in others.
• Seek to understand what they do, why they do it, and what pains they are experiencing.
• Validate perceptions before responding.
• Show appreciation for their time and contributions.
• Ask questions to confirm and improve your understanding.
• Summarize what the speaker said.
• Make people feel heard.
• Focus on building relationships.
• Stay in control of your emotions.
• Don’t assume that a negative response by others is personal—most of the time it’s not.
• Avoid interrupting, if at all possible.
• Validate that you are being understood.
• Avoid terms and tones that imply judgment, guilt, or wrong doing on other parties.

Communication Planning

Communications management is about keeping everybody in the loop. The communications planning process concerns defining the types of information you will deliver, who will receive it, the format for communicating it, and the timing of its release and distribution. It turns out that 90% of a project manager’s job is spent on communication so it’s important to make sure everybody gets the right message at the right time.

The first step in defining your communication plan is figuring out what kind of communication your stakeholders need from the project so they can make good decisions. This is called the communications requirements analysis. Your project will produce a lot of information; you don’t want to overwhelm your stakeholders with all of it. Your job is to figure out what they feel is valuable. Communicating valuable information doesn’t mean you always paint a rosy picture. Communications to stakeholders may consist of either good news or bad news. The point is that you don’t want to bury stakeholders in too much information but you do want to give them enough so that they’re informed and can make appropriate decisions.

Communications technology has a major impact on how you keep people in the loop. Methods of communicating can take many forms, such as written reports, conversations, email, formal status reports, meetings, online databases, online schedules, and project websites. You should consider several factors before deciding what methods you’ll choose to transfer information. The timing of the information exchange or need for updates is the first factor. Do you need to procure new technology or systems, or are there systems already in place that will work? The technologies available to you should figure into your plan of how you will keep everyone notified of project status and issues. Staff experience with the technology is another factor. Are there project team members and stakeholders experienced at using this technology, or will you need to train them? Finally, consider the duration of the project and the project environment. Will the technology you’re choosing work throughout the life of the project or will it have to be upgraded or updated at some point? And how does the project team function? Are they located together or spread out across several campuses or locations?

The answers to these questions should be documented in the communication plan.

All projects require a sound communication plan, but not all projects will have the same types of com­munication or the same methods for distributing the information. The communication plan documents the types of information needs the stakeholders have, when the information should be distributed, and how the information will be delivered.

The types of information you will communicate typically include project status, project scope statements and updates, project baseline information, risks, action items, performance measures, project acceptance, and so on. It’s important  that the information needs of the stakeholders be determined as early in the planning phase of the project management life cycle as possible so that as you and your team develop project planning documents, you already know who should receive copies of them and how they should be delivered.

Types of Communication

Completing a complex project successfully requires good communication among team members. If those team members work in the same building, they can arrange regular meetings, simply stop by each other’s office space to get a quick answer, or even discuss a project informally at other office functions. Many projects are performed by teams that interact primarily through electronic communication and are, therefore, called virtual teams. To avoid miscommunication that can harm trust and to include team members in a project culture, the project team needs a plan for communicating reliably and in a timely manner. This planning begins with understanding two major categories of communication.

Synchronous Communications

If all the parties to the communication are taking part in the exchange at the same time, the communication is synchronous. A telephone or Skype conference call is an example of synchronous communication. The following are examples of synchronous communications:

• Live meeting: Gathering of team members at the same location
• Conference call: A telephone call in which several people participate
• Audio conference: Like a conference call, but conducted online using software like Skype
• Computer-assisted conference: Audio conference with a connection between computers that can display a document or spreadsheet that can be edited by both parties
• Video conference: Similar to an audio conference but with live video of the participants. Some laptop computers have built-in cameras to facilitate video conferencing
• IM (instant messaging): Exchange of text or voice messages using pop-up windows on the participants’ computer screens
• Texting: Exchange of text messages between mobile phones, pagers, or personal digital assistants (PDAs)—devices that hold a calendar, a contact list, a task list, and other support programs

Modern communication technologies make it possible to assemble project teams from anywhere in the world. Most people work during daylight hours, which can make synchronous meetings difficult if the participants are in different time zones. However, it can be an advantage in some circumstances; for example, if something must be done by the start of business tomorrow, team members in Asia can work on the problem during their normal work hours while team members in North America get some sleep.

Remember Time Zones

It is important to remember time zones and calculate the difference between yours and your associates’ zones correctly so as not to miss important meetings or deadlines. Cities and countries to the north or south of each other all observe the same local time. Be aware that many well-educated people in the United States and Canada think of South America as directly south of North America.  As you can see, South American countries can be up to five time zones east of North America.  A helpful site to convert local time to another time zone is Time Zone Converter. (http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc)

Figure 15.1: World Time Zones.
Standard time zones of the world

Time zones are calculated in reference to the time zone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The time at that location is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). More recent references designate it as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) instead of GMT. The time zones advance from Greenwich in an easterly direction (Figure 15.1). However, at the international dateline (about the midpoint around the world from Greenwich), you subtract the time zone from GMT. To prevent confusion between a.m. and p.m., times are often given using a 24-hour clock. For example, midnight is indicated as 00:00, noon is 12:00 and 1 p.m. is 13:00.

Example: Conference Call between Toronto and Paris

A project manager for a software development project in Toronto is five time zones west of the reference zone, so the time is given as UTC–5 (or GMT–5). If it is noon in the reference zone, it is 7 a.m. (five hours earlier) in Toronto. The manager would like to contact a project team member in Paris, France. Paris is one time zone east of the reference zone (UTC+1 or GMT+1). If it is noon (12:00) in the reference zone, it is 1 p.m. (13:00) in Paris. This means that there is a six-hour difference between Toronto and Paris. If the project manager waits until after lunch to place the call (1 p.m. in Toronto), it will be too late in the day in Paris (7 p.m.) to reach someone.

Asynchronous Communications

Getting a team together at the same time can be a challenge—especially if they are spread out across time zones. Many types of communication do not require that the parties are present at the same time. This type of communication is asynchronous. There are several choices of asynchronous communications.

Mail and Package Delivery

Many companies prefer that final contracts are personally signed by an authorized representative of each party to the agreement. If several signatures are required, this can take weeks to get all the signatures if the contracts are transferred by a postal service. If this process is holding up the start of the project, you can use an overnight delivery service to minimize the time spent transferring the documents.

Fax

Fax machines have been around a long time and enjoy a high level of trust for transmitting documents accurately. Although it might seem archaic to still use fax transmissions, in many countries a fax of a signed contract is legal, but a computer-scanned image is not.

Email

Electronic mail (email) is widely used to coordinate projects and to communicate between team members. It has several valuable characteristics for project management:

• Information can be sent to a list of team members.
• Messages can be saved to document the process in case of a misunderstanding or miscommunication.
• Files can be attached and distributed.

Project Blog

A blog is an online journal that can be private, shared by invitation, or made available to the world. Some project managers keep a journal in which they summarize the day’s challenges and triumphs and the decisions they made. They return to this journal at a later date to review their decision-making process after the results of those decisions are known to see if they can learn from their mistakes. Many decisions in project management are made with incomplete knowledge, and reflecting on previous decisions to develop this decision-making skill is important to growth as a project manager.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Some projects are directly affected by external factors such as political elections, economic trends, corporate mergers, technological or scientific breakthroughs, or weather. To keep informed about these factors, you can subscribe to online news sources. A technology that facilitates this process is Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Web pages with RSS news feeds have labeled links.

If the user clicks on the RSS feed, news from the website is automatically sent to the user’s news reader, such as Google Reader. The news reader can be set to filter the news for key words to limit the stories to those that are relevant to the project.

Assessing New Communication Technologies

New technologies for communicating electronically appear with increasing frequency. Using a new technology that is unfamiliar to the team increases the technology complexity, which can cause delays and increase costs. To decide if a new technology should be included in a communications plan, seek answers to the following questions (Business Dictionary):

• Does the new communication technology provide a competitive advantage for the project by reducing cost, saving time, or preventing mistakes?
• Does the project team have the expertise to learn the new technology quickly?
• Does the company offer support such as a help desk and equipment service for new communication technology?
• What is the cost of training and implementation in terms of time as well as money

Communication Plan Template

So how do you create a communication plan?

1. Identify your stakeholders (to whom)
2. Identify stakeholder expectations (why)
3. Identify communication necessary to satisfy stakeholder expectations and keep them informed (what)
4. Identify time-frame and/or frequency of communication messages (when)
5. Identify how the message will be communicated (the stakeholder’s preferred method) (how)
6. Identify who will communication each message (who)
7. Document items – templates, formats, or documents the project must use for communicating.

Figure 15.2 shows a communication plan template.

Figure 15.2  Communications Plan Template

Project Communications

The communications of a project include all means and manners that the project interacts with all its stakeholders. This not only includes the standard, formal communication items such as:

• Status reports
• Progress review meetings
• Kickoff meetings
• Executive reports
• Presentations
• Financial reports
• Government (or external agency) reports
• Issue logs
• Risk logs
• Change request logs
• Role-responsibility matrix
• Project organization chart
• Any project meeting (in any form/option)
• Any project deliverable
• Project collaboration tools

But can also include organizational change management communications such as:

• Project name/identity
• Project website (portal)
• Enterprise social networking platforms
• Organizational change management plan
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) references
• Awareness campaigns
• Newsletters
• Public relation notices
• Roadshows
• One-on-one meetings with key stakeholders

Although the nature of your individual project (number and type of stakeholders, location of stakeholders, and overall project risk level) dictates how many of these elements are part of your project, the next set of project communications are included on every project, and are likely the most important part of project communications: the day-to-day, interpersonal communications that occur between the project team and the project stakeholders. These include interactions in the following forms, plus others:

• Face-to-face
• Telephone
• Email
• Instant messaging (individual or group)
• Voice mail
• Texting
• Conferencing (audio, web, or video)
• Meetings

Project communications are not only important for the obvious reason- keeping
individual stakeholders properly and consistently informed on the status, progress, and impact of the project—they are a key determinant factor to the overall success of the project due to following reasons:

Managing expectations- The quality and effectiveness of your communications will have a tremendous impact on stakeholder perceptions regarding the project and your role as a leader.

Managing the project team—Your ability to communicate is the prominent factor affecting how well you manage and lead the core project team.

Reducing conflicts—There are enough challenges executing your average project with the customary time, fiscal, and resource constraints without adding unnecessary conflicts that result from wrong perceptions, lack of information, or non-existent issues. All of which result from ineffective
communications.

Saving grace—Every solid project manager knows there are two skills that will carry him in almost any project situation: organization and communication. Being excellent in these areas, especially project communications, will compensate for shortcomings in almost every other area.

Communication is the fuel that drives project success, and the mishandling of it is a top five reason why projects struggle. Let’s make sure we understand why we cannot take communications for granted. On one hand, we know instinctively that there are many factors that impact the communications process—primarily because we live it every waking minute. On the other hand, many of us don’t seem to incorporate this reality into how we communicate. The goal of any communication is to have the receiver end up with an understanding (resulting perception) that equals the meaning intended by the sender (intended message). Let’s take a look at the seven key principles employed by most effective project communicators:

Plan your communications - The goal of communications planning is to ensure that all the stakeholders involved in the project have the information they need, when they need it, to fulfill their responsibilities. The key factors that affect communications planning and the communication requirements for a project include the following:

• Sponsoring organizational structure
• Results of stakeholder analysis
• Reporting relationships
• Functional areas involved in the project
• Number of people involved in the project
• Physical location of the project stakeholder
• Information needs of each stakeholder
• Experience level of project team members
• Availability of technology
• Immediacy and frequency of information needs
• Desired form of project communications
• Expected length of the project
• Organizational risk level of project
• Expected change impact on end users
• Organizational culture
• Level of external communications needed
• Procurement contracts
• Any constraints advised by legal counsel

After the specific communication requirements are determined for your project, make sure to do these two things:

1. Document this information in a project communications management plan.
2. Ensure that all formal project communications (and the work to produce them) is included in the WBS and project schedule.

Remember the basics - The three most powerful communication techniques are also the simplest. They work and most people don’t do them, so the contrast is very noticeable.

• Make it a high priority—Don’t shortcut project communications; show respect for stakeholders.
• Use your manners—Be polite; show appreciation and gratitude.
• Follow-through—If you say you are going to do something, do it.

Five Cs of communication - Keep the five Cs in mind when composing or delivering any project communication:

1. Clear - State the subject; stay on subject; hold the receiver’s hand through the message; use appropriate terms.
2. Concise - Get to the point; limit scope of the message.
3. Courteous - Be polite; watch your tone.
4. Consistent - Use appropriate tone, medium for intended message; all message elements should support intended meaning.
5. Compelling - Give them a reason to pay attention.

Take responsibility for understanding - This hits at the mindset you need for effective communications. Key points include the following:

• Invest the effort, patience, and determination to make sure you are clearly understood.
• Employ effective listening skills to ensure you have clearly understood what the other person has intended.
• Use the communication medium that is the best fit for the intended audience. Be flexible.
• Tailor your communications content to best fit the information needs of each target audience (project team, customers, senior management, or personnel management).
• Pay attention. Notice the feedback. If what you are doing is not working, be willing to adjust.
• Don’t assume understanding—always clarify, ask questions, verify. Focus on taking the other person’s perspective in all communications.

Build relationships - Effective communicators know that the bridge between people is built upon trust, rapport, and personal connection. Be eager and willing to invest the time to build one-on-one relationships with your key stakeholders, especially early in the project. In addition, a relationship focus helps create an open and honest environment, which is better suited for dealing with natural project challenges.

Be proactive - Your enemies in project communications are surprise, doubt, and uncertainty. Per the communications plan, keep your targeted audiences informed on a consistent basis. Anticipate any additional information needs. Never leave stakeholders wondering or needing to call you first.

People and politics go together - Effective communicators demonstrate an understanding and
savviness for the political nature of the project environment. They understand the political implications of any potential communication and make sure to look at it from other perspectives before delivering the intended message.

Here I am ending this post and in the next post we shall discuss best practices used by effective project communicators.