IT Project Management: Ten Rules for Enhancing the Human Element
by Kevin McGaffey and Rob Beckmann
Educational institutions and certification organizations are fast at work trying to ensure that project managers have the skills and tools available to manage the process of project management but little is done to teach and mentor project managers on the key aspect of each and every project: People. People have to do tasks to make the project successful. Given the maze of challenges IT organizations face in these times of increased complexity and pressures from the business one often overlooked area is the people who work in these organizations day-in and day-out delivering on projects. Enhancing the human element in your project is the fundamental key to success. Ensuring that you have a developed strategy around people management in your project will put you on a solid foundation for a successful outcome.
This article originally appeared in the May, 2009 issue of the “Municipal Interface”, a newsletter published by the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) of Canada.
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Ten Rules to Enhancing the Human Element - Response to Questions
Thanks Doug for the Questions
Let me try to respond to your questions the best I can. Obviously there are many things to consider for each one of these but i will try to outline a response to each.
1. For this particular situation i can think of three things that i would put in place to try and resolve this. First, during project initiation i would negotiate up front with the individuals' managers what the expectations around their involvement would be so it is clear to all. I would then ensure that this is communicated to the individual so there are no surprises for either party.
Second, I would enlist the help of Senior Management to communicate to the entire organization the priority, urgency and value expected to be received by the organization from completing the project. This gives the PM some political "capital" to spend later in the project and allows you a certain amount of "freedom" from the constant pull back of resources.
Third, I would make sure that a process is put in place that on a weekly, bi-weekly basis I am communicating with the managers to let them know if any course corrections are required or changes needed against the expectations that were previously discussed. Keeping them in the loop and up to date on your status will go a long way to building a productive, honest relationship with them.
2. For the second question on the third rule you have to really understand the situation that you are trying to solve first prior to figuring out how to juggle the resources to accomplish objectives. There are probably too many situations to consider in the scope of the response to this but I can provide a couple at the bottom of this.
You also need to have clear picture of each individuals strengths and weaknesses, the role that they are to play in the context of the project, the relationships between the team members (who works well together and who really does not work well together), the work that is ahead, potential possibilities for re-shuffling the work efforts (moving the blocks around) and a clear understanding of the risks ahead.
With all of these things in mind you should be able to realize benefits of acceleration of certain tasks by using the right line combinations on tasks or blocks of tasks.
In one situation, if someone was very good at a certain aspect but a person that prefers to work alone then use then use them as a "First-mover" on tasks and allow them to go in front of the team and do reconnaissance and figure out the potholes so that they set up the work for others to do the work more efficiently. They may also be able to develop patterns that are re-usable in other tasks that can be used by larger groups of people to accelerate their tasks.
Another situation you could find yourself in may be where you would like to partition off certain blocks of tasks that had a high degree of affinity to each other and put 1:m people on this to clear it off the schedule and allow yourself to "get ahead".
It is really understanding what is ahead of you, what assets you have available to you and then doing "what-if" analysis to figure out the best path forward.
Hope those help - please feel free to continue the discussion if you need more info
Kevin McGaffey CARO SYSTEMS INC. | 50 Wellington Street East, Suite 200 | Toronto, ON | M5E 1C8 P: 416.603.9697 | F: 416.603.9326 | Cell: 416.716.5519 | kevin [dot] mcgaffey
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