Ensuring your Team Works Well

Building a team involves much more than just putting the right people together. For a project team to gel and work effectively you need to do the following:

• Ensure that the roles and responsibilities of all team members are clearly defined.
• Encourage people to think as a group and not as individuals.
• Communicate and listen. To be a good communicator, you must be a good listener. Otherwise, your communications may not take into consideration the needs of your team.
• Be dependable. Always do what you promised. Nothing saps team moral as much as a manager who does not abide by his or her promises.
• Never miss a chance to praise/reward your team or a team member. Always communicate a team member’s achievements to his or her functional manager.
• Be enthusiastic. Being positive is infectious, and motivates your team.
• Empower your team members by giving them sufficient decision-making power so that they can get their work done. However, ensure that they follow the proper project operation procedures.
• Provide training on teamwork if your team is not working well together.

Tasks Execution

During the project’s execution phase, the project manager has to make sure that all tasks are executed as planned in terms of time, resources and budget. Measurements should be taken frequently and corrective actions should be made accordingly.

Communicating

Throughout the project communicate, communicate and communicate. Good communication is a major key success factor of any project. As a project manager you will surely communicate via phone, emails, meetings, and so on.

As mentioned earlier, to be a good communicator, you must be a good listener first. So listen intently to your project team - your team members will appreciate that you value their opinions and encourage discussion. Listening also is very useful as it provides you feedback on whether your team members understand your messages.

Giving your stakeholders access to information is a vital part of any project communications strategy. Ensure that your project team has access to an information sharing system such as an intranet or a similar collaborative environment. In large projects, a team member may be designated to supervise the project information sharing system.

Monitoring & Controlling

Drive your project don’t let It drive you

Project control consists of ensuring that your project is progressing according to plan, and taking action if any deviation from the plan is identified.

Use the project plan to monitor and control your project. During the controlling process, you may have to update the project plan and other documents such as requirements and functional specifications.

Project Tracking

The project should be tracked on regular basis and corrective actions should be taken accordingly to the project’s progress or deviation from the original baseline. Successful Project Management Principles & Controls are summarized as three main methods:

• Continually focus on the Project Plan as the basis of your project
• Continually update the Project Plan (especially the schedule, scope, and budget)
• Regularly (better still, at scheduled intervals or on achievement of milestones) measure status and project progress against the Project Plan - and make adjustments to get back on track, if necessary
• Follow up Follow up Follow up

Additionally, Project Management Principles & Controls include managing the inevitable conflicts and changes that arise during a project – Conflict Management and Change Control.

Tip: Use weekly and daily reminders, agenda or tasks list for follow up.