How To Start And Finish A ‘no-fail’ Project. Part 2

Improving team communication and planning for success. Part 2.1

Suggestion #1: Centrally manage and store team communications
Suggestion #2: Personalize preferences
Suggestion #3: Involve customers

According to The Standish Group, a major IT research institution, only 16% of IT projects are completed on time and on budget. Standish estimates that 53% overrun their schedules and surpass their budgets, while 31% are canceled. META Group estimates that nearly 50% of all new software projects in the United States will go over budget.

In other words, there is only one chance in six that your next project will succeed. These are fairly depressing odds. However, unlike Texas No-Limit Hold’em, your next IT project does not have to be a gamble. By knowing the most common causes of project failure, you and your company can play your cards well and lay down a winning hand every time.

Recognized PM specialists all agree that the following are the primary factors that could ruin your project:

• Lack of objective project status reports;
• Poor communication within a team;
• Internal resistance to the project management tools and methodologies;
• Changing requirements during development;
• Inadequate initial project planning.

In this article, we will review one of these obstacles – poor communication within a team – and show some effective ways to improve it.

You might have the best talents in your team, and you might have the most detailed specification and the most comprehensive list of requirements; however, unless your team communicates effectively, your project will fail miserably.

There are many factors contributing to effective team communication, starting with hiring the right people, creating a good work environment, and giving your team members the best tools money can buy. However, in this article, we will assume that you’ve already read “Peopleware” and all your employees are geniuses with great interpersonal skills sitting in separate offices with windows and doors and working with top-of-the-line equipment. Under this assumption, we will discuss the top three techniques that will help you to get these people working together as a team, which is the essence of effective communication.

Centrally manage and store team communications

There is nothing more frustrating for a project manager than to hear “You’ve never told me about this...” from the team leader two weeks before the product release deadline. The only thing more frustrating is: “Oh, no, no, no! What I really meant...” coming from your customer’s mouth one week prior to the release deadline. But that is something to be discussed in another installment of this series – “Avoiding the ‘We need one more feature’ trap”.

To eliminate finger-pointing and make sure that every team member knows exactly what their tasks are, follow these simple rules:

• Make one person responsible for a task by assigning it to him in your project management software.
• Instead of using emails or IM (instant messaging), use your PM software message boards or forums to discuss project-related issues.This ensures that everyone and everything is literally on the same page. If IM or email communication is unavoidable, copy its content to the message board anyway for history.
• Keep all your project-related files in the same web-based PM system to ensure no one implements an obsolete requirement based on an outdated specification copied from a long-forgotten network folder.

Personalize communication preferences

As confirmed earlier, your team is full of geniuses, and most of the geniuses are introverts. They don’t want to waste their precious time talking to others or attending a boring project status meeting when they could be coming up with a brilliant ad or coding an even more perfect algorithm. But you do need their input, and you do need them to communicate with the rest of the team. Give these people the tools they want and the freedom they need. If they don’t want to sit in meetings, that’s fine, as long as they indicate their progress in the project management software or generate a report and send it to their project manager. If they don’t want to have long conversations, even better! Go online and post comments and relevant information to the message board.

Involve customers

If your team members are communicating perfectly among themselves, but the communication with your customers (external or internal) is not effective, your project is in trouble. You need to make your customers a part of your team; you need to make them work for you. Here are some useful tips:

Ask your customers to use your PM software instead of emails or phone calls to submit new requests. This not only helps to track the history but also trains your clients not to abuse the “One more little feature” habit.
When a client can see a list of all the new requests he has submitted, it will make him think twice before adding another one to the pile.

Make it easy for your customers to report defects, e.g., set up your PM system to download emails from a dedicated support@… account and post them as issues. Then configure the system to automatically assign new issues to the Team Leader or QA Lead. This ensures that nothing slips through the cracks.

Encourage your customers to post their feedback and discuss the project using the project message board. This helps to keep the project transparent and minimizes the risk of unpleasant surprises for both you and your customers.

Following these three simple techniques will help you build a stronger and more efficient team and keep your project on the right track:

• Have a central place to manage and store your team communications.
• Allow for personal communication preferences.
• Make customers a part of your team.

And who knows... Maybe from now on, you will only hear “Are you kidding? It’s already done...” from your team and “Wow!” from your customers.

Planning for success. Part 2.2

Suggestion #1: Lay down the details
Suggestion #2: Be prepared like a boy scout
Suggestion #3: Keep everyone in the loop

According to The Standish Group, a major IT research institution, only 16% of IT projects are completed on time and on budget. Standish estimates that 53% overrun their schedules and surpass their budgets while 31% are canceled. META Group (www.metagroup.com) estimates that nearly 50% of all new software projects in the United States will go over budget.

Recognized PM specialists all agree that the following are the primary factors that could ruin your project:

1. Lack of objective project status reports;
2. Poor communication within a team;
3. Internal resistance to the project management tools and methodologies;
4. Changing requirements during development;
5. Inadequate initial project planning.

Suggestion #1: Lay down the details

Just as you would not undergo a drastic haircut without first giving the hairdresser an idea of what you are looking for, you should not begin a project without a proper project definition. Often projects are rushed during the development stage, leaving certain details completely overlooked. Though the project may look flawless on the surface, problems arising from poor planning begin to emerge as the project progresses. Effective project management should start with a comprehensive outline of all details required to advance project success. To ensure consensus between the project manager, project sponsor, and any other stakeholders involved, sufficient time must be spent defining the objectives, scope, assumptions, constraints, organization, and overall approach of the project. Once approved, the project definition becomes the basis for all work to be performed during the project.

Suggestion #2: Be prepared like a boy scout

Project details set parameters for the project. Once these limits have been established, a project work plan should be created to specify exactly how the project will be carried out. This plan should make estimations of effort and time needed, mapping out work at least several weeks in advance to ensure that resources are properly allocated. At this stage, it is important that project team members and all stakeholders have a common understanding of how the project will be managed.

Useful Tips:

• Try to avoid creating tasks longer than sixteen hours in duration. The longer a task lasts, the harder it is to make accurate estimations. If you know that a task will run longer, split the task into several smaller tasks.
• Do not assign the same task to several people. When this happens, no one feels responsible for the task because they assume that someone else will take the lead. If you have multiple people working on the same task, split the task into parts and assign responsibilities accordingly.

Suggestion #3: Keep everyone in the loop

Consensus and cooperation are key contributors to project success, accomplished only by keeping all team members and stakeholders involved throughout the process. It is therefore important that everyone is given a say in the project. Differences in expectations and opinions, though frustrating, should be resolved before the project starts; putting resolution off only increases future problems.

If you are looking to cut costs, reduce duration, and dramatically improve project quality, make sure to:

1. Lay Down the Details
2. Be Prepared like a Boy Scout
3. Keep Everyone in the Loop

You’ve heard the saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Planning provides direction and foundation for a successful project – spend adequate time defining details, preparing procedures, and resolving differences, and you will be well on your way to conquering your own workplace Everests.