4 tips for Making the Most of Limited Office Time

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How to return to working in the office – or not – is hot news in 2021. The pandemic has proven that many people don’t have to work in the office all the time. However, collaboration is challenging when your project team has limited overlapping office time.  Here are tips to make the most of precious time when most of the team members are in the same place.

Prioritize face-to-face time. According to Steve Knight of The Be Human Project, “At our core, we humans are tribal. Constantly, our subconscious is bombarded with cues that identify who is us and them.” Video conferencing tools are better than phone calls or email. However, being in the same room leads to more meaningful conversations. Think about how often you’ve heard, “It’s great to finally meet you in person.” That’s because we desire connection that a screen doesn’t provide. Even if deadlines loom, schedule together time for your team and allow for chit-chat. It’s how individuals connect as a team.

Focus on creativity and collaboration. Rich solutions require unhampered idea generation. Sure, video conferencing has become sophisticated. Yet, it doesn’t allow for spontaneous side conversations and body-language that trigger the conversations that generate new ideas. Use your team together time to brainstorm solution ideas.

Address contentious topics. Speaking of body language, it’s critical to be supportive when teammates disagree. Virtual connection tools aren’t great for expressing your thoughts and intent. Plus, groupthink becomes more likely as people consciously or unconsciously eliminate contentious ideas. And groupthink introduces risk to the project. So, take advantage of face time to work through contentious topics.

Schedule office time purposely versus “every Monday” or “twice a month.” Resolving issues and generating ideas doesn’t come “every Monday.” Scheduled face time doesn’t leverage that time when it’s needed most. If possible, schedule time for your team to be together when it’s really needed and you’ll get fewer complaints about coming into the office.

For more about going back to the office, check out Jodi Smith’s course — Navigating New Professional and Social Norms When Offices Reopen.

Four Reasons to Consider Specializing as a Project Manager

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Should a project manager be able to manage any project in any industry? Yes, if industry experts are available to supplement the project manager’s skills and experience. Is that efficient? Do businesses want PMs without specific industry experience? Here are four reasons to consider specializing to promote your project management career. 

Vocabulary and regulations. Each industry has its own vocabulary, including slang, acronyms, and unique descriptions of regulatory items. If you have to learn the lingo, you take your time and effort away from the project team, making it difficult to build respect. By specializing, you understand the lingo and solidify your reputation as a knowledgeable industry insider. 

Keep up with trends. In almost every industry, equipment, vendor capabilities, techniques and available resources change quickly. Bottom line: it’s taxing to keep up with the changes in multiple industries. Specializing allows you to increase your value by introducing latest trends, rather than learning about them from your stakeholders. 

Develop foresight. Specializing in an industry or type of project builds experience that helps you anticipate issues and take advantage of successful approaches from prior projects. You can anticipate and understand project-related risks and how to address them. Keen foresight can positively impact all three elements of the triple constraint: time, scope and cost. Projects deliver more value when you add your industry skills to those of the project team.

Build a network and reputation. The best project managers don’t have to look for work – they are pursued by business sponsors because of the reputation they’ve developed. Working consistently in an industry enables effective networking with project team members, peers, and key stakeholders. Promoting yourself within a single industry is simpler and allows you to spend more time delivering your current project, with fewer worries about your next assignment or corporate position.

For more about building your project management career, check out the course Become a Project Management Entrepreneur, co-authored by Seyi Kukoyi and yours truly.

How to Inspire Accountability in Team Members

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As a project manager, you need to inspire accountability from people who report to other managers. It’s enormously challenging! Here are tips to get your team members to be accountable.

Collaborate to build and confirm understanding of your work breakdown structure (WBS). When you collaborate on the WBS, team members get a deeper perspective and understanding of how their work fits into the overall project. Ask people who understand each section of the WBS to explain it to the rest of the team. That way, everyone on the team understands how their work contributes to the project objectives. When a team works together to decide how to approach a project, the sense of ownership grows. And ownership builds accountability because nobody wants THEIR project to falter.

Make sure task relationships are understood. After you’ve built your project schedule from the WBS, ensure each team member understands and agrees to the pre-requisite tasks that need to be completed for them to complete their work. Equally important, make sure each team member understands the tasks they need to finish so other team members can complete their deliverables. Doing this reinforces the value their deliverables contribute and cultivates accountability amongst the team.

Acknowledge completed work. Good project managers acknowledge deliverables completed by their team members. Great project managers foster a sense of pride within their team members by acknowledging something specific about the work each team member delivers. This reinforces the sense of accountability which will manifest itself in future project work.

Provide formal recognition. Formally acknowledge the work of each team member by writing an email to their manager. This reinforces the contribution project work provides to the organization and the value their employee provided to generate business outcomes. The enthusiasm this act generates in the team member not only boosts accountability on future project work —  it can boost accountability to deliver projects for the entire organization.

For more about teams, check out Mike Figluolo’s course building High-Performance Teams.

Don’t Let Human Foibles Hurt Small Projects

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Small projects don’t always get the respect they deserve. Here are a few tips for keeping people’s peccadillos from derailing your small project: 

Consider team members’ personalities. Small projects have only a few people, so – um —  harsh personalities stand out. With small teams, you need people who work well together. Coax your team members into getting to know and understand one another, even if the project duration is short. Don’t forget about your own personality and that of your sponsor to minimize potential conflicts and leverage your team’s strengths.

Protect your team from excessively detailed reporting. Your sponsor may want detailed reporting even on a small project. Try to discourage this — if possible. On a small project, discuss status with team members and capture the information you need for status reports. Keep your sponsor in their comfort zone of status detail and your job will be much easier. 

Watch for competing priorities. Small projects don’t necessarily mean small amounts of work for the team. Others may be clueless about that and pressure your team members to take on other work. Emphasize the commitment needed to meet project timeframes with your folks’ managers. Small projects can yield big outcomes – make sure all stakeholders understand your project’s value.

Stay on top of change management. Even a small change can significantly affect business processes. To ensure you deliver the intended business value, don’t skip change management in your project. Make sure stakeholders understand, are comfortable with, and can use your project outputs to generate business value. 

For more about managing small projects, check out my Project Management Foundations: Schedules course.

5 Tips to Reduce Scheduling Tool Headaches

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Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Like a sharp knife for a chef, a scheduling tool is a must-have item for a project manager. Scheduling tools, like any technology, can help or hurt. Here are five tips for using your project scheduling tool with less drama. 

  1. Use a template or copy a successful plan. Although projects are unique endeavours, they are rarely totally different from past projects. Use a project template or copy and modify a schedule from a successful past project. You can save time, leverage the success of these schedules, and capture tasks you might otherwise overlook. 
  2. Keep task relationships simple. The straightforward finish-to-start task relationship works most of the time and it’s the easiest for people to understand. Use that simple relationship unless there is a pressing reason for start-to-start or finish-to-finish (or lag and lead time).
  3. Customize calendar and hours/day defaults. The calendar settings you use need to match your organization’s and team member’s work schedules or your schedule won’t be accurate. Don’t forget to add holidays and other non-working days like factory maintenance periods to your project calendar. Also, consider adjusting the default hours per day or other calendar settings to reflect the actual project work time. While an 8-hour workday is common, team members rarely work 8 hours on your project tasks. Team meetings, other project and operational work is often required. You might change the hours per day to 6 or even lower based on your environment. Or you can assign people at less than full time to their tasks. Talk to your team members about what’s realistic.
  4. Keep resource assignments simple. Managing and modifying resource assignments is a huge source of scheduling headaches. A best scheduling practice is to break down project work so tasks are shorter than your reporting periods and have one or two resources assigned. With tasks like these, it’s a lot easier to create resource assignments – and change them once work gets underway.
  5. Train people to use the scheduling tool. Scheduling tools help you produce easy-to-understand reports. Sometimes, people believe they can modify your schedules or produce project reports without any training. That is a recipe for inaccurate reporting, expectation management issues, and a project manager migraine! Make sure everyone who will use the scheduling tool to maintain the schedule and produce reports is properly trained.

For more about scheduling and Microsoft Project, check out my Project Management Foundations: Scheduling course and Microsoft Project Essential Training course.