Expanding Team Member Capabilities

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The people on each project team have unique skills and strengths. To increase the effectiveness of your teams, look for opportunities to leverage and expand those attributes. Here are four approaches for expanding team member capabilities.  

  • Identify and leverage team member strengths. Take time to identify your team members’ strengths and weaknesses. Ask them questions to uncover their individual talents and preferences. Use what you learn to assign tasks that are best suited to their skill set. Also, look for opportunities to expand their experiences. Assignments that increase skills generate enthusiasm and loyalty, which can help you achieve better project results . 
  • Create a learning culture. Establish a culture of learning and continuous improvement. Set up opportunities to learn from you (the PM) and from other team members, such as lunch and learns, or cross-training sessions. Set up sessions where team members present their work and share their expertise. This can expand knowledge and perspectives throughout your project team. In addition, it will increase your team flexibility if a team member will be absent. When practical, support your team members when they try new approaches or work out of their comfort zone. You’ll improve team dynamics and project outcomes. 
  • Facilitate candid and courageous risk-based communication. Encourage team members to share their experiences, even when challenging the status quo. Every team member’s experience is valid. To reduce risk, use their collected pool of experience to determine the best direction . Make sure that stakeholders who are risk-averse don’t discourage team members from voicing their concerns. You will reinforce the value you place on team experience and enhance their sense of project ownership.
  • Focus on formal professional development. A learning-focused project environment creates significant professional development opportunities. You can go further by supporting team members in their pursuit of formal training and certifications. That way, they can increase their skills and stay up to date with industry trends. In turn, this helps you deliver better outcomes.  

Whether you are a project manager or team member, what are your preferred approaches for expanding capability? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about team building, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Foundations: Teams course.

Coming Up

On May 18th 4PM MT, I will be joining Christina Charenkova to talk about how Project Managers and Change Managers collaborate on things like scope, communication, and stakeholder management. We’ll discuss how to leverage and clarify roles and plans, avoid pitfalls, and collaborate better for awesome outcomes! Sign up here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7056412593510363136

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 35,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Reduce Risk by Managing Project Assumptions

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Reduce Risk by Managing Project Assumptions

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Assumptions are an important and necessary part of launching a project — and you continue to evaluate them as your project progresses. Managing assumptions appropriately helps you reduce project risk. Here are four recommendations for handling project assumptions.

  • Determine when you can validate assumptions. Build a plan for how and when you can validate your assumptions. The earlier you can validate an assumption, the less risk it poses for the project. You can usually validate funding availability and internal staffing data early, because they require discussions within the company. Vendors’ staff availability should also be available early, but keep in mind how much experience you need. More experienced staff may not be available in the short term. Sometimes, validating assumptions takes longer. For example, waiting for a software release so you can confirm its capabilities. 
  • Identify the data you might need from stakeholders. Provide stakeholders with details about data you need to validate your assumptions and request it from them in writing as soon as possible. Don’t be surprised if you get incomplete data. Work with your sponsor to define the minimum amount of information you need to validate an assumption. If the data you require isn’t available, you need to manage that unvalidated assumption as a risk.
  • Plan your actions if an assumption is proved false. Investigate alternatives if an assumption is incorrect. At times, you might be able to take a different approach to complete your project. For example, create a more people-intensive process versus using automation that won’t be available on time. In other cases, an invalid assumption may mean cancelling or postponing the project is the best course. Discuss these possibilities with the sponsor in advance.
  • Plan around assumption validation events. You will validate assumptions such as government approvals or legislation being passed at specific times during your project. Treat these as significant milestones. Schedule meetings to confirm your plans going forward, such as modifying or cancelling the project. Communicate those potential outcomes and plans going forward with your key stakeholders. 

How do you manage project assumptions? Have you experienced any challenges not mentioned here? Have questions? Share with us in the comment section.

For more about project assumptions, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 33,000 subscribers. If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Keys to Successful Integration Projects

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Photo by Chris Hardy on Unsplash

 

The world gets more complex and intertwined, which creates more projects involving complex integrations. What is an integration? It’s when separate systems or components are brought together to build a seamless solution. For example, building a satellite means integrating a propulsion system, navigation component, scientific instruments for research, communication components, and others. Here are crucial keys to managing an integration project successfully.

  • Approach the project in four phases: Define-Decompose-Build-Recompose.
  1. Define the entire integrated solution in detail. 
  2. Decompose that solution into pieces that separate expert teams can work on. 
  3. Build the solution, where the expert teams construct those pieces (systems or components).
  4. Recompose the components or pieces into a solution. 

Less experienced project managers might try to shortcut these steps. For example, they don’t decompose the solution fully and overlook an integration element. Let’s take our satellite example. Say the communication component is combined with the scientific instruments. That could lead to overlooking the integration between the communication system and the propulsion system (so people on the ground can reposition the satellite).

  • The best management flow is Centralize – Decentralize – Recentralize. Experienced integration project managers understand that success means giving up some control.
  •  As the total solution is defined, management is centralized and controlled by the project manager. 
  • When the product is decomposed and the expert teams are working on their components, management is decentralized. The project    manager releases control. Teams still report status and risk status to the project manager. But the teams work under their own management, exercising their specialized expertise. 
  • When components are integrated (recomposed), control is re-centralized. This affirms the accuracy of integrations. It also resolves any discrepancies between the expert teams. 

You can hamper the build effort and increase time and cost if you try to exercise too much control while components are under construction.

  • Understand the start-and-stop points of each component. The project phases and management flow depend on one critical element: the clear definition of components. It’s crucial to know where each team’s responsibilities begin and end, and where the technical component integration points lie. Using our satellite example, the scientific experiments include a communication element to share the output from the research performed. The overall communication module shares those research results and other data with staff on the ground. So you need to define in detail where the communication role of the scientific experiment modules end and where the primary communication module takes over. 

Integration projects amplify the risk of errors occurring, particularly when the expert teams are not co-located. Risks expand further when multiple unrelated vendors need to come together to integrate an overall solution. Carefully define your components and integration parameters!

  • Ownership of testing needs to be defined specifically. Don’t try to ask two teams to build their individual components and be responsible to “test the integration.” That usually ends badly. Project managers need to decide who specifically will take the lead on testing each integration in the solution. Often, an independent test owner works best. This person isn’t a member of either team with integrated products. With an independent test owner, you reduce the occurrence of pre-conceived ideas about how the integration should work. Also, the independent test owner will evaluate results more objectively. 
  • Add a lot of time and money to manage integration risks. This is the most under-estimated aspect of any project. Be conservative when estimating the cost of testing and completing integrations. Add at least 50% (yes, 50%) of the cost of building the separate products that will be integrated — to accommodate testing and correcting integration. Lots of unexpected things can happen. Errors often take a lot of time and effort to resolve. It’s better to surprise stakeholders with a less costly integration event than to explain why you need more time and money to make something work. 

Have any good stories about integration projects to brag about? How about horror stories that we can all learn from? Share with us in the comment section.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 34,000 subscribers. If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the 

LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Negotiating Project Deadlines

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Photo by The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

Have you ever had to negotiate a project deadline with your project sponsor? It’s daunting, but being prepared makes the interaction easier. Here are my top four tips for preparing to negotiate a project deadline.

  • Identify what’s driving the deadline. Ask questions about desired deadlines and what drives those dates. It could be a legal mandate, a desire to beat a competitor to the market, or pressure from the Board of Directors. By understanding the deadline pressures, you can address those considerations head-on. Adjusting the scope or bringing in experts might help you meet a mandatory deadline.
  • Research your project. To negotiate effectively, you need to know as much as you can about the project, particularly the project timeline, staffing challenges, scope, and potential risks. Don’t discuss deadlines until you complete that homework, so your discussion can be more informed and meaningful. If your negotiation identifies other items or risks, ask for time to research them.

Giving a timeframe without doing research is irresponsible. It would be like your car mechanic telling you what’s wrong with your car and quoting $1200 without looking at it. You probably wouldn’t trust that estimate! So, look under the hood before you agree to an estimate and project deadline.

  • It’s the sponsor’s project! Negotiation should be about sharing information and coming up with the best outcome. The result could be an aggressive project deadline. Remember, it isn’t the project manager’s job to prevent the sponsor from taking risks. Your job is to make sure the sponsor understands the risks they’re taking and the associated impacts. Try proposing alternative solutions that could make the deadline more achievable. This can include staffing, scope reduction, or delivering the project in stages.
  • Document assumptions. Once you have agreed upon a deadline, be sure to capture any assumptions you’ve made, such as staffing levels from operational personnel. Often, operational staff members get pulled from a project into day-to-day business dealings, which impacts your project progress and puts the deadline at risk. Other assumptions could be the availability of certain technologies or vendors to assist with project deliverables. Ensure that your sponsor and key stakeholders understand these assumptions. Track progress against these assumptions and report when any deviation occurs. That way, you can react to make corrections to meet your deadline.  

Do you have other tips for negotiating deadlines? Have you come across obstacles with deadlines that you don’t know how to resolve. Add your comments and questions to the comments section.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 33,000 subscribers. If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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