Communications during Project Management

Proactive communication: The project manager is the focal point and the conduit for all project related communications. Everyone in the project team, the business users and other stakeholders look up to him for directions. Hence, he should always be proactive in communicating to the team. He has access to most resources and holds all the strings. He can tell others what to do and what not to do and what to expect and what not to. He is the one who is expected to share the good news as well as the bad news and intimate the team on the risks and road blocks. He is the one who will rally the cause of the team with the sponsors and the business users. Hence, proactive communication is one of the efficient tools in his toolkit.

Planning in project management

I like to use a much clichéd quote while talking about Planning. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. A project manager must have a planned approach to the project. It doesn’t matter if a Microsoft Project is used or an excel sheet or any other tool. But planning is the key. A project manager must be able to check the pulse of the project at any point of time. But if he doesn’t know where the project should be at a certain point in time, he will be groping in the dark to figure out if the project is on track or not. If a project is not planned, then how would you know when you have to make mid course correction? If a project is not planned, how would you know how much value has been added to the project and how much is yet to be added? Moreover, planning is not a one time act. Once the initial planning is done, the project manager must keep checking the progress of the project against the planned so as to find out the deviations if any, make necessary adjustments and then proceed.

Excelling in project management

Each project is a different animal and poses its own set of challenges. So what does a project manager do to excel in project management? What are the key attributes which help a project manager across different projects?

Planning, Communicating and Executing are three important things which a project manager should do diligently to excel in his project. In subsequent blogs I will elaborate more on these.

Challenges for a project manager

The other day, a bunch of techies were discussing about their career path. Most of them wanted to go deeper and deeper into their chosen technology and attain nirvana. One among them had displayed a keen interest in moving to a project management role and all others were critical of his choice. Their main contention was that there is no challenge in a project manager’s role! All agreed that each project had the same set of challenges and once one had done project management for one project, all other projects were cakewalk. They had somehow figured out that all challenges in life lie in technology. Coding all through the night and feeling elated when a critical issue was resolved or a bug busted was all they thought of challenges and each project according to them offered newer technical challenges. However, project management, according to them, was bland!

Some people still prefer to live in their own cocoon. However, all said and done, there is spice in project management! Agreed that a project manager independently can not complete a release. He is the person who is always dependent upon his team members. But, a project manager is the person who is responsible for getting the work done. And whenever the job gets done, the project manager smiles to himself and is contented. The project manager is the facilitator among all the different project stakeholders. And each project has a different set of stakeholders. This calls for different types of people management in different project team. Similarly, the structure of the engagement, the deliverables, and the processes, the risks, each are different in different projects. There is a lot to learn from all of these. One the most important job of the project manager is to ensure productivity increase and this requires various innovative ideas to structure and execute projects. I have felt that, apart from managing the people and keeping them focused and motivated, this is one of the biggest challenges a project manager can have which changes from project to project.