Project Management Scratchpad

Engaging the Team: Project Management Kickoff Meetings

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

How do you use a project management kickoff meeting to ensure your team effectively communicates during your project? Michael Sisco wrote that this is the single best occasion to give common goals to the team and to motivate them.

When I think back to all the meetings I sat through at previous companies, mostly I remember how useless many of them seemed. It made me think about what all those facilitators could have done to better engage us for the duration of the work ahead. A great kickoff meeting is simply a start to making this happen, but it is very important to set the right tone of this meeting and to cover as much of the “big” stuff as quickly but clearly as possible.

The more I learn about project management, the more I realize how important two things are – planning and documentation. Sisco recommends using a clear-cut agenda, and I would advise that you have it distributed before the meeting (but not more than a day or two so that it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle). Let everyone know that if they have something to add it will be addressed at your next meeting.

The length of the meeting depends on the magnitude of the project. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• If the team is newly put together, doesn’t know each other well, or if there are several new members to an existing team, explain everyone’s roles. If there is a high level of distrust, work on it now before it blows up in your face mid-project. Also identify stakeholders and brief the team on any necessary information regarding the stakeholders.
• If this is a new team, or there are several new faces, it's also a good idea to discuss your change request policies, and if you don’t use a change control board, explain what methods will be used to avoid deviating from these policies down the line.
• Review significant expectations, and let everyone know there will be time to discuss these in greater depth when the need arises so that you don’t slow down the meeting pace.

A well-run kickoff meeting doesn't guarantee the ultimate success of a project, of course, but it certainly gives the team a push in the right direction.

Delivering Project Plans to Your Team

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

Recently one of our salespeople was talking to project managers on the trade show floor at a conference and discovered that many of them still print their project plans to pdf documents and distribute to their team and stakeholders.

If you prefer to use a program like Excel, it's important to note that this is not helpful for delivering project plans over the long term any more than printing to a pdf. What if the team members need to add information to your project plan? This is not at all feasible for them. This reminds us that Steelray Project Viewer  saves project managers time and prevents the hassle of trying to print plans to a pdf or strictly using Excel.

It would be simpler and faster to send an e-mail to your team, telling them where the mpp file is located so they can see it. The team can open it with our Microsoft Project viewer, and there will be no problem trying to get it to print correctly to a pdf or making sure everything exports to Excel perfectly. It is almost the same as if you had created it in Microsoft Project.

What are some of the other ways that our Viewer can help?

• There is no need to update to a third-party server - instead, store it on your server, and there is no need to create a new pdf.
• A pdf gives you one view - our Viewer gives you a sight-line to overdue tasks, incomplete, and tasks beginning this week, as well as tasks assigned to a person and more.
• Filter and navigate your view. Drill down to all parts of critical project information.
• A pdf file limits your zoom levels because you only have two options - bigger or smaller. Our Viewer allows multiple zoom levels with different timescales.
• The Viewer is also a navigator - it allows you to search in the same way you would use a search engine on the web.
• A team member can send a status update to the project manager's email inbox.
• If you like using Excel and feel comfortable with it, you can use one of our Excel templates that's included with our Viewer. You can also export tasks to Excel, as well as html.

What holds you back from using a better tool? Could it be that there are many products that cost a great deal of money out there, each vying for your attention and budget? Some companies charge a monthly fee, which actually costs you much more than the cost of our viewer.

We love to hear your feedback, so keep it coming! We’ve enjoyed our conversations with you on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Why That Urge to Scream is Totally Valid

By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

People who know me well would consider me prominently a dominant person with a huge dash of an influencer thrown in for good measure. My child certainly considers me a dominant, as he is raised in a one-parent household. Someone has to be “the boss” of things and despite the terrible two’s, it isn’t him. When I pick him up from pre-school and see another child commit some form of misbehavior, I admonish him or her just like I would my own. That’s only partly a carry-over from my own days of teaching pre-school. I tend to treat adults I know well the same way. They’re so used to it they no longer complain.

It’s hard to keep that from seeping over into my professional life, where I am an influencer rather than a dominant team member. If you are social by nature, you are likely an influencer. You might think that an influencer is not something you’d want in one of your team members after you keep reading. You would be wrong, and I’ll get into that momentarily. So I wonder: if your team is comprised of all different types of people and it doesn’t gel, what is the real problem?

Picture it. You attend a meeting and in the midst of it, a colleague mentions a project you are jointly working on and gets a fairly crucial fact wrong. You correct him (nicely, you think) and the meeting continues. Ten minutes after it breaks, you’re at your desk when you receive an emotionally-charged e-mail from him, accusing you of trying to discredit him in front of the entire staff. You are completely taken aback, but this is someone who, at times, fires off epistles at others (including you) that seem out of left field. It takes days to get to the bottom of them and nine times out of ten the colleague misunderstood what was said or done and apologizes. You like him as a person, so you always let it slide. But lately, you are getting more and more tired of dealing with it. Maybe you ask to have someone else work with you on these projects, someone you get along with better who creates less “drama.”

You think that by keeping your mouth shut (even though you feel you have a genuine issue with this person that needs to be addressed) and “playing nice” that you’re doing the “right thing.” I was taught that no matter how angry you are, no matter how badly your feelings are hurt, you just tamp down that anger and frustration and let it go because it’s the “nice” thing to do. No wonder I have always failed so miserably at that – vindication at last! That is the direct opposite of what you should do.

There are several different types of people on your team - those who are domineering (no doubt who they are!) and influential (the life of the party - just about everyone likes them) and then there are those quieter people who are dependable or good at following and administering compliance.As an influencer at work, I dial down my dominance, afraid of offending people if I come across as abrasive or too harsh. So some of your team members have more than one trait here, but one is always apparent more so than any other.

Each person sees himself or herself one way under stress (which is pretty much all the time as both moderate – a normal work day – and extreme stress come with the territory) and everyone else sees that person in a different way.

For example, even under moderate or extreme stress, I see myself as enthusiastic, charming, persuasive, outgoing, inspiring and optimistic. I sound great, but these things aren’t always so good in the eyes of those around me, who might see me as self-promoting, overly optimistic, glib and unrealistic. Meaning, I don’t always take things seriously enough; I don’t always listen well to what’s important to others and my ideas or suggestions or goals seem impossible at times. Huh? How can others see me this way when I’m so wonderful? Because I see them differently from how they see themselves too. When you add that up, there is a big fat disconnect.

Wait a minute, you say, on my team there is only one person who sometimes causes trouble. Everyone else gets along fine. Are you sure? What about those people who never venture much at meetings because they're so busy formulating thoughts or ideas that by the time they’ve finally picked one, the meeting has been over for three days? Everyone knows how “nice” and “dependable” they are. As it turns out, their second-guessing ways have got to go because their idea could have made your company a lot of money or they could have come up with a great way to save a project but you’ll never know. You can bet that they have some resentment towards themselves and the team fostered in there somewhere.

What about that employee who always seems so sensitive to any criticism you put forward, no matter how slight and kindly put? She may seem like a real team player most of the time, but every now and then she fires off those emotionally-charged e-mails that riles everyone up. Nobody can figure it out. Maybe nobody says anything to you, but you can bet they’re talking to each other and they don’t like it.

The very things that my friends love about me – my ability to deeply feel and articulate their emotions (because I am so emotional), my introspection of the past (making it difficult, sometimes, to catch up to the future and present), my knee-jerk extreme loyalty (rather than giving the other person a chance at an explanation that could be totally rational and valid) – are the very things that can cause problems for me at work.

The point is that because your teams are made up of different types of people who see themselves one way while others see them in entirely different (and sometimes negative) ways, the problem is likely not so much who you have on your team but how they all interact.

And that can be changed.