PM Insights: Communication Concerns

Over the next few weeks here on the Project World blog we're going to be featuring some of the insights shared at the 2011 Your Space session at the ProjectWorld® & World Congress for Business Analysts® event.

A repeat favorite, Your Space offers PW&WCBA attendees a chance to debrief on topics covered, come up actionable plans for their return to the office and share in the collective knowledge and expertise of other PW&WCBA attendees and speakers


 This week's topic comes from Table 6: Communication—between all groups 

So many projects are delayed or break down altogether due to miscommunications. Why is this?

Our team at Table 6 identified some common causes of communication breakdown, including:
- Silos: Left hand is unaware of what the right hand is doing 
- Over use of acronyms and terminology 
- Overlooking a communication need
- Problems with information data source and usability

As well as some steps towards improving communication:
- At the start of your project, identify your communication timing and details (how much/when)
- Find the appropriate use of technology and human touch for your stakeholders
- Remember the cost of not getting it right the first time
- Lead by example:
         - Define goals and set communication strategy. Ownership- Buy In continuous communication
         - Customize delivery approach and audience (explain how and why)
         - Train your team and direct to info source. Provide responsible leadership on usability
         - Use accountability, agreements and commitment
         - Encouragement, websites, develop, sharepoints, generic, servers, guidelines, byu in, WITFM,
           Support stories
- Use a stakeholder roster, org charts, or a communication tree

What would you add? What are your best practices for communication?

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA and the voice behind the @Project_World twitter. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

PM Insights: Resource Management

Over the next few weeks here on the Project World blog we're going to be featuring some of the insights shared at the 2011 Your Space session at the ProjectWorld® & World Congress for Business Analysts® event.

A repeat favorite, Your Space offers PW&WCBA attendees a chance to debrief on topics covered, come up actionable plans for their return to the office and share in the collective knowledge and expertise of other PW&WCBA attendees and speakers

This week's topic comes from Table 4: Resource Management


As we discussed last week, there is often a conflict on project teams that occurs as a result of limited resources. In many cases, there is nothing to be done about these resource constraints, but conflict can be lessened or avoided entirely through good resource management.

Our attendees at Table 4 had a lot of questions when it came to achieving common disciplined resource management, such as:
- With 1000s of resources to manage, how do we stay effective and efficient with project resourcing?
- Vendor resources: how to have control over quality?
- How do we forecast resource demands at different phases of a project?
- How do we deal with resources being informally reserved for “pet” projects?
- What tools and processes are best for effectively managing assignments and notifying stakeholders?
- At what level of granularity should resources be measured?
- How to manage availability/contention for key resources?

It wasn't all unresolved questions, the team also came up with a number of ideas for addressing this issue such as: "Solution: use capacity management tools and best practices (Not a trivial task!)" and "Solution: Strong portfolio and pgm management best practices and tools," as well as managing vendor quality issues at the contract level, and using a PPMtool or Access database for notifications and managing assignments.

Still, there are some lingering issues here, how do you manage resources? What advice would you give? Let us know in the comments or contact me if you'd like to contribute a guest blog on this issue.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA and the voice behind the @Project_World twitter. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com

PM Insights: Managing the tension between projects and operations

Over the next few weeks here on the Project World blog we're going to be featuring some of the insights shared at the 2011 Your Space session at the ProjectWorld® & World Congress for Business Analysts® event.

A repeat favorite, Your Space offers PW&WCBA attendees a chance to debrief on topics covered, come up actionable plans for their return to the office and share in the collective knowledge and expertise of other PW&WCBA attendees and speakers


 This week's topic comes from Table 2: Managing the tension between projects and operations

• The attendees at table two identified a number of issues that can cause tension between project teams and operations. Those included:
• Resource constraints
• Team members assigned to support both operations and projects
• Poor communication between stakeholders and operations
• Disruptive stakeholders
• Operations staff not engaged in project team – no buy-in or ownership
• No funding for operations to support the project outcome (during and after the project)
• Operations resistance to prescribed solutions.

Ultimately these sources of tension boiled down to four root causes: Lack of Communication, Not involving right people at right time, Resource allocation, and Prioritization.

Our team at table two suggested that ultimately many issues came down to resources or funding, which can be a difficult (if not impossible) problem to solve. However, re-prioritization of resources or improved communication could lead to improvements in some areas.

How would you address these issues? Have you ever faced conflict between projects and operations?

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA and the voice behind the @Project_World twitter. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com