Preface
At the center of the role played by today's organizations, the project is dramatically increasing. There are various possibilities, such as new product development, marketing campaign, technology introduction, process improvement, but the project is a successful result.
Most of us can point out examples of project success and project failure. There are topics such as the Apollo Space Plan and Chrysler Automotive Turn-around in many famous examples of the success of the project. A more recent success story is the rescue of Chile miners. However, there are multiple failures in all the success stories. In many current projects, time and cost overruns will occur, but only a small portion of the target goal will be offered.
At the center of almost all projects, there are teams who are responsible for completing the project and bringing value to the organization. An effective team will provide high quality, value-added projects. Teams with ineffectiveness will provide ordinary projects at best and not provide the worst projects.
How can we improve the performance of the project team within the organization? How can you make your project team list projects as success rather than just one of the statistics to maintain or improve the quality of the product more quickly and deliverable? The purpose of this article is to consider 10 ways to bring both short-term and long-term results, which should make you think of other ways effective in your own organization.
# 1: All participating in the project planning process
When planning your project, please make the entire team fall into various angles. In order to achieve the goals of the project, ask what kind of work you need to complete. Ask how long they will guess the work to be taken. Please tell me what kind of problems are likely to occur and how to plan the problem. why? When your team enters a project plan, it starts to feel ownership and responsibility of the tasks and deliverables in charge.
David is a team member of a new marketing project responsible for creating ad copy. He has not been told in the project plan, but he talked about the duties he needs to achieve and how much time it will take. David does not feel ownership of the plan and does not feel responsible for completing the task within the allotted time. In fact, he feels a bit indignant in troubles. When the push is pushed and the project is delayed and it falls into wire, David does not do extra effort by working over time.
In contrast, Susan is a team member of software implementation project. She has been involved since the beginning and offers various tasks and related estimates that need to be achieved. Susan is excited about the project, feeling it as a member of the team, and looking forward to the donation. When the project is on the train, Susan will stay late and will work harder and promise to complete the work in a time and quality way. why? Because they are her job. She sat on the meeting and promised to the crew, she obliged the delivery.
A related proposal is to use a brainstorming session. During the planning and execution of the project many times a question, problem, or issue has occurred and must be resolved. For example, we need to develop product solutions to meet specific needs. Sometimes a brainstorming session may be a suitable and effective way to present a solution.
In the brainstorming session, even if not all members of the project team, several members gather and brainstorm the ideas of possible solutions. Certainly, many "crazy" ideas are thrown away and that is okay. The goal is to identify the best idea and evaluate it as a group to determine the best solution taking into account the current constraints of the team.
# 2: Easy status update
The main task of the team members is to complete the project deliverables in a high quality way. However, some of their duties also convey the situation of their work. This is very important as we need to make decisions based on the current situation of the project. Can we add resources to tasks that are backwards? Since the original vendor is behind schedule, can you get a supplier from another vendor? What should be communicated to customers in the organization? Unless you have a good project position you can not ask such important questions as these. The current status of the project is as good as the status provided by each individual.
The quality of team member status updates is often related to the ease of offering and what is done after being offered. If team members take time every week to provide status, it will not be completed or it will not be working. If it is a complex process, you simply do not want to do it. As a result, you will definitely not be sure at any point when your project is up. These mushrooms will be ineffective or missing decisions, inadequately implemented projects, ineffective teams.
First, we will make status updates easier. We will decide the necessary information for project decision making. Sacrifice quantity for quality. You can collect a large amount of information from team members, but most of them can not be used or needed. Please do not collect information that is not necessarily required. Collect only necessary information.
Once you decide what you need, decide on the appropriate format to collect it. The format must be quick, simple, and intuitive. Please get your opinion from your team member.
Second, as mentioned above, the quality of the status update is also related to what was done with the information. If a team member feels "beaten" more than any type of "bad" information, it becomes a link to give it. Confirm that the information is used constructively and that "bad" information and "good" information are freely given.
In summary, we determine the necessary information, a good, simple form for receiving it, and use it appropriately.
# 3: Holding a regular meeting
Your first reaction can be very negative, as all of us have experienced irrelevant meetings and plans were wrong. Nonetheless, successful meetings are valuable tools in team performance.
Rudolf Giuliani (former New York City mayor) went with the top staff every day morning meeting. He also continued this through the disaster of 11th September 2001. By doing this, everyone discussed what was happening, raised a question, learned what everyone else was doing, and most importantly, provided a forum that gives direct access to decision makers.
You may not want to hold daily meetings, but you can also benefit from regular project team meetings following the guidelines below.
- Shorten your meeting . Please do not drag your meeting past the allotted time. Otherwise team members will grow up and look down and the effect will be lost.
- Confirm that an appropriate decision maker is present at the meeting . Knowledge of being able to make decisions at meetings and being done will greatly increase their effectiveness. Team members attend and confirm that questions and questions are prepared. Teams will be more effective because they can make decisions and acts, rather than being late for making the appropriate decision makers into the room, as they are making decisions.
- There is a clear agenda . Do not join the meeting without at least a basic plan for what you want to cover. Please have a concrete agenda with specific goals you are going to achieve and stick to it. Where possible, deal with side topics later outside the meeting.
# 4: Together your team outside the office
A good relationship that develops within the project team will promote efficiency and productivity that can not be created in other cases. Team members who communicate well with each other, respect each other, and resemble each other work better, improving overall performance.
One of the best ways to improve team membership is to collect team members outside the office environment. Go out regularly and do something fun. Let's go for lunch. Please do field trips to other organizations working on similar projects. I go to a baseball game. Creative. This one very simple step will be a way to improve the performance of your team.
# 5: Celebrate performance
In today's hasty pace, results are often not noticed without noticing. We focus on failure, but we rarely succeed. It is important that you find something to celebration. Celebrate a series of tasks to be completed in time or early. Celebrate the completion of the project. Celebrate big things as well as small things. This will motivate team members to achieve more goals and make the project environment generally enjoyable. Performance of individuals and teams is often related to their attitudes. Celebrating outcomes is most useful for improving your attitude.
How do you celebrate achievements? There are various ways from large gatherings and parties to very small acknowledgments. You do not always need to celebrate in a magnificent way. Sometimes a small acknowledgment means more: personal recognition at the meeting, handwritten notes, crafted "awards". If your team member knows that you appreciate your contribution and you really admit it, they will attract performance and will continue to improve performance.
Finally, let's celebrate each milestone. These do not need to be related to the project, but it may be a birthday, company anniversary, promotion, etc. This simply creates a fun project environment that team members enjoy.
# 6: Dealing with failures
The same thing as praising performance is to deal with your team's failure straight ahead. It goes without saying that this is a difficult task. Every project team experiences success as well as success. Separating very effective teams from ineffective teams is not often how to cope with success, but how to deal with failures.
If failures are not properly handled, they become "elephants" behind the team and load them in all future projects. Nobody wants to talk about it, but everyone can feel "clouds" hanging on the project. It is important for the team to sit down and talk about what happened. Just simply dissatisfied, you can go far to move forward. But be careful. This should never be a personal accusation or injury. It is professionally and carefully tied, focusing on the way of improvement, so that everyone understands that exceptions to this rule are not simply permitted.
Sometimes it is useful to leave the project team "project settings" in a short time. Please go off-site. Please tell me what happened. It was a good thing what the team did. What did the team do better? Let's make it positive, but I will not be afraid to tell you what went right.
Once you have completed this process, make the appropriate changes. Learn from mistakes. The next project is not perfect, but there are always better things. Implement some of the lessons learned.
In short, it handles failures directly, makes changes, does not advance and does not process the past.
# 7: urge team input
Team members can often come up with the best ideas to improve team productivity and ultimate success. Creative about how to ask for their input. Please take a few minutes to make a meeting and make ideas and suggestions. Please open to them. Please encourage team members to periodically provide input in various formats. Please open the input and deal with the appropriate one.
Team members not only provide truly productive ideas (but also provide non-productive ideas), and if you have some input on how to run the project you will feel the ownership and responsibility of the project.
# 8: Empower's decision maker
It is common that there is no mistake in the project team without a decision maker. The team must make decisions by the committee, which is often a cumbersome and time consuming process. Identify who the decision maker is, clarify on the team who the decision maker is, and stick to it. In many cases you should be asked to enter team members, but there must be one person making decisions.
Please be aware that there may be multiple decision makers. There may be decision makers in various specialized fields such as product development, testing, engineering, marketing. In addition, project managers may be able to become the ultimate decision maker of the project as a whole outside of the business problems that need to be decided by management.
This is directly related to holding regular meetings. Your decision makers need to participate in the conference, make your meetings effective, and provide a forum for team input and quick decision-making.
# 9: Give them the necessary tools
One common complaint of team members is that they do not have the right tool to do their job. This includes two areas: job-specific tools (test platform, good computer, appropriate software for graphics designers) and tools for managing projects.
Job specific tools are self explanatory. If your team members need something to do their job, they will not be more irritable than not having it. Please get it for them. I understand the constraints of the budget under the organization, but I can find a way to win. Borrow from another department for a while, please find a way to ask your team to ask what you need to ask or succeed. This will not only help them improve their work better but will show them that you will bat for them.
Talking about the tools that are actually used to manage projects is a little absurd. Team members are irritated when you have to spend time using tools to manage the project itself. How much time do you spend as you track spread of project information using spreadsheets? It is unnecessarily necessary to embark on a spectacular exploration for finding and implementing a large project management software system. There is a simpler tool and you can also use a better process to supplement existing in-house tools. Please follow the following basic principles.
- We provide a tool that only requests information you actually use (related to the previous point).
- Easy access to the tool.
- Make it easy to access information (you do not have to look for the right information).
- It does not take time (do not spend time updating the status every week).
- Please do not make it difficult or too complicated to use the tool for the work at hand.
The other side of this is that team members do not want to use tools, but stay on their own cocoon without using anything. Still you need to provide the appropriate tools, there are no mistakes in using them. However, please confirm that you comply with the above principal.
# 10: Organize problems management and change methods
Changes are given in almost every project, and that is a good thing. All you need is to implement a system to manage it. Unmanaged changes can very quickly remove improvements in performance and motivation made by the team. The reason is simple. If your team members are working hard, are well planned, have encountered unexpected changes, have to work for a long time, and can jeopardize the success of the project, the team's motivation and Performance declines in a hurry.
That is not to say that we should not allow changes. Resources, environments, and business needs all change, and we need to respond flexibly to meet changing needs and requirements. However, we need to do it in a way that does not endanger the performance of the team.
The system for managing changes need not be complicated. In fact, it is very easy. However, at least the following simple rules should be followed:
- All changes are made in the same process.
- Your team members need to enter changes. They may not have the authority to approve or reject the change, but you can indicate the time and effort required and what the result is (ie, if the other delays are delayed, I will finish later).
- Please do not tackle any changes until it is approved.
- Clearly identify who has the authority to approve changes.
- Make sure you have the organizational value to introduce the change.
As with changes, the problem will be displayed in all projects. We also need a system to manage them. This is as simple as the spreadsheet where the problem is mentioned, when it is displayed, who is responsible and what actions are taken to deal with it. Your regular meeting is the best place to raise questions and you should allow time to pose problems in effect. The problem management system does not need to be complex, but needs to be present, and someone (usually the project manager) should be responsible for adjusting them. This prevents problems from being lost or forgotten (which will unwittingly come back to attack you at the most inconvenient times), affecting the overall performance of the project and the project team I will not.
Conclusion
Improving the performance of the project team can be a very long and detailed conversation covering various knowledge areas such as psychology, organizational behavior, business, team dynamics etc. However, there are easy and simple basic methods that can bring visible short-term outcomes, improve the project team's performance, and promote the success of the project.
Let's see your organization and project. Please think of other similar ideas that will be productive in your organization. Please select some methods that seem to have the most influence from the methods listed here, and focus on them.
Although project management is not easy, implementing consistency, flexibility, and basic project management practices can make more success in your project.
