INTRODUCTION

   

In this chapter we talk about status reports , and I tell you how the Lazy Project Manager spends her week.

We are told that knowledge dispels fear. Amundsen and Scott provide conflicting examples of how to handle information dissemination within a project. Amundsen explained the objective and his plan to achieve it. The plan was explained, discussed and posted up in the mess for everyone to see. As we have seen, the plan enabled people to visualize progress and set a finite limit on what they would have to do each day.

Scott by comparison would remain unclear as to his plan until well into his journey to the Pole. Whatever plan he eventually evolved was not shared with anybody until the moment when people had to know. At the last moment he changed one of the cornerstones of the plan: the number of people who were to go to the Pole with him. Even his backup plan, such as it was, was hastily put together, and the result was that when he got into serious difficulty, whatever hope he had of rescue was ruined by the poorly laid and confused plans he had given to his subordinates .

What I am saying here is that people are thinking creatures . Everyone has inputs to give, everyone has elements of creativity and everyone feels more self-worth if they know what's going on. People will operate at their best if they know what the big picture is and how their component, no matter how trivial, fits into it. One assumes this is particularly true in a military situation if you are asking people to make extraordinary and sometimes final sacrifices for you.

So Step 8 is Tell people what's going on. Having said this I will now proceed to contradict it. There is the concept of the leader acting as a filter. Think of it as a fort with the project team inside and the leader acting as a sentry on the gate. The world outside is in a constant state of change. During the life of the project, some of these changes will have implications for the project and the team. The leader needs to determine how much of this change to let through to the team.

Some change has to be let through. Some is healthy and, as I have already said, the team will feel more self-esteem for knowing that they are being treated as intelligent people. However, there will be changes that might, or definitely would, cause a major problem in the progress of the project if the team got wind of them. These changes you must either:

  • block

  • or failing that, censor so that their threat is reduced

  • or finally failing that, relay to the team in such a way as to minimize the effect on them

and you have to do all of this without hiding true realities from them. A tall order? You bet! The foregoing is equally true of outgoing information. There will be ups and downs on a project, and the outside world needs to be apprised of progress. But there may be things which occur on the project that you must:

  • stop from going outside

  • or failing that, water down so that when they get outside, their true effect is reduced

  • or failing that, transmit so as to minimize the effect on the outside world

and all of this without hiding true realities. All of this is a very tall order. What this book does is to try to give you an armful of methods and ideas that you can apply in just such circumstances. In Chapter 15, there are a whole bunch of ideas that you can use. In any particular situation you will be able to apply more than one of them with differing results. It will be up to you to pick the one that suits you and the situation best.

The analogy is with a carpenter 's toolbox. Pretty much anything in it “ a hammer , the handle of a screwdriver, the flat side of a plane “ will drive a nail into a piece of wood, but some of the tools are better suited than others. So too with the tools in this book. Several will achieve the effect. It will be up to you to judge which effect is best for you.

   


How To Run Successful Projects III. The Silver Bullet
How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0201748061
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 176

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