#leadership #projectmanagement #projectmanagers #professionalgrowth
Just like with Leadership Project Management is a journey. Not only have the standards changed and adjusted to the demands of the current market, but also each project has new demands and unique requirements as well. But I think this is where the fun comes in. Your creativity is required for each project.
If you keep an open mind and a willingness to learn on your feet, you will have no problems adjusting to each project and the changing times. You will actually have fun learning more and more.
Have fun with it!
Things to consider for each project:
- Does this project need a waterfall approach, a hybrid approach or an Agile approach?
- What are the skill levels in your team for the chosen approach?
- Do you need training or a mentor?
- What documentation needs are there?
- Who are the stakeholders?
- What is their focus / their preferred reporting format? – You will need to prepare different reports for different people if you want to really bring the message across
- Look at each document that you usually prepare critically. Do you need it for this projects? What benefit will you gain.
- Have you identified each Stakeholder and their character, their role in the project, their communication preferences and their communication needs separately?
- What are your and your team members skills in engaging each stakeholder separately
Keep it lean
Project Management is about Leadership & People Management. Keeping your meetings, your documentation and your reports lean will free you up for Stakeholder Management.
So what does lean really mean in this environment? It means:
- Short documents – keep it at 1 page wherever possible
- Minimum of documents & artefacts
- Short meetings
- Fewer big team meetings, more individual One-on-one meetings
- Less time spend on documentation, more time available for engaging people
None of us is perfect and there is no one-fits-all solution. Hence, we will all need to keep learning and keep adjusting.
Get your Team’s Input
You do not need to come up with everything yourself. Get your team’s input and ideas. Ask for their feedback. You will be amazed at what they come up with. At the same time you will keep growing together as individuals and will learn from each other.
Every time you feel you have to do a project a certain way, because this is how you have done it before, please rethink. Ask your team, how they would like to approach it and discuss as a Team. Then agree on the solution.
Learning needs to be a livelong attitude. If you stop learning, your projects will be getting stuck and you will not meet the requirements. But the more you use a individualized approach they better your outcomes will be. In my eyes this individualized approach also makes it more interesting.