Project Communication Series: The Project Status Report

I’d like to go through a communication series and cover every aspect of what’s involved for effective communication on the project with the team and the customer.  Requirements may be the lifeblood of the project, but communication is the beating heart and without proper, effective, and efficient communication no project can succeed.  And that all starts with the project manager.

In the first segment, we’ll start looking at the project status report.  Because it is something that is produced weekly, contains up to date status, and drives the weekly status call with the team and customer (at least in my methodology it does!), it is one of the most critical pieces to your project management puzzle.  Skipping it or slacking on its information is really not an option.

If you share my belief that the project status report should drive the weekly status call, then all relevant project status information should be included.  In fact, look at the status report as something that you – the project manager – could produce and give to just about anyone and they could then drive the project status meeting.  This serves two purposes:

• It allows you to miss a meeting if you have an emergency or another project needs your attention
• It gives you something that you can hand to your senior leadership at any given time and say “here is the current status (within days) of ‘x’ project”

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Five Signs You’re Not Cut Out to be a Project Management Consultant

Consulting, in general, is not for everyone.  Likewise, consulting it the field of projectmanagement is not something everyone is ready to handle.  Even if you’re a 15-year veteran of project management, that doesn’t mean you have the tools, the stability, and the make-up to go out on a limb as a consultant in your given field.

We all know that project managers have a few skills and characteristics that they must have to some degree to be successful:

• Leadership
• Communication
• Organization
• Confidence, etc.

The list can go on for quite awhile.  Those are still necessary for the project management consultant, but let’s look at five key signs which can point to individual characteristics that should be present to help enable you to be a successful consulting project manager.  If you don’t have them, it’s probably not a field that you should be in.

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Project Financial Management: Budgeting

Most projects have a budget, so learning how to handle money on projects is a really important skill for project managers.

Project financial management is even more important now, as we work in a climate of increased financial awareness, given the recent economic crisis.  Gone are the days – if your organisation ever had them – when companies had money to spend on whatever the company felt like.  Now, with increased competitive pressure and a general tightening of the belt all round, as project, programme and portfolio managers we have to be really careful that we are spending money on the right projects, and that we are budgeting carefully when that money is allocated to us.

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March Survey – Remote Project Management

If you’ve been reading my articles for any length of time you’ll know that I’m somewhat passionate about remote project management and green or sustainable project management practices.  And I believe that one supports the other.

For my March survey – or at least March survey #1 (there may be more) – I’d like to get an indication on where our readership stands on remote project management.  How many of you out there are independent or involved in an organization that supports the management of projects in a primarily remote situation.

And for those of you who are, or have been, involved in the remote management of projects, I’d like to hear what you liked best or least about them.  The capabilities of my website right now still limit my surveying options, but I’ve put up what I think are common pluses and minuses with remote or virtual project management in a team environment.

Please take the survey – it’s completely anonymous and it’s brief … only five questions.  But I think the results could be very interesting.  I’ll close this survey down in 10-15 days and then do a follow-up article on PM Tips analyzing the results.

Please go to this address to complete the survey…

http://www.bradegeland.com/march-survey.html

If any of you survey takers have feedback or something you’d like to add after taking the survey, please feel free to comment on this article or email me at Brad.Egeland@pmtips.net.

Thank you in advance for taking this survey.  Your participation is greatly appreciated by me and everyone at PM Tips and Seavus – the creators of Project Planner and Project Viewer.

Do You Trust Your Organization’s Leadership?

This may seem like a simple question, but the answer is bigger than we think it is.  We’ve all grown somewhat immune to the mocking of those in charge – you see the President of the United States mocked on Saturday Night Live all the time.  But really, what about the leadership of your company?  Do you have confidence in them?  Do you think they have your back?  Do you feel like they’re leading you, your co-workers … even your customers in the right direction?

I think the answer for many of us is often ‘no.’  And that’s sad.  Why is that … why do we feel this way?

Let me look – generically – at situations I’ve both encountered personally at organizations I’ve worked with and for, as well as situations I’ve seen at customers and clients I’ve worked with.  I’ll try to not be too specific so you can’t tie a situation back to one of my past employers – but you know who you are!

Examples of leadership failure

One Fortune 500 organization did very little support their PMO.  I was around long enough to see it created, witness it flounder and fail, see it disassembled, and then see it re-assembled.  And through all of this, there were other organizations within the company who were acting in renegade mode leading projects – and getting support from executive leadership to do so (crazy!) – while the actual PMO struggled and disintegrated.  Rarely have I personally witnessed such an extreme waste of time, effort, good people and good money.

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