Handling Interpersonal Relationships on the Project Team
Posted by Brad Egeland
Friction exists in almost any interaction between human beings. There may be misunderstandings, conflicts, personality clashes, or petty jealousies. Project managers must be prepared to deal with all of these. In fact, if you dislike having to deal with the behavioral problems that arise on project teams, you should ask yourself whether you really want to manage projects at all. It’s a given that this will be part of the project manager’s responsibilities, just as it really is with any management role. Like it or not, the behavioral problems come with the job, and failure to deal with them may sink a project.
Many personality clashes are the result of a lack of good interpersonal skills. People have never been taught how to sit down and work out differences with others, so when the inevitable conflict happens, it just blows up. The best way to minimize the impact of such problems is to provide training for all team members (including yourself) in interpersonal skills. This area has been sorely neglected in many organizations because there seems to be no bottom-line impact. It is hard to prove that there will be a $10 return on a $1 training investment.
Because of their inability to quantify the benefits, companies don’t do the training. Yet if they have capital resources that don’t work well, they will spend whatever is necessary to correct the problem. Interestingly, a company’s human resources are the only ones that are renewable almost indefinitely, but companies fail to take steps to keep them functioning effectively. As a project manager, you owe it to yourself to manage this aspect of the job.
Is PMP Helping Your Job Hunt?
Posted by Brad Egeland
Whether you’re employed right now, independently consulting, or unemployed, we’re all really looking for a job, right? No job is safe in this economy so if you’re employed you can’t afford to raise any flags for fear you could lose the job you have. But we’re all looking just in case. Or looking for our next gig. And even if you’re independent, you’d still probably take a W2 position – especially in this uncertain economy – if the right option presented itself to you, right?
So, here’s my question. For those of you who have the PMP certification after your name… are you finding that it is helping your job hunt? I actually had one recent comment to one of my articles from a reader who stated that the PMP designation actually hurt his job hunt. He started getting interviews based solely on the PMP certification (insert my comment here about lazy HR reps) only to have the interview end early when they found out that he had very little experience. Sometimes that hadn’t even bothered to check out his actual PM experience – they only included him in the interview process because he was PMP certified.
June PM Survey: Managing the Project – Part 2
Posted by Brad Egeland
Part 2 of the June PM survey is now available. This 2nd part of the monthly survey again deals with concepts associated with the ongoing management of the project.
The survey is now active and ready for your participation at:
http://www.bradegeland.com/june-survey-part-2.html
In this 2nd part of the survey, we’ll be looking at the following topics:
Definition of project success
For this question, I’m looking for how either you or your organization primarily defines project success. Is it on time project delivery, on budget project delivery, or customer satisfaction? And for those of you who feel it’s something other than those three options, there is a write-in ‘other’ response area available.
Percentage of successful projects delivered
This one will definitely a best-guess scenario because I doubt that anyone has compiled hard numbers on this plus it’s somewhat subjective as to what one would call a ‘successful’ project. I’m trying to get an idea of where our readership stands in regards to successful vs. failed projects. Recent studies – as I’ve reported here in recent articles – place the percentage of failed projects between 62% and 75%. It will be interesting to see where PM Tips readers fall in that spectrum.
Percentage of project revenue from change orders
Change orders are always a love – hate thing. For the PM and team, they are a great way to increase project revenue and executive management loves them. However, it’s often difficult and even uncomfortable for the project manager to present the customer with change orders – unless they are the result of direct customer requests. Also, change orders are a necessary tool to bridge the gap between the originally defined requirements and what reality fleshes out over the course of the engagement.
Four Ways Attending Professional Conferences Can Re-Energize You
Posted by Brad Egeland
I have to admit, until recently I’ve stayed away from conferences. For a couple of reasons … 1) as an independent consultant they are often too expensive for me to consider AND 2) work gets in the way and I always feel that I should be working rather than attending a conference. Especially as an independent consultant… it’s about the billable hours, right? (At least that’s what my wife tells me).
Recently, though, I’ve had new opportunities to attend important IT-related conferences and I’ve been rethinking my stance on these things. Yes, I will admit that my admission has been free as I’ve been able to obtain media passes because of my professional articles. So what that does is place me back in the category with the W2 employees who don’t usually have to pay their own way into the conferences they attend. Now we’re back on even ground…
What I have found recently is that there are, indeed, some benefits to be found in sucking it up and taking time away from work to attend a professional conference that is applicable to area of expertise. Here are four that come to mind:
#1 – Networking with peers
Whether you’re an independent professional or a W2 employee and in either case have more work than you can handle, never ever underestimate the value of networking with your peers. Take a look at the economy if you haven’t lately. Tomorrow could be the day that you need to take advantage of professional contacts that you’ve made at a conference or professional gathering.
Take a lot of business cards with you and make a point to get together with professionals in your line of work. Networking with other project management professionals is not only a good way to potentially get an ‘in’ at another organization, but it is also a great time to share ideas, templates, frustrations, etc.
#2 – Resetting your mindset
Even if networking and schmoozing is not your thing, then at least putting things on hold for awhile and meeting up with some peers and taking the time to take in new information related to your profession is worth it. Look at it as a chance to reset your mind. As a project manager, you’re under constant stress and pressure to not only perform well on your projects but also to ensure that your projects as a whole perform well. I realize that getting away from it to reset your thinking at a conference is not that easy and you’re likely to have your phone/email with you at all times, but it still helps if you can at least ‘tentatively’ put someone else in charge of your project for the week and make it to a conference. The take aways may even be beneficial to current projects and yield immediate benefits.
More on Pleasing the Customer and Management
Posted by Brad Egeland
Already my recent article on “Who’s More Important to Please – The Customer or Your Management?” has generated interesting discussion and feedback on LinkedIn. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some comments here on PM Tips as well.
In response to the discussions that are going on so far, I’d like to follow up with some thoughts on the matter.
The general agreement among responders is that both need to be important – and I agree. Also, it is being said that a talented project manager will make it apparent to both the customer and their management what is important and align the goals of each. I agree on this as well – in most cases.
The issue is, most of us have been in one or more poorly planned or poorly run project management offices or organizations with poorly run project oversight. In some of these cases, it really won’t matter how talented the project manager is, if management doesn’t get it, isn’t focused on project successes, or is often trying to ‘solve’ things behind the scenes before taking it to the customer (and by that time making it too late to resolve the real issues) then there’s not much that can be done.
