Ten Actions to Better Project Performance – Part 3

In Part 1 of this four-part series we covered three of the ten actions to better performance on your projects: Bypass an obstacle; Cause people to stretch, not break; and Focus on the goal.  In Part 2, we covered two more: Follow a standardized process and Learn from the past.  In Part 3 we will discuss #6, 7 & 8: Maintain ongoing communications; Record the work being done; and Reuse previous work.

#6 – Maintain ongoing communications

More projects have probably failed due to poor communications than from any other factor. I consider communication to be the #1 responsibility of the project manager and there’s no substitute for the project manager’s role in this – it can’t be passed of to someone.  Ironically, while everyone recognizes the contribution of good communications to success, it still remains a problem area on many projects and in many companies.

One reason is that people confuse the medium with communication. A medium is the vehicle for communicating, acting as an enabler of communication, rather than a substitute for it. With so many available medium – email, video conferencing, social media and other avenues across the internet – many people just assume that they will be good communicators.

All too often, the medium simply gives a poor communicator a louder voice. At least from a project management perspective, the medium is not the message. The other reason for poor communications is the lack of team members’ distinction between data and information. While data is unprocessed, information is data that is converted into something meaningful. When team members confuse the two, they send data rather than information, whereupon the recipient must go through the data to derive the information. Because this confusion manifests in electronic as well as paper format, many project team members generate countless data files and e-mails, and build innumerable Web pages replete with data but not information.

By contrast, good communication is providing the right information at the right time in the right amount to the right person. When that occurs, people operate on the “same wavelength.” They take part in better dialog, reducing the number and magnitude of misunderstandings. As a result of good communication, team members are also better able to adapt to change.

To realize the benefits of maintaining good communications, team members can perform three actions. The first is to concentrate on generating information rather than data. The second way team members can improve communications is to ensure that data and subsequent information are current and relevant. The third method of improving communications is to use the chosen medium as the principal means of communication to obtain the necessary data and information.

#7 – Record the work being done

On most projects, team members perform considerable work in management and development. Unfortunately, the work often goes unrecorded, and the knowledge and expertise is lost due to turnover and time constraints. This is a tremendous loss to companies that could have saved this knowledge and expertise, applying it on future, similar projects.  What we’re basically talking about is a combination of lessons learned and a project knowledge database.  It sounds great in theory, but companies and teams often overlook this effort and a lot of good knowledge and experience (both good and bad) is lost in the process.

If recording offers many benefits, why is it not done more thoroughly and more often? For one, it easier to react and see some tangible, immediate results than to take a proactive approach, which produces long-term rather than immediate results. In addition, such a process requires administrative overhead. Finally, even if it is done, it often gets buried, so it is overlooked and eventually lost. 

#8 – Reuse previous work

While it is good for team members to feel creative on a project, unfortunately, their desire for creativity often leads to reinventing the wheel. There are major consequences when that occurs, including wasted effort due to repeating work, slowing of the project’s momentum, a failure to capitalize on the success of the past, and extension of the project’s life cycle. In other words, it is nonproductive.

Reuse enables organizations to use what was done before again, in a similar situation. The benefits include expediting the project life cycle, allowing team members to focus on more important issues, increasing the product’s reliability, and enabling team members to make modifications quickly. Because plans and products are built modularly, reuse also reduces complexity. Finally, it allows more accurate planning.

Reuse occurs on both the project management and technical development levels. For project management, teams may reuse sections of schedules from similar projects, segments of files loaded into automated scheduling packages, report formats and contents, and forms. Examples of reuse related to technical development include code, models, files generated from software tools, and specifications.

Information for this article was derived, in part, from Paul Tinnirello’s book entitled, “New Directions in Project Management.”

Related posts:

1. Ten Actions to Better Project Performance – Part 4
2. Ten Actions to Better Project Performance – Part 2
3. Ten Actions to Better Project Performance – Part 1
4. The Project Management Knowledge Areas – Part 3
5. More on Project Communications Plans