My Love/Hate Relationship with Project Teams (Re-run)

Project teams can be a project manager's greatest resource or can be a huge impediment to getting things done. I have a lot of opinions about project teams and most people would find them to be controversial. I will state them here and hope for feedback.

My general theories about project teams follow:

Project teams tend to waste a lot of time, and like to blame others (outside the team) for lack of project process

Project team members are rarely on the same page

Internal politics doom many project teams from the start

Project managers usually don't have the ability to reward or punish bad behavior

One or two "bad apples" can spoil the whole bunch

Many functional managers don't believe they have to support project teams, and at times they do all they can to undermine the team approach to managing projects

A team "visionary" is a person that is usually disengaged from everything and accountable for nothing

Lack of leadership, direction, and follow-up from top management is the number one cause of project team failure

If you have a member of your project team that would rather be doing something else, do everything you can to grant their wish

Most project managers are wimps when it comes to managing individual members of their teams

Lots of organizations talk a good talk when it comes to project management and teams, then go about managing change using the same old failed processes

Many project team members are loyal to their functional departments, not to the project

Teams by nature are dysfunctional, and because of this fact the project schedule and estimates should reflect this

Dysfunctional project teams are the fault of senior management because of their refusal to attend important project team meetings

Many project teams are composed of the wrong people doing the wrong things at the wrong times.

Eight Stage Process of Creating Major Change (Re-Run)

I like the process below for creating major change. It was taken from the book "Leading Change" by John P. Kotter (see source information at the end of the posting).

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
a. Examining the market and competitive realities
b. Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities

2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
a. Putting together a group with enough power to lead the change
b. Getting the group to work together as a team

3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
a. Creating a vision to help direct the change effort
b. Developing strategies for achieving that vision

4. Communicating the Change Vision
a. Using every vehicle possible to constantly communicate the new vision and strategies
b. Having the guiding coalition role model the behavior expected of employees

5. Empowering Broad-Based Action
a. Getting rid of obstacles
b. Changing systems or structures that undermine the change vision
c. Encouraging risk taking and non-traditional ideas, activities, and actions

6. Generating Short-Term Wins
a. Planning for visible improvements in performance, or “wins”
b. Creating those wins
c. Visibly recognizing and rewarding people who made the wins possible

7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
a. Using increased credibility to change all systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit together and don’t fit the transformation vision
b. Hiring, promoting, and developing people who can implement the change vision
c. Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents

8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
a. Creating better performance through customer and productivity-oriented behavior, more an better leadership, and more effective management
b. Articulating the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
c. Developing means to ensure leadership development and succession

SOURCE: Adapted from John P. Kotter, “Leading Change,” Harvard Business School Press 1996

Project Management for Networking Geeks

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