Some damn good advice…

http://www.cio.com/article/3001214/project-management/6-tips-to-identify-project-management-red-flags.html#slide1

CIO.com’s slide show article “6 tips to identify project management red flags” seems to sum up our project management class in 6 key steps to avoid PM problems. These tips focus on preventing potential mishaps associated with project management while ensuring projects are carried out smoothly. I found some important and relevant similarities from the tips in this slide show to our PM class project. Here are 3 of what I consider to be the most important of the 6 “red flags” mentioned in the article:

Red Flag: Focus on output rather than outcome

Although project managers must ensure tasks are completed on time, budgets are met, and resources are allocated appropriately, it is of most importance to work toward a desired outcome. The individual steps of project management should all build toward the bigger picture. But when the focus becomes overly consumed with one individual aspect of the project, the goal/outcome soon gets overlooked. For my group’s class project, we did a nice job making sure that we did not lose focus of our overall goal. However, there were times were we caught ourselves up hyper-focusing on individual elements. Specifically, we spent a lot of time preparing what foods to bring and how to sell such foods during our bake sale. Although this was necessary, the real desired outcome was to promote awareness for our cause – obviously the food we sold was irrelevant when strictly considering our desired outcome.

Red Flag: Focus on process instead of people

One might think this is counter-intuitive, but projects are – at their core – completed by people. I had the pleasure of acting as my team’s project manager and what I quickly learned is that our success was only a result of the hard work, expertise, and personal commitment of each of my teammates. The reality is that each person brings a unique skill set to a project and it is essential to allocate that person’s time and energy effectively. For our group project, we assigned team members portions of our project the aligned with their expertise. This enabled us to be efficient and gave each member a sense of responsibility that only he or she would be able to effectively uphold.

Red Flag: Lack of clear communication

The slide show article mentions that clear communication is common and expected when things are going well during a project. But the real red flag occurs when communication falls short during times of difficulty. The ways to overcome this is to identity potential risks/issues early on and communicate them to avoid future failures. Our group encountered various issues during our early planning phase as we ran into roadblocks when trying to secure a venue space for our event. We maintained constant communication by email and phone conferences as we updated one another on the statuses of potential venues. In less than a week, we vetted out 5 different venue options and finally settled on one that fit our needs.

For those who made it this far, did you encounter any of these “red flags” during your group project?

8 thoughts on “Some damn good advice…

  1. Thought provoking article. Our group definitely struggled with communication at the beginning. We did assign responsibilities but we did not split into event “teams”. The result was that our communication at the beginning was one long stream of consciousness via emails on all topics. This made it difficult to keep up with the history of a particular topic and nearly impossible to find information you needed to proceed with next steps. We changed platforms which helped a bit, but still struggled to separate communications into topical streams of conversation. This is perhaps something we could have paid greater attention to at the beginning but once we were mid-process it really would have been more work to change habits; a good lesson that if you want to start good habits, start early; don’t wait.

    We also encountered the “single point of failure” red flag at the beginning when one of our group members dropped the class. We had been depending on his pull to get people to an event in the city as most of us had contacts out in the suburbs. Our attendance at our event in River North was fairly low, possibly due to this early setback. The planning time available before we had to decide on an alternative first event was very short; more time would have helped, but we also should have recognized that attendance numbers depended largely on one member. Maybe we would have held our first event out towards the suburbs, or on a weekend instead of a weeknight when more people would be likely to come into the city from the suburbs.

  2. Dan, great post thank you for sharing. As we all have our fund raising events behind us we all can breath little easier now:) It has been a great experience. Great character building and team building experience. I did not know that I had in me the ability to go from business to business and ask for donations. I did it no problem because I wanted to contribute all I could to a great cause. With five people on the team I was nicely surprised about the quality of our communication. We did not use anything fancy, we went with the old fashioned group text and conference calls, and it worked out extremely well. So, I am happy to say that lack of clear communication was not what we experience. We definitely focused on output rather than outcome. We made sure we never lost the focus of what our overall goal was. We stayed focused and we were able to have a great event.

  3. This definitely strikes a cord with me. So many times leaders or teachers will harp on sticking true to a process or specific tasks…however they forgot that all these “ideas” are completed by PEOPLE. People are what drive everything. You cannot forgot the personal people touch that is required to keep people engaged and motivated to stay involved with the project.

    It is essential to treat people fairly and allow them to fail/succeed. Throughout the process it helps to engage with them on a personal level, not one that demonizes bad/good action.

    Focusing on people is an imperative quality that all groups must not forgot. Once you lose the personal “people” touch, all will be lost in the success of a project.

    Stay Fresh,
    Kevin

  4. Dan – great post, and well-written too. I liked your comments about people, output, and communication, as they are all very important in managing expectations within a project. When spotting red flags in our project, we discussed some additional ideas in planning for our event but identified these ideas as project creep. This was an example of output vs. outcome, and as a group, we stayed focused on our outcome, and not worrying about creating additional tasks that would not impact our high level goal. Again, well written post – I think you have a future blog career ahead of you. Or maybe not, as I understand you are a killer salesman!

    Stay hunger,

    Matt

  5. Dan – great post, and well-written too. I liked your comments about people, output, and communication, as they are all very important in managing expectations within a project. When spotting red flags in our project, we discussed some additional ideas in planning for our event but identified these ideas as project creep. This was an example of output vs. outcome, and as a group, we stayed focused on our outcome, and not worrying about creating additional tasks that would not impact our high level goal. Again, well written post – I think you have a future blog career ahead of you. Or maybe not, as I understand you are a killer salesman!

    Stay hunger,

    Matt

  6. Dan, what an awesome post!!! I love this subject. I am always drawn to discussions about red flags because you can learn a lot from them. One of my favorite topics to talk about is when communication falls short during times of difficulty. Once you encounter lack of communication within a project you are definitely heading in the wrong directions. If you know how to spot that red flag from the beginning you can save the project. In my opinion communication, you could also fall short if you will over communicate during the project. People tend to ignore messages if there are too many of them.

  7. Dan, thanks for sharing this very useful post. I enjoyed reading it. I wanted to weigh in on a couple of the red flags you highlighted.
    Red Flag: Focus on process instead of people
    I have never been a project manager and based on what I learned in class and what I heard from a project manager that I interviewed for the class, my feeling is that both are very important. However, the experience from the class project has taught me that without proper dedication and commitment from people, the project will not succeed. Process ensures things are done in a systematic manner but a great project leader is essential for the success of the project.
    Red Flag: Lack of clear communication
    I think communication is probably the one of the most important elements of a successful project. Communication these days are easier because of the various electronic mediums available. However, it appears that even with all the advanced technologies, communication breakdown occurs far too frequently and subsequently derails projects. During our project, initially, we had communication issues because we were using email as the main tool to communicate. This was ineffective because not all of us read our mail throughout the day. We immediately switched to a mobile app that everyone checked throughout the day. This way we were able to get quick responses and move forward faster.

  8. Dan, thank you for sharing this article and your analysis. I particularly identified with the advice to focus on people rather than production. This is so important for maintaining the team dynamic. Often in order to produce quality work, you must first insure that the attitudes of your team members are in sync. This cannot be done when a manager loses sight of the human factor.

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