ICPM

A key success factor for excellent project management often relies also upon the people skills of the project manager.

In order to minimize risk and ensure a successful project, project managers must not only deal with the technical project management aspects, but asses leadership skills, cultivate a motivated team, master negotiation tactics to effectively handle conflict situations and communicate effectively. Projects success can be jeopardized by things such as personal agendas, politics, poor communication and team conflicts.

And if you succeed, no matter how "good" you are,  you will never get the credit, if can’t communicate well with colleagues or clients.

Break Down Departmental Barriers in Pursuit of a Common Goal

Many processes are cross-functional. The same is true of projects. {mosimage}This point is about dissolving the “us versus them” scenario that so often exists in one form or another within organizations. In most projects that I work on, there are individuals from departments such as operations, central services and other support functions, MIS, IT, Service Engineering, etc. The “us versus them” attitude comes about when project managers and project team members look at their own interests at the exclusion of others, and instead of working towards a common goal, work towards their own separate and distinct goals.

The superhero gene inherent in project managers can mutate and become something ugly. Such is the case with Ms. Bellows. Instead of discussing, she yells. People leave her office in tears. Behind her back people call her Yelly Kelly.

The problem is that she is successful. People jump when she says to and projects get done on time. This makes upper management happy and she is rewarded, reinforcing the original problem. Eventually no one willingly works with her and some of the best resources leave the department, company or even country.

For an organization whose fundamental work is the delivery of projects, it is extremely important that projects are viewed as a source of learning.

Project delivery is a process that produces an abundance of knowledge. Project teams encounter problems, assess and monitor risks, evaluate baselines, watch budgets and finance and manage stakeholder needs and expectations, as they do, they generate knowledge that is contained within the team.

Scope planning is the process of creating a project scope management plan that documents how the project scope will be defined, verified, controlled, and how the work breakdown structure (WBS) will be created and defined. The goal of scope planning is to create the output of the scope planning process the Project Scope Management Plan. To be successful creating the scope statement and the scope management plan, the project manager and the project team must have a full understanding of the project requirements, business need of the project, and stakeholder expectations.