LeftField – news in project management

www.project-management.com.au

Welcome to the LeftField newsletter. We thought it would be nice to get in touch occasionally and share some interesting project-related stories, news and events.

As you know, projects can bring out the best and worst in people – sometimes within the space of one meeting! If you have any stories or anecdotes to share with us, we’d love to hear them.

Eye-rollers anonymous – trouble in your team? 

Recently a client came to us and said, ‘There’s a lot of eye-rolling going on in my project team’. His team members weren’t getting along and bad feelings were developing.

Friction within a team and open displays of negativity can be signs that there’s big trouble ahead.

The people in a project can make or break it. Often we find that stress is the result of lack of clarity in key areas such as agreement around scope and deliverables, and who is responsible for which tasks.

It’s important to identify the causes of the friction (not just address the symptoms) so you can get back on track.

Things you can do immediately might be:

1. Talk it through with each of the affected people. Let them have their say about why they’re behaving the way they are. You might be surprised about the real reasons for negative behaviour.
2. Talk to the team in small groups. This will get you another perspective on events.
3. Invite a third party to facilitate a discussion involving the whole team; a skilled independent facilitator can have people seeing eye to eye in no time.

The solution usually involves acknowledging the friction (and subsequent behaviours!) and clarifying areas of confusion. You might need to rework parts of your project plan, develop a project team charter, review how you share information as a team, or develop better team decision-making processes.

A team charter might look something like this.

Training news and events

LeftField wins another three years' training delivery

LeftField has just been awarded a tender to continue to deliver project management training workshops for the Tasmanian Government for the next three years. We’re pleased to have been chosen by the Tasmanian Training Consortium from the 26 submissions they received.

New workshop launched

On 30 July Sharyn delivered a workshop for senior managers and executives who sponsor projects or are members of project steering committees.

This new half-day workshop is called

Effective Project Sponsorship: Securing business benefits and busting myths around steering committees.

Given that a recent international benchmarking study identified ‘active and visible executive sponsorship as a key success factor for projects’, it proved extremely useful.

In one participant's words, the session: "helped to clarify the role of the Project Manager and the role of the Project Sponsor and their different accountabilities".

We'll offer the workshop again soon through the TTC.

Upcoming training

We’re also running the popular Project Management Essentials workshops on 18–20 August and 17–19 November 2009. These two-and-a-half day workshops are ideal for new project managers, experienced project personnel, or for anyone who oversees portfolios of business projects.

Participants will learn about the core concepts, tools and techniques necessary to plan, manage and evaluate projects. This workshop is consistent with the highly regarded Tasmanian State Government Project Management Framework.

Read more or book your place on the TTC website.

Project management and food – AIPM updates

Sharyn recently delivered a lunch-time talk to the local AIPM chapter exploring links between project management and change management.

These lunches are great opportunities for keeping up to date while enjoying a light meal with like-minded people. If you’re interested in coming to a lunch, or another AIPM event, take a look at their online events calendar at www.aipm.com.au.

We’re all looking forward to the AIPM achievement awards dinner on 28 August. If you’re going, we’ll see you there.

And speaking of speaking, Sharyn and Bron are both presenting at the next AIPM conference in Adelaide in October. Sharyn’s paper is called Conversations about project leadership, and Bron’s paper is titled Wonderful world of metaprograms.

We’ll get back to you in the next newsletter to tell you what exciting or useful information we came across at the conference.

That’s all for now. Until next time, warm regards from the team at LeftField Project Solutions.

– Bronwyn Cross, Lea Symonds and Sharyn White

Why you?

You’re receiving this newsletter because you’re on our mailing list; we thought you’re just the sort of person who might enjoy hearing stories about other projects and maybe learning some tips to make yours go more smoothly.

Feel free to pass it along to anyone you think might be interested.

We’ll be respectful of your time (and privacy) with these occasional newsletters. And of course you can unsubscribe any time you like using the link at the bottom of this page.