HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUILDING A PROJECT TEAM WITHOUT EVEN TRYING

Quite unlike the old musical, the best way to succeed in almost any endeavor is NOT to be sneaky or undermine your co-workers. The best way is usually to be methodical, be around good people and communicate. A project team is no different when building for success. Plan properly, identify and utilize good people, and always communicate.

Whether you are embarking on a multi-year global implementation or a two-week sprint process review, the PEOPLE themselves are the primary factor in your success. A team that doesn't have the right people will always be a struggle. Who are the right people for any type of project team? Your team should ideally have members that have most (if not all) of the following ingredients:

  • Bought in

    • If your team wants to be involved in the project and believes in the goals, you won't be fighting uphill

    • Buying into the project goals doesn't have to mean blind obedience, but rather that they appreciate the concepts of the project and are committed to driving forward

  • Available

    • A semi-secret component to team success. Are your team members available to perform their tasks?

    • If your team is available to the project 50% of the time, either bi-weekly or 20 hours per week…they need to ACTUALLY be available for that time

    • Your team time commitment must be laid out early, agreed to by leadership, and adhered to

  • Empowered

    • This one word is usually the one word that differentiates truly meaningful projects and those that just meet expectations (or even don't) especially as it relates to the calendar

    • Are your people given the authority to make decisions? Does the organization take cues from the guidance the team provides?

      • If the answer is yes, your project will usually meet deadlines, be more harmonious, and be able to focus on the difficult items

      • If not, your team will often get bogged down in receiving guidance from above on all of the minutiae, point fingers when progress isn't made, and spin it's wheels

  • Other Good Words

    • Safe

      • Does your team feel like their job is 'safe' during and after the project? If not, there will always be a cloud of uncertainty and turnover is likely

    • Rewarded

      • Can you get your team bonuses for meeting objectives? Is membership on the team viewed internally as a positive to career growth? Making being on the team a positive instead of a negative can have major implications

      • Make every effort to minimize the team having to sacrifice

    • Experienced

      • The most obvious, key is to have a team that knows the business

    • Back-fill and Replace

      • Teams will lose people, people will get sick and take vacations, people will need to cover ongoing business situations

      • Having a plan to work through those inevitable situations cannot be overstated, lest the project be derailed

Even if your team doesn't contain all of the 'right' people, often those are the employees most responsible for running the business, it can succeed if the team is bought in, available and empowered.

PLANNING ties into the People in more ways than one. Often planning is performed well in advance of the project actually occurring. The Project Plan itself is an entire blog (or many!), but how it relates to the success of your project team is also important. Some of the areas to look out for include:

  • Clarity in timing

    • Dates are always fluid, it is the nature of projects. But fluid does NOT mean that they aren't intentional and should not be strived for

    • A team that sees dates as 'nice' instead of 'important' is never going to focus on meeting deadlines

    • Communicating why dates move, and how the plan is changing to make those new dates FIRM is critical

      • Revising resource allocations or adjusting expectations to meet dates is fine…but everyone needs to appreciate that dates are important

  • Clarity in task

    • Defining for each every task what the expectations are is vital:

      • What requirements are being met and how does this task meet it?

      • Who owns the task and who is supporting that ownership?

      • What potential roadblocks exist in meeting the objective of the task?

    • If your team can look at the tasks they are assigned and understand what they are supposed to be doing, they have a better chance of success

  • Critical Paths and Dependencies

    • Finally, planning needs to consider what the key through-line is so that the team can always know how they are doing

    • Focusing the timing and resources on the most critical items is the best way to build a plan

    • This involves:

      • Understanding what tasks have to be completed before others can begin

      • What tasks, if not performed fully, will prevent the project from being completed

  • Successful teams can then adjust to keep the project on the right path by moving priorities and assignments

You've built a great team. You have a solid project plan. You kick off the project. You even have built in the right contingencies. How do you keep your project team moving towards the end with the best chance of success? Communicate, communicate, communicate. I say it three times because there are three ways that need to be communicated. Communicate TO your team, communicate WITHIN the team, communicate externally.

Communication to your team involves providing the team all of the information that they need to both understand how the project is progressing AND make them feel like they are being given proper direction. Member-level communication is important so that each person knows if they are behind, that they have additional resources, etc. But often project teams do not have proper big-picture, cross-team communications that set a common base of knowing what is going on.

Examples of typical TO the team communications that work

  • Periodic emails summarizing project information

  • Periodic phone calls or web meetings to do the same

  • Boards in a 'war room' with the project plan highlighted, current tasks being performed, and issues called out

  • Two-way communications vehicles to allow issues and progress to quickly get back to project management

Examples of what kinds of information is important to share

  • The plan itself, with progress, dependencies, etc.

  • Recent milestones/successes so that everyone can see progress

  • Upcoming focus areas, so the team understands where the current emphasis is

  • Personal insights and information (birthdays, upcoming vacations, etc) can help make things a bit more personal

Large meetings, depending on the size of the team, are the best method of making sure everyone is on the same page. But they can be a challenge with multiple locations, remote work, etc. Still they should be scheduled periodically, as getting everyone together now and then is the best way to share. Communicating TO the team is vital to keeping the team moving together.

Communications within the team. Probably the most overlooked area of communications is the team members having good structures in place to encourage internal discussions. Naturally, teammates will have calls and emails when to collaborate on their tasks. This would occur within an area (say production) or in a process stream (purchasing and the warehouse). But often that is where it ends. Accounts Receivable and Maintenance may not have much in common in most situations, but cross-team communications can help build camaraderie, identify common usage ideas, and simply lends itself to better 'teamwork'. Examples of times when internal team communications might pay off include referencing other experiences (prior companies or positions), building common documentation, and validating that decisions made 'early' in a process stream don't have detrimental impacts well downstream.

Tools that are often successful (though every team is different…try things!) include:

  • Periodic team meetings to share ideas and progress

  • An internal team newsletter

  • Social engagements to mix up the players

  • Assigning ownership of tasks like data migration to cross-team users encouraging natural discourse where it may not naturally occur

Finally, we come to external communications. This includes both communicating 'up' to management and 'out' to the overall business (such as a project newsletter or quarterly progress report) When focusing this concept around making successful teams, these communications should include:

  • Recognition of the team members

    • Make sure your team is known to management and the entire business. They are usually sacrificing something to be on the team, everyone should know it

  • Highlighting the positives of being on the team

    • Remember, the team will probably evolve. Making being on the team a positive will help recruit new members!

  • Focus on the positives of the change that's coming

    • This can also put your team members into a positive light overall

  • Overall honest progress reports and accurate dates

    • NOTHING is worse than inaccurate or misleading information, it will always come back on the team

A successful project team is really not that complicated. Find the right people, plan on how to use them right, and communicate consistently. The team will take care of the work if these concepts are included in your team building strategy.