We can always get better. Many of us have a long way to go...some are closer to the top than others. But improvement should always be the goal. We can always be serving our project, team and customers better tomorrow than we are today. But how do we get there? What can we do to be continually improving ourselves and our project management processes?
I've come up with a list of six ways we can be doing this on each project or in our project management careers. Taking these steps sooner rather than later can really pay off I'm not saying it will be easy... please consider...
I've come up with a list of six ways we can be doing this on each project or in our project management careers. Taking these steps sooner rather than later can really pay off I'm not saying it will be easy... please consider...
Train, train, and certify. Actually, it's really train and certify if you find the right place... and I know the right place. If you want to be at the top of your PM game, then get certified. I know it takes time and money, but your employer will usually pay for it. So now it's down to time. But if you're looking for a good place to get it done... then you can get it done with a guarantee through Cheetah Learning. With Cheetah, you take their 5 day program – 4 days of training either classroom, virtual or online... whatever is your best way to absorb the training... ending with you successfully taking the project management professional (PMP) exam for certification. If for some reason you don't pass, you can take the training again for free until you do pass. Win-win-win.
Survey meeting attendees by email. We are conducting meetings all the time on our projects, but are we doing it well? Are our meeting attendees getting a lot out of these meetings? Could we be doing a better job at facilitating our project meetings and sharing or disseminating information? Try surveying your project meeting attendees at various points throughout the engagement. And don't force the survey on the same group every time (like your project team). Survey your team, survey the project customer, survey other key stakeholders. Try to hit each group two or more times throughout a long engagement and see how the results compare. Are you improving? Be sure to ask questions that all for good feedback...not just yes or no questions.
Conduct lessons learned sessions in mid-project. I realize it's hard enough to find the time and availability of project team members to get everyone together for a post-project lessons learned session. However, I strongly recommend instead conducting several lessons learned sessions throughout the project – likely following a major project milestone or the rollout of a key project deliverable. These are often short pause points in a project allowing for time to slot in a short lessons learned session. Trust me, you may often gain very valuable insight that will not only help you on future projects but on this current project, as well.
Analyze your estimating and forecasting accuracy with your project team. How well we estimate time, effort and cost on projects is an important ongoing consideration. The project manager is often having discussions with the project sponsor and doesn't always have access to his team when discussing things like change orders, proposed next projects, etc. So, when possible, it's a good idea for the project manager to work on sharpening his estimating skills periodically...and on technical engagements or really any project engagements...the best way to do that is to work through estimating efforts with his entire team.
Survey customer satisfaction at the end of each engagement. On bad projects this will be hard to do. On good projects, this might be fun. But do it either way – the truth helps and going to the customer and asking tough questions about your team's performance will tell them a lot about you and your delivery organization. Often this comes out in lessons learned sessions, but we know from experience and surveys that lessons learned sessions happen far less often than they should.
Force yourself to do project postmortems to senior management. The next worse thing to going to the customer to learn what you did right and wrong is to go to your senior management with a project post-mortem discussion. If everything went well, it will be easy. But we know this is rarely the case. There are always issues and discussing them with your leadership can be a humbling experience. But trust me, it will help you grow as a project manager and also gain visibility with your senior leadership. Could be win-win.
Summary / call for input
The concept here is we never hit perfection. You may feel like you have, but you're fooling yourself. We can always improve and we need to always be striving to improve. If you don't feel this need, then you probably should move on to a different career. How about our readers? What are your tips you can share as ways of improving yourself as a project manager?
Survey meeting attendees by email. We are conducting meetings all the time on our projects, but are we doing it well? Are our meeting attendees getting a lot out of these meetings? Could we be doing a better job at facilitating our project meetings and sharing or disseminating information? Try surveying your project meeting attendees at various points throughout the engagement. And don't force the survey on the same group every time (like your project team). Survey your team, survey the project customer, survey other key stakeholders. Try to hit each group two or more times throughout a long engagement and see how the results compare. Are you improving? Be sure to ask questions that all for good feedback...not just yes or no questions.
Conduct lessons learned sessions in mid-project. I realize it's hard enough to find the time and availability of project team members to get everyone together for a post-project lessons learned session. However, I strongly recommend instead conducting several lessons learned sessions throughout the project – likely following a major project milestone or the rollout of a key project deliverable. These are often short pause points in a project allowing for time to slot in a short lessons learned session. Trust me, you may often gain very valuable insight that will not only help you on future projects but on this current project, as well.
Analyze your estimating and forecasting accuracy with your project team. How well we estimate time, effort and cost on projects is an important ongoing consideration. The project manager is often having discussions with the project sponsor and doesn't always have access to his team when discussing things like change orders, proposed next projects, etc. So, when possible, it's a good idea for the project manager to work on sharpening his estimating skills periodically...and on technical engagements or really any project engagements...the best way to do that is to work through estimating efforts with his entire team.
Survey customer satisfaction at the end of each engagement. On bad projects this will be hard to do. On good projects, this might be fun. But do it either way – the truth helps and going to the customer and asking tough questions about your team's performance will tell them a lot about you and your delivery organization. Often this comes out in lessons learned sessions, but we know from experience and surveys that lessons learned sessions happen far less often than they should.
Force yourself to do project postmortems to senior management. The next worse thing to going to the customer to learn what you did right and wrong is to go to your senior management with a project post-mortem discussion. If everything went well, it will be easy. But we know this is rarely the case. There are always issues and discussing them with your leadership can be a humbling experience. But trust me, it will help you grow as a project manager and also gain visibility with your senior leadership. Could be win-win.
Summary / call for input
The concept here is we never hit perfection. You may feel like you have, but you're fooling yourself. We can always improve and we need to always be striving to improve. If you don't feel this need, then you probably should move on to a different career. How about our readers? What are your tips you can share as ways of improving yourself as a project manager?
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