And the Challenges Continue...!
You may remember that in March I shared a summary of the project challenges from the survey that I conducted. Let’s face it, the challenges that we have endured during 2Q20 far exceed what we might have experienced in the past with our project efforts! Like many of you, I have been adjusting to working remotely and have been thinking about some of the challenges that Project Managers, Project Leads and Team Leads may be having with their remote teams. I have also heard from a few clients asking for some help with various situations. With this in mind, I set out to develop some tools that can help with a few of the scenarios that you may be faced with.
Some of the questions that I have received include:
How do I keep my team engaged while working from home? Many of my team members do not have the ability to work from home.
If your team cannot complete their regular tasks from home, is there something else that they can be doing? For instance, can they begin writing a user manual or process guide for their role on the team? How about updating their job description or responsibilities? Drawing out a process map that details how they complete various, complex, tasks to help train someone else on the team? I also provided a number of other ideas in a blog posting that I titled If I Only Had the Time. If you’re like me, you’ve said this phrase at least a hundred times over the last year alone! If you, or your team, have some available time while working remotely, this is a good list that can get you started on some of those tasks.
How can I keep the project team working collaboratively?
· Someone mentioned the other day that the project work was “chaotic” because there were no guidelines or protocols established on how the team would be working together. This topic should have been addressed at the Kick-Off Meeting for the project. I strongly encourage Project Leads to discuss a number of topics at the Kick-Off Meeting including the collaboration tools that will be used, meeting schedules, and status reporting in addition to other team based topics. You can use a Project Team Handbook like the one I created, or use this as a template for your own team handbook.
· Many organizations already have a suite of tools in place which will dictate how the team will communicate over the life of the project. One of the most common issues that I have observed over the last few months is the lack of training on how to use the tools. I have heard from a number of colleagues and clients that team members are not “using the tools correctly”. They probably haven’t been trained on how to use the tools effectively. So, train them! My suggestion is that once the Project Team has identified a collaboration tool that they will be using, the team member with the most experience with this tool, will be responsible for training the rest of us on the Project Team. We will then document various elements of this training and agree, as a team, to the usage as defined during that training discussion.
The Project Team Handbook can be a companion file to the Project Team Onboarding System as well.
The objective is to keep your team engaged and contributing to the organization. They may be asked to complete tasks that are outside of their normal responsibilities, and that’s okay. I’m sure that there are still a lot of open items on the organizational TO DO List that could use some attention! Use this time to tackle some of those tasks!