10 steps to Resolve Conflicts in a Project Team

Conflict is pretty much inevitable when you work with others. People have different viewpoints and, under the wrong set of circumstances, those differences escalate to conflict. How do you handle that conflict determines how good a Project Manager or a leader you are.

 

You can do either of the things: 1. Choose to ignore it. 2. Complain about it and do nothing. 3. Blame someone for it and think that the solution has been achieved. 4. Try to deal with it through hints and suggestions 5. Be direct, simplify what is going on, and attempt to reach a resolution through common techniques like negotiation or compromise. However, 1, 2 and 3 should never be done as doing so may end up with the failure of the project or in worst case, create an obstacle in your PM career. [Read More...]

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10 ways to organize your Project Team

Project teams are typically formed for the sole purpose of completing the project successfully as per the plan, budget and yes, quality of-course. Every project team obviously has a mission but that’s not enough. Without an effective and aligned organizational structure, that mission may turn out to be a non realistic objective. 

 

The project team is a functioning unit of individuals, sharing a common goal. Unity of purpose is essential to success, but a united team is not a given thing. A Project Manager has to keep the team united and motivated across the various functions and he has to try hard for it. It is not at all easy. Every Project team starts off as a team, but once the work begins the team begins to cater. Each individual in the team has a mind, individuality and creativity of his own, and there comes the drift sometimes. As a fact, individuality, skills and creativity are a key component of the team dynamics, but keeping these qualities in control and moving forward as a team is a daunting task a Project Manager has to perform. So, how does a Project Manager keep his/her team united? To understand this further, we first need to know how a team can be built and organized for a Project.  

 

A team can be organized in a combination of the below 3 ways:

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‘‘Make versus Buy’’ decision in a Project?

 

When should you outsource? When should you make the deliverable in-house? This decision has to consider many factors. A judiciously outsourced piece of a project can save you a good amount of money in comparison to if you decide to make it in-house. Similarly, the vice versa may also be true. So how do we make a perfect ‘make or buy’ decision that can save us money and time also taking into consideration the scope of the project.

 

In certain cases, organizations are subjected to make decisions on what to make internally and what to buy from outside in order to maximize the profit margins. As a result of this, the organizational functions and projects are divided into segments and some of those functions were outsourced to expert companies, who can do the same job for much less cost.
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Managing Customer Expectations in a Project

 

Managing customer expectations seems to be the most important and the most difficult part for a Project Manager. Infact, meeting customer expectations is the single largest parameter to be achieved in order to the project being called ‘successful’. If the customer is satisfied with the outcome, the project is successful.

How difficult it is to manage customer expectations depends upon whether you are:

1. having a known or single customer or having a ‘market’ customer
2. having users who may not be the economic buyers

Discovering the Client

Now the difficult part is ‘How to achieve Customer Satisfaction’? The path to success goes from ‘Managing the customer satisfaction successfully’.

As a Project Manager, you need to communicate and work with the Project Sponsor and key Stakeholders from the very ‘kicks off’. The earlier it starts in the project, the better it is. Unless the Project Manager understands the customer’s requirements he would not be able to get the work done from the team. Even if he gets a deliverable done, it may include a lot of rework in the later stages. [Read More...]

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Which Project Management certification to go for?

If you are looking out for a Project Management certification you should read this blogpost before deciding upon which one to go for.

Project management certification has considerably grown in recognition in the past few years. Unlike the yesteryears, employers are now seeking professionals with a Project Management certification. Read More...

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Key responsibilities of a Project Manager

A Project Manager is responsible for the success or failure of a project. This blogpost discusses about the key responsibilities that a PM needs to perform.

Apart from his core role as a Project Manager, a PM has to play other roles such as that of a Project Coordinator handling the administrative responsibilities and sometimes a Program manager who may have to manage a hierarchy of contributors and leaders and handle a team with hundreds of people or more. Read More...

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Hardware Development Projects vs Software Development Projects

Although the core fundamentals of project management are almost the same across all industry verticals and all project types, there are still some differences between them. In broader sense, everything depends upon the project size and complexity. In this post I would be discussing on the dissimilarities between hardware development projects and software development projects. Read More...

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Risk Management for IT Projects

Every project in an organization is subject to risks and the one which finds itself in a state of unending crisis is failing to manage the risks properly. Failure to manage risks is characterized by inability to decide what to do, when to do it and whether enough has been done. The purpose of Risk Management is to identify potential problems before they occur so that risk-handling activities can be planned and invoked as needed across the life of the product or project to mitigate adverse impacts on achieving objectives. Read More...

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Quality Management for IT Projects

The dictionary meaning of quality is, the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind or the degree of excellence of something. However, this definition is not always applicable to a project.

In a nutshell, this is what various Quality Gurus have to say about quality:

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Time Management for IT Projects

Alright! So lets get started. This weekend I am going to talk about a very very important topic in Project Management. By the way, it has the same importance in life too. I would be randomly taking topics on Project Management and not post in any specific order. Next week it may be anything.

As they say ‘Time is Money’ and it is definitely true in a project’s perspective.

Time management is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency or productivity. Time management one of the most important aspect of managing a project. As such, it is considered to be a core knowledge area, and is closely knit to the scope and cost of the project. Read More...


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