Creating and maintaining momentum on your
projects is a tough battle; especially when your team members have other
responsibilities including other projects to work on. How do you keep your
project lively and moving forward? Well-organized and run Project Progress Tracking
Meetings are the key!
Notice I didn’t just say project progress
tracking meetings? I said ‘well-organized and run..’. What’s the difference?
Lack of planning or poor planning will have the exact opposite effect. Lack
of planning will drain the life out of your project and allow the focus of your
key team members to shift away. Once they’re lost, it’s very hard to get them
back.
For project managers who hate planning, they experience the same effects
project after project; no one shows, and when they do they are not prepared to
provide updates, or they take notes and tell you that they will get back to
you. This leaves the PM with a meeting that produced no real value and wasted everyone’s
time including theirs.
Eventually your number of attendees dwindles each week
until you find yourself cancelling these meetings.
Your project is flat-lining.
It’s easy to blame the guy that didn’t provide the info or support the PM
needed. But ultimately it isn’t their job to make this project a success…it’s
the PM’s job.
A well run progress tracking meeting produces the
follow for its participants:
- · Team members arrive fully aware of what is expected of them, and what updates specifically they are expected to provide.
- · Team members have an open floor to demonstrate their prowess (incentive to attend)
- · They have an open forum to raise an issue and ask for support from others in the room
- · They leave the meeting knowing exactly what is expected of them for the next meeting, giving them ample time to plan their work load and execute for next week.
- · They arrive NEXT week with the answers to the questions or issues that were raised LAST week
- · A habit of performance excellence develops and encourages other team members to do the same.
- · The PMs establishes a sense of leadership and confidence that there is someone looking further down the road for obstacles than the current deliverables everyone else is focused on. The team can more confidently focus on their more immediate work knowing that the PM is looking ahead and HAS A PLAN
- · The PM’s leave the room with the information that they intended to get from the meeting
- · The PM gets floor time to provide clear expectations to the team
- The PM gets more and more people to attend without having to chase them down. If a person gets to shine in your meeting, they are more likely to show then if they are constantly being made to appear incompetent.
The energy that everyone leaves the room with
carries over into the focus and quality of the work your team needs to produce.
Planning gives people time to think about the best way to perform a task
instead of the tired approach of just giving you what they can in the time they’ve
got left. It may feel like you won, but the shoddy end result will really be a
loss for you and the team. No one wants to work on a project that is clearly
going to fail.
This result means that the PM needs to invest the
time to prepare for the meeting. It can mean spending 3 hours preparing the
details so that your 1 hour meeting continues to breathe life into your
project. Remember you don’t always see the work that everyone does when they
leave the room. A well planned & executed meeting may require 4 hours of
your time each week BUT it produces the momentum to get dozens or even hundreds
of hours of work done this week for you!
It is the best and most immediate investment you can
make to your own project success and towards building your professional brand. The good news is that it's never too late to start. You can start next week!
Also, this meeting can’t be monthly, or as
needed. You and your team both need a regular energy boost. Just like needing
to eat regularly to be able to function, this recurring, well-planned
and executed meeting provides sustenance to your whole team on a regular basis.
If you want to encourage a habit of excellence, you need to start with you. Once
a week will give you and your team the momentum you need and allow you to
provide your team with manageable, bite-sized chunks of work to do weekly. If
you dump it all on them at once (too busy to plan & prepare) your project
will stagnate, and you will find that you’re working inhuman hours to try to
compensate.
If you’d rather DO than PLAN, you may need to
consider whether project management is where your strengths lay. Planning and
running progress tracking meetings isn’t a nice to have – it is the most vital regular interaction you will have with your team. Leaders must plan in order to lead.
Doer’s follow plans and focus on doing. Trying to do both is not leadership.
The old adage: ‘if you do what you’ve always
done, you’ll get what you’ve always got’ is the truth not just in project
management, its true in life. If you are looking for a way to make a clear
difference in your career, and set yourself up for the big promotion, don’t be afraid
to lead.
Weekly progress tracking meetings is a PM’s opportunity to grow beyond
the boundaries of their past performance and stand out amongst their peers,
with their team and impress their executive stakeholders.
I'd love to hear your opinions and feedback. Have a different point of view? Please share it!! And thank you for reading my blog!
This process is a
powerful tool to add to your PM tool kit for improving your brand and your
reputation for execution excellence in project management.
For more information on
tools & techniques that you can use to improve your project performance in
increase the value of your brand join us on Twitter @exOrionLLC.
by Sean Best, PMP. Owner of exOrion LLC. His 20+ years of project
management experience includes work in the banking, payment processing,
telecommunications and software development industries. He can be reached at sbest@exorion.net
