The importance of communication and teamwork has been highlighted throughout the last year. Although technology has helped many people and businesses to improve virtual communication, it is more difficult to build collaborative project teams. This has resulted in the need to be thoughtful in the strategies used to make project management work.
PRINCE2 has always emphasized planning for control as well as offering another mechanism for communication. So, with a good plan, you must share information about it while tracking what is happening and whether you are meeting your objectives. The pandemic experience has served as a wake-up call that we cannot be so casual about project planning; we must return to first principles and not just pay due respect to them.
Project managers and team members will need to be able to operate both virtually and physically, which means being part of a team that is sometimes together and sometimes not. As a result, the project manager must make necessary adjustments to ensure that everything runs well.
For example, having teams physically together for a project kick-off is vital if possible. It provides a framework for collaboration before needing to operate as a team remotely. And this affects not only teams spread across various nations; even teams that were previously co-located may suddenly be mostly virtual.
Communication in difficult situations necessitates project managers being aware of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. What someone acts next is the effect of communication. As a result, you must be able to discuss the intent of a directive and then follow up.
In certain cases, it may appear unpleasant to monitor people in this manner; however, it is easier if both parties recognize the importance of having this level of contact to explain and confirm the next moves. It’s not a lack of trust that makes it tough, but rather a lack of physical proximity.
Good plans can be used as communication tools. As a result, after emailing a plan to a remote team, it’s important to schedule a follow-up meeting to check intentions, timelines, and resources.
In a virtual environment, how will a project manager be aware of poor team relationships or personalities?
It is vital to create an environment in which people can share ideas and focus on both the softer themes of teamwork and the harsh, task-driven jobs. This entails pushing individuals to go beyond conventional niceties to provide genuine insight into how they’re feeling, what’s going well or not, and who is driving them insane!
Agile working techniques encourage retrospectives, and part of that is the concept of “glad, sad, and mad”: glad is what you’re satisfied with, sad is what disappoints you, and mad is where your dissatisfaction comes from.
You can’t design a project management process about how to get along with others, but framing it as something other than the process or approach makes these important difficulties more evident. PRINCE2 Agile has demonstrated how to incorporate agile delivery approaches into everyday project management by combining glad, sad, and mad.
So, in 2022, having a once-a-month 30-minute team meeting to discuss this adds to the controls on which a project manager has previously relied. People management is essential to the success of any endeavor. After the last 18 months, the concept of an environment in which individuals are open, honest, appreciated, and trusted has gained traction. And until organizations manage this properly, there are already consequences: people changing jobs or even breaking contracts as a result of their bad work-life experiences.
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