Leadership Skills : Trust

Trust is a key leadership skill.  Without trust, you will find many blockers in your projects and find that teams will not optimally perform for you within the execution phase of your project.  Gaining trust from your senior stakeholders ensures that your project has the appropriate level of support from the business and provides you with a level of authorisation to  smooth out any political issues.

Weekly Reports

Part of being a good Project Manager is being a good communicator.  A good communicator can convey information both orally and in writing.  One of the key communications is a weekly status report.  This report can become an historic archive of the way that the project is progressing and can allow all stakeholders to see where you are against your schedule and budget and see what the major risks and issues are.

I have a template that I use each week, so that the stake holders can see the progress easily.  This report is produced on Friday afternoon and distributed to the required stakeholders.  I then place this report into a folder within my project site on SharePoint so that anyone can see the report.  The target of this report is to be a single printed page, as any more may take too long for a senior stakeholder to read.  I try to make the report graphical, so at a glance you can see which areas require attention.

Standard Documentation

Is there such a things as Standard Project Documentation? I know different methodologies state that there should be x, y and z, but is there any standard format to these? … And should there be?

Most companies have a communications department, which designs templates and colour schemes for corporate literature, usually limited to external communications.  I have worked with guidelines for logos, colour schemes and fonts, but usually this have been for external documentation and website designs.

Define the Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person, group, organisation, member or system who affects or can be affected by an organisation's actions.   

In terms of Prince2, the definition of a project refers to a temporary organisation and therefore the Project Stakeholders are the people, groups, systems that are directly affected by the delivery of the business products of the project.  From the early stages of a project, the Project Manager must identify the key stakeholders and understand the influence they will have on the product delivery. 

Stakeholders may be internal or external, such as Trade Unions, or external support.  The stakeholders may benefit from the project, however, to some the project may deliver a negative effect, such as reducing team sizes.   

Identifying and working with the stakeholders is a key task in the early stages of your projects.  As I am from a Prince2 background, i follow the standard 6 step approach to stakeholder engagement and interaction.   

1. Who - Identify the key stakeholders 
2.  What - Understand what the project will mean to the stakeholders.  They may gain or loose as products are delivered and therefore their commitment and influence will need to be managed. 
3.  How - This is the defining of the method of communication to the stakeholder.  This will set out the frequency and content of the information that needs to be communicated. 
4.  When - This will define when the communications and the engagement of the different stakeholders will be required. 
5.  Do - This is a simple reminder - You must engage with the stakeholders.  Make sure you do.  You cannot deliver a product without their help, as it may not be fit for purpose. 
6.  Results - Check that the engagement and communication has been successful.  Learn from feedback. 

I actually think the 6 step process is a little over the top and will tailor the steps to suite my requirements.  The key point is to make sure your stakeholders are engaged early within the project.  Be careful, the stakeholder may influence the business in a positive or negative way, so choose your stakeholders wisely.  Stakeholders generally include people from the Project Team, Senior Management, the Customer, Resource Managers, User groups, Trade Unions. 

Define the stakeholder, Engage the stakeholder and Deliver a successful project !