Lucid Meetings Blog

Getting the Project Started

Have you ever sat down to get start work on a new project that you were handed and then run into some sort of strange project manager's “writer's block”? I have.

I'm guessing at some time or another most of us have.

The economy hasn’t completely turned around yet, but it is getting better. Unemployment rates are slowly going down, foreclosures are dropping, and house values are finally going up again.

But it still isn’t easy to find a job – you’ll know this if you’ve applied to any in the last year or so. It’s still tough and there are still a lot of jobs you apply for and never hear about again even though you looked like a perfect match.

And those others where you interviewed and maybe were even a finalist and then…nothing…or a surprising flush.

Have you ever had a project client come to you and say, “Can we implement this a month sooner than we originally planned?” No, that never happens…right? As a technical project manager, if something similar hasn’t already happened to you, trust me, it will.

Performance, performance, performance. Doing more with less. Making the most of what you are given. Meeting the needs of the project customer head-on.

Are you and your team doing these things every day on your project?

Your competition is, so you better be. But how? How do you get the most out of your team?

How do you ensure they are performing at their individual best and at their best as a team?

What can you do as a project manager and fellow project team member to help get them to that level of cohesiveness and performance?

In my opinion – based on I how have managed project teams…both successfully and in failure…it comes down to three main concepts to get the most out of your teams… 

You can look at project success from many angles and probably come up with a dozen different ways to measure it.

However, there are really three main keys to project success:

• on time delivery
• on budget delivery, and
• exceeding customer expectations

Some project managers like to include quality in there as well, and you can, but usually a customer won’t be satisfied with a project that is delivered sub-standard.

So, in my book, customer satisfaction covers quality too.

Is one more important than the other? Well, that depends on why the project may be going over time or over budget.

Meetings come 3 general forms:

1. The traditional face-to-face meeting
2. conference calls, and
3. video conference calls

There are probably some variations you can think of on these three based on different technology, but this about covers it.

Now, consider you’re working with a remote team – you’re the project manager and your team is geographically dispersed so you’re never co-located…you may never be throughout the entire project engagement.

I’ve worked several projects like this where I never even met any members of my team face-to-face during the entire project.

Related: 4 ways to run status meetings with your remote team that actually work

How do you keep virtual team meetings cohesive and focused during such a project? How do you make sure everyone is working their respective tasks and you’re consistently getting closer to a working end solution? Are meetings important?

Communication is always critical and meetings are probably more important than ever on an engagement like the one I’m describing here.

When you’re running meetings where everyone is remote and may never meet face-to-face, there are three things you need to ensure are always happening…