One fair day, one of
our clients asked me over a coffee, what is your competitive advantage? Several
answers started in my mind as a slideshow; Project Management, Requirement
Analysis, bla bla bla… All jargons! But none of them could delight me, so I
asked myself “Really???” and I got “Absolutely Not!” as a kickback. Then after self-examination,
it finally alarmed in my mind that “It’s your team moron!”
Yes it’s my team, and
without them I can’t succeed and as a project manager, it’s my duty to serve them. Every PM must understand that your team is human
at last; they have emotions, aspirations, weaknesses, strengths, attitudes and
so on. So while managing project, understand that you need to manage people
too.
More than a project manager perform like facilitator!
Try to diagnose and expel all obstacles for your team e.g. Understanding
requirements, explaining flows, any infrastructural issues that is hampering
productivity of your team, avoiding unwanted long meetings where people are
struggling to be concentrated. Do all possible things which will increase
velocity of your team and automatically of your project. Serve their all valid
demands or problems because your project’s success is built upon them rather
than any Gantt Chart!
As people’s manager one should:
- Understand team very closely. Ask them for their ideas, issues etc. Note their inputs and operate on them
- Understand their career aspirations. Become mentor rather than boss!
- Always give them unclouded views about entire project, vision behind the same
- Motivate them by providing proper appreciations. Performance of people increased when we started performer of the week awards!
- Always be keen about what is affecting productivity of the team
- Handle egos in team well
Nowadays, Agile project management approach gives you more resultant tools and
techniques to handle your project, learn them! One of the KRA for project
manager is to increase team’s efficiency and create healthy team environment in
organization
"The strength
of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team" --Phil Jackson
