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| Eight Factors in Do-it-Yourself Projects | ||
| Factor
1 – Gather the Right People Try to get the right people for the project. Although each of these eight factors is important, this one is probably the most important point. Spend as much time politicking and working to obtain the brightest, hardest-working, people-oriented, goal-oriented, experienced people that you can get. This will make the other factors go much more easily. Factor 2 – Give Them Training If your project team needs any training, identify it, budget for it, and schedule your people to get trained on whatever skills or products they’ll need. Although quite a lot of us get only on-the-job training and do quite well with it, by sending all your people to the exact same training, they’ll have a common background and terminology with which to communicate. If you are the project manager or team leader, you might want to attend some of this training, as well, if only to help you understand your subordinates better. However, if you trust your team, you may find that you don’t really need to learn all the same things that the team does if you and they have strong avenues of communication. Factor 3 – Get Management Support If the management above you and for the groups that are involved doesn’t truly support your project, it’s much more likely to fail. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it’s unlikely to succeed. If you have their full support, they’re more likely to stick their necks out to help you when you need help. Most project managers or team leaders will need some sort of help at one point or another. Factor 4 – Get Vendor Support Get your software vendor on your side. For one, they can be helpful and give you advice when you need it. For another, you’ll find it takes too much of your time away from leading the team or managing the project if you have to spend your time fighting with your software vendor. In fact, bad relationships, on the whole, are one big sinkhole that sucks your time away from the critical things you need to accomplish. Factor 5 – Determine If You Need An Expert If your project doesn’t have the time the get junior people up-to-speed or needs help getting them up-to-speed very quickly, you need an expert. If you believe your implementation will be tricky in any way, you need an expert. However, if you’re not an expert, it’s probably hard to know if your implementation will be especially tricky. If you already are an expert, then you don’t need another one. There’s no simple solution to this problem but to ask for advice wherever you can, such as from your software vendor (see Factor # 4) or others who have done similar projects. Factor 6 – Determine the Duration of the Expert’s Involvement For how long do you need an expert? Unless your expert is part of a fairly permanent project team, you need to plan carefully for the amount of time you’ll need from this person. Some projects will pay experts to stay around for long periods just in case they might be needed. This is an expensive practice. Additionally, people who are experts at something are usually looking for new challenges and might not want to stay around merely to do very little and wait to see if anything comes up. Instead—and I realize how difficult this is—you need to plan to have your expert come back for follow-up work. If your experts are truly professional, they are willing to help you with this. Factor 7 – Determining What The Expert Is Expert In Somewhere in this process, you’ve determined what kind of expert you need. Now, you need to find out if the person you are considering is truly an expert and in what area. For example, someone can be an expert in implementing a software package, but not experienced with leading people. If you are looking for someone with both these skills, you need to determine that he or she actually has these skills. Asking them if they are an expert and having them say, “Yes,” is not enough. You need to check references, question them thoroughly, and apply whatever method you believe will give you assurances that you are getting what you’re paying for. Factor 8 – Expert as Mentor and Leader Regardless what type of expert you need, the expert should be a mentor and a leader. There should be knowledge transfer going on. You want someone who your other team members feel comfortable going to with questions and who will not just fix things for them but teach them how to fix things for themselves. You need someone who can enable the entire team to learn quickly and make the entire project successful. Best Wishes To those of you starting projects, my best wishes go out to you. Keeping these factors in mind won’t automatically make your project successful, but will help you over some of the common stumbling blocks. |
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