• Define the issues and goals. Ask yourself how a project will contribute toward group and organizational goals. Target one or two key benefits the project will bring to the organization.
• Break it up. Split large projects into smaller pieces, or tracks, each with its own deadline. Remember to clearly outline dependencies and to determine milestones accordingly. Extremely large efforts may require splitting the Project into sub-projects, each with it's own Project Manager (or lead), which is then managed and dovetailed to the Master plan by the Program Manager.
• Communicate goals and deadlines.Be sure all project team members know exactly what the project is intended to do and when each part must be finished. Make sure team members understand key dependencies. Explain how the project will benefit the team and what priority it should receive. Meaningful, thorough communication should also be disbursed to all stakeholders at each milestone in the project.
• Bring in key people. Talk to people who will be affected by the project, including people you'll need to contact for support and resource acquisition. These are the project stakeholders. When planning a project, consult people in different positions and departments to get the big picture. Relationships and information can mean the difference between success and failure.
• Get feedback early. Consult important decision makers and others early in the planning process to save time and add quality to your projects. Objective viewpoints can help you avoid problems and predict the optimal amount of time and resources needed to reach goals. Remember, it is valuable to hear feedback from those who are not your top supporters. If you can listen to their concerns and satisfactorily mitigate the risks they bring up, you will have laid significant groundwork for success.
• Measure progress. Work with the team to define quantitative measurements for progress at the beginning of a project. In other words, ask the questions - How will we know we have succeeded? When will we know we are done? Communicate the numbers regularly and post publicly, for example, on the project website. Make sure to check and interpret the numbers yourself on a regular basis and encourage team members and stakeholders to do the same.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Collaborative planning. Mentor your employee by modeling a real-life planning process for an important project. Help him or her refine the objectives and set up realistic milestones to measure progress. Offer suggestions on approach.
• Ask for a written outline/project plan. Ask your employee to draw up an outline/project plan that includes a summary of project goals and a breakdown of the project plan by phases/milestones. Discuss the plan together. Raise awareness of any gaps or weaknesses in the plan.
• Align with organizational goals. It is important to the employee to understand how the project at hand benefits the organizational goals and objectives. Work together to find ways to refine project goals to better serve the organization.

Suggestions for the Employee:

• Follow the experts. Talk to others who have run highly successful projects. Identify the key structures (tools, document templates, corporate culture, staffing) and procedures they used to keep the project moving, and ask them for any personal tips they can provide on managing people and resources.
• Solicit ideas from the team. Encourage ongoing comments and suggestions on project approach/methodology. Remember that your team members hold key skillsets; look for opportunities to put these skillsets in the spotlight. Implement the best suggestions to demonstrate the value of team input. Remember to ALWAYS give credit to team members. It will build a committed team.
• Identify weak areas. Look for specific processes that are slowing down the project. The problem may be an administrative requirement that slows things down or a specific person who is having a hard time handling the increased workload from the project. Work as a team to come up with strategies to reinforce weak areas. Continuously evaluate opportunities for improvement with team members.
• Focus on results. If your original approach isn't working out, determine why as a team and work to find a better way to meet project goals. It is better to handle problematic areas early on than to try to continue forward in a direction that will not be positive.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Focus on results. Tell your employee what work you need completed, and provide deadlines. If your organization is following a specific methodology, i.e. Sigma, TQM, make sure the employee understands how to best use the methodology. Make sure the employee has access to mentors as needed when incorporating complex methodologies. Give him or her as much freedom as possible to set up a system he or she can work with effectively.
• Provide mentorship opportunites. Introduce your employee to a co-worker who is an efficient project/program manager, or who has varied experience achieving results in the specific corporate culture. Encourage your employee to use the expert and others to get advice on project management strategies and methodology.

Suggestions for the Employee:

• Communicate roles, responsibilities and priorities. Work with the project team to define primary project roles and associated tasks for each employee. Try to align skills and interests with tasks to increase project efficiency and team support. Once agreement is reached by the project team, this now becomes part of the project team contract. Document and post the roles and responsibilities to the project website along with the meeting minutes.
• Check in with each team member. Spend a few minutes one on one with project members to make sure they understand and feel comfortable with their roles. Check in periodically as the project changes and progresses. Stay alert for signs of apathy or disenfranchisement. Listen carefully to what is being said. Often, team members have concerns they are afraid to voice because they don't want to appear as negative. These are precisely the type of feedback that is the most useful to the project manager as this surfaces potential pitfalls which can be mitigated.
• Understand effort required. Help project members understand the level of effort needed for the project; make suggestions on reorganizing work to accommodate important projects. Identify lower-priority tasks that can be dropped or postponed so that the team member does not feel overwhelmed. Depending on the effort required, and the length of time of the project, it may be worthwhile to consider contracting temporary staff to help get through some of the more task-dense segments of the project. Don't forget to have a fall back plan in place in the event that a key project team member is lost, i.e. illness, job transfer, relocation, etc.
• Milestones. Set up regular checkpoints to evaluate overall project progress and individual contributions and workloads. Most methodologies already build these milestones into specific phases. Make sure team members understand the milestone requirements and phasing of the effort. Remember to publicly acknowledge everyone's work effort. Broaden roles or refocus as needed after each milestone.
• Let the team make adjustments. Once the team understands project goals and deadlines, involve them in decisionmaking to adjust and split up roles. Make sure that all project members are involved and informed when this happens.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Encourage your employee to delegate. Sit down with your employee and go through a real-life planning process for an important project. Concentrate on delegating clear responsibilities to his or her staff. Review project plan and help employee exploit delegation opportunites either thru integrating with other related efforts, or by invoking resource assistance from management.

Suggestions for the Employee:

• Outline needs by project phase/tasks. Look at resource needs based on an inventory of skillsets, work plan and tasks for specific stages of the project. Outline worst-case and best-case scenarios for each segment to improve the accuracy of overall projections. There may be cases where the necessary skillsets are not available in house and require temporary external assistance. Make sure you clearly document requirements mapped back to the tasks. Summarize the number of full time employees needed based on the time requirements for tasks and the deadline.
• Create a Contingency plan. Identify internal and external factors that could affect the project and your original resource acquisition plans. This is also called a risk/mitigation plan. Develop basic contingency plans so you can move quickly to get resources and keep the project moving. If the contingency plan requires contractor labor, make sure to obtain pertinent information ahead of time from your company on the hiring process used for external, temporary resources. Sometimes vendor relationships and system setup requirements have a long lead time associated with them. It is important to know this up front.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and suppliers. Look for others who have a vested interest in your project and who may be able to contribute resources. Contact people you will need resources from as soon as possible. Give them time to deliver the best value. Remember to keep these stakeholders apprised of the progress of the project to ensure collaboration. Also remember to acknowledge the contribution made by these stakeholders as their allocation of resources and funding to your effort are a significant contributor to overall success.
• Ask the experts. When estimating completion time for a task, be sure to ask at least two people who have done the work before what their estimates would be. To be safe, some project managers take the most conservative time estimate and add a safety margin such as 25%.
• Get commitments in writing. When lining up project members, be sure to go over the tasks they are expected to complete and the anticipated time commitment in order to appropriately set up expectations. Do it face-to-face, then follow up with an e-mail that reiterates the details and requests a sign-off reply from them. Some companies and methodologies further formalize this commitment by creating agreements or "contracts" between parties.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Ask for detail. Have your employee draw up a list of anticipated project resource needs and costs. Your department may already use a standard template for budgeting and resource planning. Ask for as many specifics as possible making sure to discuss risk mitigation expenditures.
• History. Go over some previous projects with your employee and point out specific expenditures that could have been avoided with better planning and prioritization. Discuss beforehand how you want to handle exceptions so that expectations are clearly set up front.
• Cost Control. With economic tension so prevalent in today's economy, it is essential to stress the importance of cost control to the health of the organization. If an employee shows excellent resource management skills, reward that individual's efforts. Reduced operational expense can be as significant as increased sales.
• Reward good behaviours. Bonuses, whether financial or otherwise, and other public recognition should be awarded to employees who demonstrate good behaviours, such as efficient budget and resource management and quality deployments.
• Model the Way. It is important to lead by example. Set the standard for intelligent and efficient use of company resources. Consider assigning your employee to projects with mentorship opportunities.

Suggestions for the Employee:

• Leverage related efforts. Identify projects and people in other departments who might have integration opportunities with your project and who could add resources and expertise. Offering to join forces maximizes use of everyone's time and broadens the skillset pool. Make sure to engage your management to assist with cross-functional relationships.
• Support Team members. It is important to provide leadership support to project team members. Depending on the person's style/personality, it may be beneficial to touch base with the person daily at 8:30 in the morning. This helps to get a status, review plans for activities for the day, and answer any outstanding question the person may be afraid to ask in a group setting. This type of support goes a long way to providing team member comfort and a safety net approach to project deliverables. It also is very effective in keeping to the completion dates.
• Be a Team player. Try to be open and generous with your time and assistance to people outside your work group. Don't be afraid to make the first investment. Relationships are generally mutually beneficial and the investment made up front often pays large dividends down the road..
• Develop a reputation. Meeting commitments, displaying integrity and ensuring team member recognition builds your reputation. A good reputation will make it easier to enlist assistance on future projects since everyone appreciates alignment with winners.
• Network. Use informal contacts to stay current on work being done in other departments. This is useful to maximize leveraging opportunities and to deliver a solid result. Remember to always look for collaboration opportunities.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Make connections. Help your employee be successful by matchmaking people you know who could help with his or her project and in turn use some of his or her expertise. Also help your employee identify key informal contacts and communication channels.
• Provide opportunites for collaboration. Assigning your employee to cross functional efforts will improve his or her understanding of the organization as a whole and can position him or her to make valuable contacts for the future. Such collaboration is good for the team as a whole and will bring prestige to the department.
• Socialize your team. Maintain solid relationships with other teams, including cross functional collaboration, occassional work swap days for learning, in order to build rapport within the organization. Host teaming events and invite people from other key departments. Generosity of support on cross-organizational effort brings benefits down the road as the department is perceived as a key enabler for success.
• Communicate a shared vision. Develop and communicate a shared vision for your group as part of the organization. Be sure that everyone on the team understands the group's role in the organization and how to interact and cooperate with other groups.

Suggestions for the Employee:

• Build structure. Create a flow chart or storyboard of ongoing projects. Include in this chart responsibilities for each project, deadlines, project plans and involvement of other departments. Make sure to track key dates, such as end of quarters, which may absorb some team members full time at a critical project juncture.
• Manage your assets. Delegate more responsibility to team members according to skillset and interest, and focus your attention on project coordination. Recognize early on if more assistance is needed and if so, immediately go out and enlist.
• Look for more integration opportunities. Identify projects and/or specific project tasks that can be combined with ongoing work in other departments and which may be aligned with their goalsets. If working with consultants, coordinate requests for proposals to get the most out of their efforts.
• Tap your team for ideas. Keep the energy and enthusiasm on your project high by encouraging ongoing comments and suggestions on work processes and tasks. Implement the best suggestions to demonstrate the value of team work and make sure to publicly recognize the team input.
• Identify weaknesses or risk areas. Find the historians in the organization. Ask for their advice. Has a similar project ever been done before? This is a KEY question. If so, what were their successes or failures? Look for specific points on projects where work is often stopped. The problem could be technical limitations, an administrative requirement (such as contracting policies and vendors) that slows things down, or a specific person/group who is over allocated. It is essential to know these things up front to avoid stepping into quicksand.
• Allocate planning time each day. Evaluate progress daily and use overall objectives to prioritize work on projects. Don't underestimate the value of continous review.
• Issues Resolutions. Maintain an issues log and devote time each day to resolving and following up on issues. Keep an eye out for dependencies on problem resolution.
• Do not Over Allocate. Take a thorough look at proposed new project participation before adding them to your current workload. Make sure to set and communicate realistic goals and scope/time limits for your involvement.

Suggestions for the Manager:

• Build a model for mutual Success: Encourage task delegation. Have your employee delegate not only more tasks, but some of the more important ones, to other staff members. Get him or her to focus on coordinating and managing the overall work rather than on trying to complete individual tasks all by himself or herself.
• Help your employee integrate with other groups. Stay current with activities across the organization and Introduce him or her to people in other departments who are working on similar projects. Leverage your relationships with other managers to trade skills and staff time to keep all projects moving. This is mutually beneficial.
• Keep an open door. Encourage your staff member to come to you for help with project coordination. Helping to prioritize work and activities can help the staff member avoid hours of wasted time on what may be low priority items.
• Build trust: Honor your commitments and mentor your staff to do the same.

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