Project Management is undoubtedly a teamwork matter. If the team is not willing to work, under no circumstances will the project be delivered on time and successfully. But a team cannot exist without its leader and when we are talking about Project Management teams, guess who plays the team leader’s role. Well, yes it’s the Project Manager! So, apart from all the other responsibilities Project Managers have, they should find the way to inspire their team in order to get the most out of it and deliver successful projects. It’s totally an offense and defense job as Andrea Mulligan, CEO of Sophity LLC describes.
In order to be ready to play offense and defense, we have collected five (5) simple ways that already helped managers with collaborative project management:
1. Be balanced and fair:
This is the first thing that Andrea underlines in order to be the winner of the battle. There is nothing worse than the feeling of being wronged in a team, or having a leader that has a different attitude among different members.
2. Provide motivators:
What comes second according to Andrea is to stimulate your team to boost their productivity. This stimulus can be from a verbal endorsement to a financial bonus! Think of yourself, wouldn’t you really do your best if you knew that you will be recognized for your efforts?
3. Start using software tools:
Pick CRM Project Management tools, collaborative Project Management app, Business Intelligence Project Management solutions, Project Tracking and Task Tracking software or any other combination that fits your needs and start using it immediately! You will be surprised of the advantages that teamwork online can offer to your daily business collaboration. Frequent communication across the team is really critical for successful projects according to William Anderson.
4. Enhance the “Not Alone” feeling:
Rebecca Bredholt describes the way they work in Sutter Group: before anything goes out the door it’s seen by the keeper of the flame. Thus, they prevent anyone from feeling like they are going it alone. Two pairs of eyes are totally better than one, so apart from the collaborative feeling you will also have a project with better quality.
5. Invite all team members to all meetings:
Every single member of your team should be invited to all meetings, even if they are not working on that one piece. Rebecca quotes that “it helps trigger reminders”. Even before the actual beginning of the project, sharing all the information with all the team is really important, as William Anderson says, they start every project with a brief that is distributed to the entire team and any key stakeholders.
