Complex Projects Alignment - Part B

(2020-09-03)

(... Continued from Part A)

Complex (and many simpler) projects can always benefit from improved alignment not only between the range of project personnel and stakeholders, but also within the assets of each participating organization such as the standard report templates, software, and project management systems. These organizational project assets (ref PMBOK® Guide) are a good topic for future articles.

Some of our earlier discussions include the project team-personnel theme on this page, such as the articles: “Happiness is... an Aligned Team” (2019-03-26); “Capital Projects Representatives of Operations & Maintenance for Process Plants (2020-07-29); and, “Complex Projects Alignment Part A” (2020-07-07).

How does a Sponsor or Project Manager expect a project team to quickly ramp up to perform safely, effectively and at top productivity when various groups of strangers from different organizations, sectors, and locations are suddenly pulled together for a project? Mountains of checklists, charts and graphs in company libraries, network drives, and iClouds won’t do it alone. Those procedural documents will be slow to learn and will only frustrate the participants.

This is where active project “champions” come in to enhance the harmony, productivity, and safety of an ALIGNED project team.

These champions (more than one per project) can be the Project Manager, Project Coordinators, Project Interface Managers, Project Services Representatives, SHER Representatives, PMO Managers, and others. They regularly try to view the “big picture” of the project to uncover disconnects between parties. They proactively coach and mentor personnel on the blended teams. They instinctively conduct informal alignment chats with “departments” whenever necessary, as well as participate enthusiastically in the formal team alignment sessions at the beginning of each project stage.

More to follow, including “formal” team alignment sessions.

(END OF PART B)