You are here:
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Project Communication – A Powerful New Tool
You have to be a member to view this video.
It is Friday afternoon; the president of your company just informed you he has to report to the Board of Directors about your project and its status. This is to be his presentation during their lunch break on Monday. He asks for a summary of your project, using text, graphs and charts - what aspects of it are on, ahead or behind time; who is responsible for each of the project's major tasks; how the project is performing in terms of the budget; how well the project is meeting its objectives; what major problems have cropped up; and generally how well the project is presently progressing, coupled with a forecast for the next three months.
Providing all this information could fill a book. You consider calling up Microsoft Project or Primavera P3 or some other project management software program you have been diligently using, and then compile all requested data.
One thing holding you back is the time involved with preparing such a report. You and your team are deploying a major milestone this weekend, and a report like this will take up a lot of energy that would otherwise go to the project. The performance of the project could well suffer because your president wants such a comprehensive report.
In addition, you know that the Board will, at best, be very limited on time. Senior managers usually only have the time to read highlights. They just cannot read all of a multi-page report; instead, they look for key indicators and the most vital of information. If this proves incomplete or unsatisfactory, they will be relentless in pursuit of understanding. Therefore, you must be thorough and disclose both good and bad news.
What to do? Should you delay your deployment and devote all of the next weekend and some of your best people to preparing such a report, or should you do the best you can, alone, and hope the Board is diverted by other issues prior to their lunch, and therefore not as piercing as usual?
The best solution is actually neither of these. What you should do - and what you should have been doing from the beginning of your project - is simply providing a copy of your one-page project manager. It can be done quickly and easily and without endangering the project's performance. And all the information required can be summarized on one page using intuitive, meaningful graphics that even the busiest senior manager and board member will quickly comprehend.
That is the promise of the one-page project manager - it will convey all the salient information a project's stakeholders need to know and provide it on a timely, easy-to-understand and easy-to-compile format. From my experience, in managing dozens of projects - ranging from celebrating the bicentennial of the U. S. Constitution with Chief Justice Warren Berger, to implementing an SAP enterprise-wide solution, to building an automated distribution center, to winning a coveted management prize, to reengineering a major business process, to launching a new internet business, to gaining ISO 9000 certification - the one-page project manager works! It informs, it keeps people focused on what is important, it makes clear who is responsible for what, it tracks how well the project is performing based on several variables - and it does all this on one, simple, 8½-inch-by 11-inch piece of paper.
Sound too good to be true? Is it magic or real? Listen to the webinar and you will see, as we construct one together, that every promise just made, the one-page project manager can fulfill.
Clark A. Campbell
Clark Campbell's best selling book, The One-Page Project Manager, published by John Wiley & Sons, is in its fifth printing. His second book, The One-Page Project Manager for IT Projects, is scheduled for release by Wiley in August 2008. Clark has advised corporations and taught university graduate students the power and simplicity of The One-Page Project Manager.
Members have the ability to post comments for webinars.
