Five Key Principles

No matter the situation, there is a common set of principles that you can apply to better manage any project where there are significant differences in the composition of the team. The differences can include location, business function, or cultural aspects. Let’s take a look at the five fundamental principles that will guide your efforts in any of these situations:

 Caution

These project environments can, and usually do, create risks around work productivity and communication effectiveness because there is often a greater chance for misunderstandings.

1. It’s the same, but more—The first principle to understand is that it does not take additional or new management techniques to be effective at leading these types of projects. These project situations just place more emphasis and importance on the project management fundamentals. In particular, these aspects of project management become essential:
   • Well-defined and properly planned project
   • Effective project sponsorship
   • Buy-in and commitment on success criteria
   • Well-managed expectations
   • Clear roles and responsibilities
   • Effective communications
   • Effective risk management
   In addition, the discipline to properly document plans, meeting minutes, decisions, and issues is generally more important due to the need to ensure proper and clear communications.
2. The right leadership approach—The best project leaders in these situations are ones who possess the right mix of communication, facilitative, interpersonal, and expectation management skills to accomplish the following: NoteA servant leadership approach is often most effective for these types of projects. See the discussion of servant leadership in “Leading a Project.”
   • Instill confidence in the stakeholders that they can lead the team to the accomplishment of the project objectives.
   • Take the perspective of each stakeholder group to ensure each group believes they are included, understood, valued, and heard in the project process.
   • Create alignment around the project goals and concentrate the team’s focus on what unifies them (the common ground).
   • Help each stakeholder group understand how their piece (work process, interests, and needs) fits into the overall puzzle.
   • Take a flexible approach by maintaining focus on the major project priorities and an understanding that everything else is just a means for getting there.
3. Communication is king—As we reviewed in “Managing Project Communications,” effective project communications are a bedrock aspect of project management. Specifically, in these types of project situations, here are the key points to keep in mind:
   • Use communication mechanisms that are accessible to everyone.
   • Use project collaboration environments and techniques that are accessible to everyone.
   • Develop a project vocabulary. Be willing to use their terms and terms they understand. Be mindful of any confusion over terminology being used.
   • Plan on frequent touchpoints to compensate for the lack of face time, especially in virtual project team settings.
   • Document project communications, especially anything discussed verbally, to ensure mutual understanding and agreement.
   • Ensure that each team member is clear on the following at all times:
     • Project context
     • Project goals
     • Team members’ roles and responsibilities
     • Team members’ assignments
     • Project schedule
     • Project collaboration environments and tools
     • Chain of command and reporting relationships

Cross-Functional Project Issues

A prime cause of issues on cross-functional projects is neglect of a specific functional area or group. Make sure each affected stakeholder group is properly represented, consulted, respected, and kept informed.

Another prime cause for issues on cross-functional projects is poor performance by a functional leader. Common performance issues include the following:

• Not fulfilling role responsibilities
• Lack of functional knowledge or experience
• Misalignment of priorities; unable to meet time commitments for role
• Not consulting other members of their functional group
• Not keeping other members of their functional group informed
• Unable to complete reviews in a timely fashion

4. Verify understanding—In these project situations, more time is necessary to verify that you are being understood and that you (your team) accurately understand the other stakeholders. A few specific things to be mindful of include the following:
   • Be wary of any assumptions.
   • Ask the extra question to make sure.
   • Establish and clarify team norms and procedures.
   • Explain project processes and the value they serve.
   • The larger the project, the more effort to get through requirements definition and review cycles.
   • Requirements gathering needs to use multiple methods to ensure completeness and understanding.
   • Take the time to walk through their current processes.
5. More project management effort—This is somewhat implied by the first principle in this list, but it is important to understand that the project management component of these type of environments is more significant (as a rule). There can be a misperception that the effort to leverage these latest technologies and business trends to gain efficiency and accomplish projects faster also means less project management effort. Incorrect. The effort to lead, facilitate, ensure understanding, and build teamwork in these situations is at least equal to, and in most cases much greater than, the effort to do the same with a collocated team.

Reminder: To help build the sense of ownership, work with the designated functional leaders to perform the detail planning for the project.