With the prior principles understood, let’s review a few proven tips and techniques specific to leading cross-functional projects that I have either confirmed or realized over the years:
- Ensure proper project sponsorship and governance—Any time a project’s scope addresses more than a single business function, it is critical that the project sponsor have jurisdiction over all the business functions affected. If the sponsor does not have this jurisdiction, then a process (often by a senior-level committee—steering committee, change control board) needs to be established up front to deal with any territorial issue or change request that affects the cross-functional environment.
- Designate functional leaders—As part of your project organization and your role-responsibility matrix, include functional leader positions as the primary representatives from each distinct group. These roles are instrumental in facilitating the project process and reducing your workload.
- Acknowledge the importance and value of each group—Although you might serve as the ringmaster and steadfastly communicate the vision and process approach for the project, you should be quick to acknowledge the importance, value, and role that each group contributes to the success of the project. You don’t have all the answers, so you need to facilitate the execution of the project and instill a sense of ownership into each of your functional leaders.
- Get commitments from respective resource managers—As part of the collaborative approach that is needed for these types of projects, make sure to work closely with the various resource managers who are responsible for assigning the appropriate personnel to the project. In many cases, the resource managers are the bosses of the individuals who will serve as your designated functional leads. Invest the time with them. Review the project definition with them. Include them on the review and acceptance of the project plan, especially the resource plan and project schedule.
TipMake sure to include the resource managers and, if they’re not the same person, the bosses of the functional leaders in your project communications. - Ensure project alignment—If you were not involved in the project definition process, make sure your cross-functional project is aligned with the other projects underway or planned in the enterprise. There is nothing worse for team spirit and commitment than starting a project that has an obvious conflict with other initiatives.
- Focus on workflow process—To add more value to the project, to better serve your role as facilitator, and to help you make better decisions, invest the effort early to understand the complete workflow process that is affected by the project. In many cases, your functional leaders will have silo outlooks and will not fully understand how they get the inputs they do or how their outputs affect the rest of the operation.
- Kickoff meetings are essential—Kickoff meetings are always excellent tools for setting expectations and communicating the same message to the key stakeholders. On cross-functional projects, where multiple departments or business units are involved, this type of event is critical to getting the project started correctly and improving the chances for success.
- Resolve issues aggressively—On cross-functional projects, you are likely to see issues occur that do not have a clear owner. As discussed in detail in “Managing Project Issues,” it is imperative that you take an aggressive attitude toward finding resolutions to any issue to protect the project’s critical success factors.
- Look out for dysfunctional relations—Now, you would think that because the various functional areas are all members of the same, common organization that it would be one big happy family. Well, people are people, families are families, and dysfunction is always close by. Just understand that in many organizations, there can be historical disputes between functional groups or individuals within the group that affect your project’s performance.
- Invest time on communications planning—As mentioned many times in many different ways, communication is key to project success. For cross-functional projects, you need to invest additional time in planning your project communications due to the heightened importance they will have in this setting and to the increased number of stakeholders that need to be included.
- Invest time on requirements definition—As discussed in “Managing Expectations,” the requirements definition process is often the source for missed expectations. This is especially true with cross-functional projects due to the increased breadth of scope, the number of stakeholders, and the team dynamics that can come into play. In addition, as mentioned in the fourth principle in managing these types of projects, more effort is needed to verify understanding. The key is to plan adequate time and effort for a thorough requirements definition phase, so you can avoid the common problems that contribute to insufficient requirements definition, including the following:
NoteCross-functional projects are excellent candidates for conducting project and requirements definitions as a project by itself (as discussed in “Defining a Project”) due to the number of stakeholders that need to be consulted and the potential change impact. - Reluctant signatures—Stakeholders who approve requirements without a real understanding or buy-in. Be especially cognizant of stakeholders who are quiet, susceptible to peer pressure, or offer no nonverbal signs that the light bulb has gone on.
CautionWatch out for stakeholders who are signing off on (accepting) requirements without complete understanding. Although this might get you through a milestone, it will come back and bite you before you’re done. - Misunderstandings, assumptions, and unstated expectations—Use multiple requirements gathering methods, leverage visual models, ask extra questions, and focus on change impact. TipTo better achieve a common understanding of requirements on cross-functional projects, leverage visual models and prototypes of those requirements as early and often as possible.
Leave a Reply