9 Habits of Project Leaders by Bhatt Puja

Author:Bhatt, Puja
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Project Management Institute

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

—Dalai Lama

6

CHAPTER

HABIT SIX

Don't just say it. Document it and share it.

DOCUMENT TO PROTECT

By nature, people prefer verbal communication. It's simple and quick. However, people do end up with short memories or convenient memories, and that causes severe implementation risk. In a matrix organization people are reassigned all the time and may not be accessible. This can be a big problem unless adequate documentation is maintained. Documentation is a formal and essential way of communicating from the start of the project to close out.

Per agile principles, face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication. Adding to that, we believe written communication is superior to verbal. For many reasons including legal, it is important to write down important events, instructions, changes, decisions, directions, and statements. A project leader should develop a project communications plan identifying what type of information needs to be written, in which form, and by whom. In many contracts, emails are not recognized as official documents even though they are written documents. Proper documentation can often prevent expensive lawsuits and claims. They also provide good historical data and lessons learned for executing similar projects in the future.

Public projects often require full written documentation for legal, environmental, public health, and financial reasons. There are too many projects where lack of proper documentation has caused a great deal of harm.

On one international power project, a mechanical subcontractor had a legitimate claim for extra work for nearly two million dollars based on verbal directions and approval received from the main contractor's construction manager. Suddenly, one day, the construction manager was reassigned to another project. The subcontractor filed the claim with the new construction manager, but it got rejected due to a lack of written documentation.

The project leader must routinely share important communication with his or her stakeholders in a timely manner, particularly on global projects where members are located half a globe away. I have experienced several projects in which the customer will often provide verbal instructions to change project scope and then not approve the resulting change order of additional cost and/or schedule. Many project managers have the habit of not sharing relevant information with their core group, client, or senior management, resulting in unpleasant delays and adverse cost impacts. One can avoid unnecessary rework if information is shared with the impacted party in a timely manner.

On one engineering project, the customer informed the project manager that they did not want to house the water treatment equipment. The project manager did not communicate and/or document the change and went on vacation. This resulted in a waste of over 500 man-hours spent on the design of a water treatment building that was not needed by the customer.

By “share it,” we mean share it with the right people, using the right message, at the right time, and through the right channel. Again, written is better than verbal. Images/graphs/photos can be better than written. Customized dashboards are a great way to share relevant information with stakeholders at all levels of the organization.

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