Learning Solutions for Increased Project Performance

Welcome to Our April Issue

This month, our topic is Project Meetings. When they are run efficiently and effectively, meetings can be the glue that holds the project and the team together. When they are not, they can become time-sucking black holes that unnecessarily occupy resources when they could be working on project tasks. It’s up to the project manager to ensure that meetings are a valuable tool to obtain and give progress updates, make decisions, assign action items, and disseminate vital project information.

Included in this issue:

• Facilitation: Making the Meeting Easier for Others
• Project Management Q&A
• How to Be a Great Meeting Participant
• Sample Norms for Virtual Meetings
• Project Meeting Quick Tips
• Project Kick-Off Meeting Agenda Template
• Face-to-Face with Project Management
• Reading Room: Meetings
• Running an Effective Risk ID Meeting

Next Month’s Topic: Project Teams

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pmPractitioner is published as a service to the project management community. Each issue provides practical project management solutions and tips adapted from a variety of business publications and resources.

Facilitation: Making the Meeting Easier for Others

The role of the facilitator in a meeting is to guide a group of people through a cooperative process, including decision making and at times conflict resolution, so that the group can fulfill its purpose as easily as possible.

Core Pillars of Facilitation

• Be awake, be aware and listen – focus!
• Speak with personal power & clarity (empower yourself).
• Apply situational leadership.
• Work with emotions (yours and others, not letting them hijack the meeting).
• Work with conflict.
• Be resourceful and quick on your feet.
• Stay objective.

Facilitation Tips

• Listen to each individual and the group as a whole – gain a sense of the energy in the room.
• Watch for the “unspoken” - subtle messages and body language: your eyes will often see what you cannot hear.
• Listen for main points and trends, areas of agreement and disagreement, commitment (or its lack), contributions by subject matter experts, what’s present and what’s missing.
• Speak with personal power and positive energy. Use your voice and intonation as an instrument for engagement to direct, to encourage, to support, to calm, to inspire, and to lead.
• Manage time well – know where the flexibility is in your agenda. Ensure that everyone has time (and a way) to express themselves when their input is needed.
• Watch for complex issues and be prepared to decide if they can be handled within the agenda, or if the issue should be worked in another forum. Keep it relevant – if the entire team is not needed, suggest that the matter is taken off-line.

Adapted from Meeting Management Primer, Action for Results, Inc., 2006

April Project Management Q&A

Test your project management knowledge with these questions or use them as an exercise to help prepare for your PMP certification exam.

1. Planned versus actual technical performance, and project deliverables, are important inputs to the Perform Quality Control process.  Together these items are known as:

2. All of the following are disadvantages of the “majority rule” conflict strategy except: 

Answers appear at the end of the newsletter.

How to Be a Great Meeting Participant

Follow these tips and you’ll make meetings effective and meaningful for yourself and everyone involved:

• Prior to the meeting, review the agenda and complete any assignments you were given previously.
• Be on time. If you can’t be there, inform the facilitator in advance.
• Actively share responsibility for the meeting’s effectiveness. Respectfully contribute to managing the meeting’s process (but don’t take over).
• Exercise self-discipline by sticking to the topic, not interrupting and practicing “active listening.”
• Be a group observer as well as participant. Stay aware of non-verbal behavior (yours and others). Acknowledge and build on the comments of others.
• Ask for clarification on unclear points and be precise in your questions.
• Make disagreements principle based and use techniques of collaborative or integrative bargaining for resolution.
• Be willing to take on roles as needed and carry out responsibilities assigned.

Compiled by Edward G. Wertheim, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Human Resources Management, Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Sample Norms for Virtual Meetings

All project teams should develop a set of norms for their meetings and virtual teams are no exception. Here are some samples that you can use to begin to pull together your own set of virtual meeting norms.

• Be on time for video conferences, audio conferences and other meetings and attend the entire meeting.
• Rotate time zones for meetings in order to be equitable and fair.
• Link times and dates to a certain time zone (for example, Eastern Standard Time in North America).
• In video or audio conferences, keep the mute button on when not speaking.
• Take breaks every 60 or 90 minutes during audio and video conferences.
• Do not interrupt others in meetings.
• Respect the facilitator’s attempts to foster participation from all team members. Respect the agenda.
• An agenda is sent out via e-mail 48 hours in advance of every meeting and minutes are sent out via e-mail 48 hours after every meeting. Rotate taking minutes.
• If there are people attending the meeting or in the audio or video conference whose native language is different from the language in which the meeting is being conducted, give them time to think and time to speak. Provide “think breaks” so that people can gather their thoughts.
• At the end of each meeting, evaluate how the participants performed in terms of abiding by team norms.

From Action for Results, Inc., 2005

Project Meeting Quick Tips

Cutting to the Chase in Meetings
Do you have a team member who causes project meetings to bog down by talking too much or telling jokes? Stop it FAST with this method:

• Face the problem directly. “Okay, Jeff, we need to focus now.”
• Acknowledge that the person has good intentions. “Everyone appreciates a good joke.”
• Suggest a new behavior. “Let’s get serious – what do you recommend?”
• Try again by modifying or escalating your approach. You may have to forego subtleness in favor of toughness.

Adapted from 50 One-Minute Tips to Better Communication, Phillip E. Bozek. Crisp Publications

Always End with a Meeting Summary
Take five minutes to review the outcome of each agenda item, as well as the action items list. Doing this ends the meeting on a note of accomplishment and also reminds the attendees who’s responsible for what after the meeting adjourns. It’s also a good idea to review the meeting process. Ask the group what went well during the meeting and which areas need improvement. Take note of the comments and try to improve on them the next time you lead your group’s meeting.

Adapted from Better Business Meetings, Robert B. Nelson and Peter Economy, McGraw-Hill Publications

Not Your Normal Meeting Place
From time to time, hold a project meeting outside of the usual conference room. A local coffee shop or restaurant may offer a private room at no cost if you have breakfast or lunch. An outdoor meeting in nice weather, whether at a park or on office grounds, could work as well.  Changing the venue can encourage fresh perspectives or more energized participation.

From Action for Results, Inc.

Reducing Meeting Hostilities
Here’s a neat little trick that works wonders to help reduce friction in project meetings. If you have a couple of hostile team members, seat them directly next to each other during project meetings. It is much more difficult for them to confront one another when they are seated side-by-side, than seated across or several seats away. Try it – it really works.

Adapted from The Busy Manager’s Guide to Successful Meetings, Karen Anderson (out of print)

Project Kick-Off Meeting Agenda Template

One of the most important project meetings for the team and stakeholders will be the project kick-off. Use this meeting agenda template to help you begin to organize the structure of the meeting and customize as needed.

From Action for Results, Inc.

Face-to-Face with Project Management

It’s understandable how project managers can get lost in spreadsheets, software programs, and PERT, Gantt, and CPM charts in trying to keep a project on track. Although reports, tracking systems and memos can supply needed updates, face-to-face meetings – and the open communications they encourage – can be the most important aspect in the project management life cycle.

Here are some examples of meetings that should take place over the course of the project:

Key Turnover Meetings: Their purpose is to pass project information from departments currently involved with the project to departments coming on board. For example, engineering to fabrication or engineering to field installation.

Weekly Project Team Meetings: These meetings allow team members to interact, evaluate schedules, and address problems or issues. This gives the project manager an opportunity to assess the project status and adjust manpower to ensure the team will meet milestone objectives.

Customer Meetings: These meetings allow the customer and project manager to communicate design information. It is imperative to keep the customer involved to ensure there are no discrepancies between what the customer wants and what is delivered.

Notwithstanding schedule conflicts, business travel, and e-mails that provide a ready excuse for the non-personal exchange of information, face-to-face meetings should occur whenever possible as the project moves from stage to stage. When the last milestone is reached, the project manager conducts a “post-project meeting” with her team. Team members provide candid input about “what went well” and “what went badly” and offer suggestions on how to improve future projects.

Adapted from Using a Project Management Methodology for a Control System Project, Alan Kelm, 2002

Reading Room: Meetings & Facilitation

Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!: Ten Principles for Leading Meetings That Matter, Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, Berrett-Koehler, 2007

Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, Sam Kaner, Jossey-Bass, 2007

How to Make Meetings Work!, Michael Doyle, Berkley Trade, 1993

Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings, Barbara J. Streibel, McGraw-Hill, 2003

Robert’s Rules of Order in Brief, Henry M. Robert III, Da Capo Press, 2004

Successful Meetings: How to Plan, Prepare, and Execute Top-Notch Business Meetings, Shri L. Henkel, Atlantic Publishing Co, 2007

Running an Effective Risk ID Meeting

Planning risk management is an integral part of your overall project planning process and the best kick-off is an effective, comprehensive risk identification meeting.

To get the most value from this session:

• Have your risk ID session run by a skilled, independent facilitator.
• Conduct your session in a large enough room with plenty of wall space, flipcharts, tape and sticky note pads.
• Make sure the right people attend and that you have diversity of opinions in the session. Representatives from all functions should be included.
• Ensure all participants understand the project risk management process and standard terms before brainstorming begins.
• Have essential information readily available during the session, including business case, product requirements, historical data, budgets and other project planning outputs, etc.

Adapted from Using a Project Management Methodology for a Control System Project, Alan Kelm, 2002

Answers to April Q&A

1. (d) is your choice here.

While schedule performance information might sound plausible, there is no such term in PMBOK®. If you’ll be taking the PMP® Exam, watch for made up phrases that sound right.

[Monitoring and Controlling], PMBOK Guide Fourth Edition, p. 208

2. (b) is correct. (Consensus building can be time consuming.)

This is actually a disadvantage of lose-lose conflict strategy. Answer “C” (Can induce “us vs. them” mentality) is certainly a disadvantage of this strategy and can cause energies to be spent on how to defeat the other part.

[Monitoring & Controlling], Human Resource Skills for the Project Manager, Vijay K. Verma, Volume 2