Project Management Book

...chapter 10 continued

Weekly status meeting

Each Monday morning the project manager meets with the team leader(s). Keep the meeting informal and relaxed but at the same time factual and objective. So it's not: "it's fine boss, don't worry...", each team leader reports:

• tasks done or not done versus the plan
• hours worked versus plan
• problems and how they are being dealt with by the team
• status of issues and risks
• how the team leader has re-jigged his plan. Even though the re-jigging has been within their tolerance they keep the project manager - and other team leaders - informed about how they have changed their plan.
• problems the team leader needs to escalate to the project manager
• permission to change things which are outside their tolerance limits, e.g. to move a milestone.

It might take half an hour or so per team leader, so it'll be a long morning if you have 6 team leaders.

The project manager should tell the team leaders about the discussions he has had with the project sponsor and get the team leaders to pass that to the team members. This is often overlooked, but it can aid team morale and motivation if they are kept in touch with what the bigwigs are talking about.

One benefit of tasks that are about a week long is that they are either done or they are not done - end of debate. With long tasks one can spend all Monday morning debating how far through they are this week. Long tasks tend to remain 90% complete for about half their lifespan. Never have anyone report 'percent completed' for a project task, it's meaningless.

Minute these weekly meetings. Just the facts reported by the team leaders, permissions given and actions agreed.

Clearly, if major problems or issues arise during the week the team leader shouldn't wait for the Monday morning meeting to tell the project manager.

Whole team meeting

Every now and again get the whole project team together. How often depends on many factors. In a large project perhaps a monthly whole-team meeting (and more frequent meetings of sub teams as discussed above). Sometimes, perhaps at critical times in the project, a ten minute project team meeting at the start of each day may be appropriate.

Monthly status meeting

Once a month present status to the sponsor. We give an illustration of this below.

In a large project there will be an extra layer of management. There will be a project director, below him project managers and below them project leaders and or team leaders. In this case the project director may hold a monthly meeting at which each project manager formally presents the status of their (sub) project. Some project directors like to run this monthly meeting with all project manager and all team leaders present and the reporting actually isn't done by the project managers but by one of their (well rehearsed) team leaders on their behalf. Sometimes called leapfrog reporting. Why do it this way? Well, it's excellent experience for the team leaders and helps them develop their project management skills. But some project directors feel they get a truer picture of what's going on from a team leader than they would from a project manager. Project managers sometimes put a gloss on things whereas team leaders tend to tell it like it is. This sort of forum also aids cross-project (cross-programme) team building and communication.

Project Monthly Report (PMR)

Let us see what would be shown to the sponsor (or project director, as in the previous paragraph) in the monthly status meeting.

Please imagine you are the project sponsor. Have a look at this and see how you feel about your project:

You have a big grin on your face, you are being told everything is wonderful. But have a look at a bit more of the report:

Would you now believe the green status and the yes column? What are we being told:

• we've spent 10% more hours to date than we should have
• we've completed a third less tasks than we should have
• completed tasks have taken 20% more hours to complete than we expected

This project cannot be green, the yes column cannot be correct.

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