Tricks of the Trade for Managing a Successful Project
1. THINK ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE:
Maintaining perspective enables you to understand where you want to go and how you plan to get there. Share this picture with your project partners.
2. PLAN FOR THE BEST; RISK ASSESS FOR THE WORST:
Evaluate your planned process critically.
Avoid risk - Rethink the process to completely circumvent the problem. This is used to avoid serious problems;
Control/Mitigate risk - reduces impact or likelihood (or both) through immediate steps. This is done by rethinking certain parts of the process to minimise the risk. Also develop extra processes to minimise the effect.
3. VIEW PEOPLE AS ALLIES, NOT ADVERSARIES:
Focus on common goals, not individual agendas.
4. RESPECT THE PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS:
Accept risk - Take the chance of negative impact, eventually budget the cost;
Transfer risk - Outsource parts of the process/full process to external departments/companies thus transferring the risk under their responsibility.
Finding a quality that you can respect in individuals allows you to focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses.