By Suren
Most often than not the ways of work listed below tends to take place in a general project context but more than often in a non-controlled manner, there are no straight forward guidelines to set this up or to be able to control this, but as a Project manager or PMO the environment to encourage this can be built. Below are some of the ways of work I have identified together with some recommendation to build the right project environment to encourage this behaviour or at least not discourage them!!
Invisible Work
Most of the time there is an amount of work undertaken in a project that is not recorded in any project document or process documents, yet it adds to the overall process improvement / project implementation and most often than not this is a task the individual takes on not expecting any recognisition. Underlying pre-requisite for this is to give members the ownership of the project, too many controls in the project environment and the positive effects of invisible work dies out and the negative effects spreads within i.e. lack of ownership, team disconnect, work to rule syndrome etc.
Impact groups
This occurs when individuals form a bond together on a particular problem within the project and then work together to solve it and then move away. This group tend to be very efficient than the groups that has been setup to solve an issue since Impact group’s main focus is to get the job done and move on to their routine, so by human nature they work to solving the problem sooner than later. PMO cannot identify these groups until they are formed, but when they do they need to make sure the individuals in them are allowed to move on to other areas once the issue is rectified, if not this group’s efficiency tends to fall if there are not moved around.
Influence teams
An influence team is created by combinations of business users who come in from different areas of the business and some external parties either directly or indirectly connected to the project. From a project point of view, the PMO needs to be able to identify these influence teams and make sure that either they or their ideas are brought in during project requirement gathering phases, more often than not the business users are the only ones involved, but it wouldn’t hurt to bring in the external parties as well, I’ve seen this happening in only a few projects.
Hope you found this quick post informative, I’ll be adding more of this as it hovers above me......
Have a nice day!!
