Best Practices for Leading Project Teams

© 2009 W303, Inc.

This page will be a work in process over the next six months as we capture all of the best practices learned and observed, and convert this into a more formal paper. In the mean time, the items listed thus far should be valuable and we'd appreciate any comments you have that will make this piece of work helpful to everyone leading teams.

After having led teams on complex global process transformation projects for a few years and completed Lean Six Sigma training, we would like to share some best practices learned and observed. Some of these things are tips to combat real world situations that develop on a project team but are not part of formal process and quality methodologies, while some are just reminders of often overlooked/minor techniques that are covered in formal methodologies.

Leading a team through a lengthy and complex project is not easy and there are many pitfalls along the way. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference in leading a team.

1. Leading a project is like playing team Chess and you are the captain. As the project lead, you must know the the next 3 or 4 moves at all times but more importantly, you must make sure your team knows and is comfortable with the next 3 or 4 moves in addition to the end goal/objective of the project.
   
2. Project Communications Like CNN^®: Real-time. Provide meeting minutes/summaries, action items, and agenda for next work session (even if tentative) to team immediately after a work session, preferably within a couple of hours.
   
3. Avoid the Lull. On a lengthy project, you probably developed a standing schedule for project meetings/work sessions that works for your team members' schedules at the beginning of the project. Finding a workable time with a global team can be a significant challenge and you may have little flexibility after you've identified workable meeting times. After you get about halfway through the project, the same schedule can become monotonous for project team members. It is important at this time to add some variety and try to change things up to keep it fresh and interesting for the team. This may include changing up the meeting time, but more likely and probably more effective, is to change meeting facilitation techniques a bit. Perhaps schedule a few minutes for some work or project related levity during the work session, have a team member facilitate all or part of a work session, or anything else to make it feel different.
   
4. Delegate Standard Tasks and Change Assignments. As a project leader, you must get comfortable with delegating tasks to team members quickly and early. Right out of the gate, assign a team member to handle meeting minutes/summaries (though set a quick turnaround expectation with them - per #2) and assign a different team member to be the "Parking Lot Attendant" who will document parking lot items, reintroduce parking lot items if they become relevant to a discussion, and ensure that time is allocated by the project lead to re-address parking lot items at a later time. After a team member has been responsible for these tasks for a while, change it up and have them hand it off to another team member.
   

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