NewYork2008:Navigating internal politics and relationships

Politics of Project Management facilitated by Mohammed

Managing relationships with people
Ambiguous authority
Empowerment

• In Nonprofit sector - degree of emotional involvement in the work is more intense than corporate work
• Establish formal & informal communication with stakeholders - customize to each stakeholder
• Understand what each stakeholder cares about (their concerns, emotional involvement) and manage the relationship with that in mind
• People that don't understand technology and are concerned about costs - need extra explanations for simple technical/project needs
• Having a decision maker that does not understand technology causes a lot of extra work
• Trainings for decision makers on technology does not always work - hard to schedule and gain their interest
• Forces PMs to think carefully about projects and what they are doing
• Rephrasing things in layman's terms can help PMs fully understand the project/technology
• Need to communicate the changes fully to decision makers so they care/are interested in trainings
• Personal training sessions for technophobes help them understand technology the way they need to

• Managers that "think" they know a lot about technology - challenging, annoying
• Need to be able to make a case for the technology being requested (new, cool software needs a purpose)
• Why? is always a useful question - why is it needed? what is the purpose?
• Delegate right back to person who requests things - ask them to document what they want and often it won't happen
• Who is going to maintain cool, new ideas in the organization?

• How to have conversations about technology with people who are scared of it
• Point to concrete outcomes - time saving, money saving, money making
• Stress in dealing with anything technological
• Lure people into participation with simple explanations and technical implementations
• Strip things down to basic language - simple illustrations or metaphors - a picture is worth a thousand words
• "Hot swapping is like working on a plane when its in flight"

• Wanting more involvement from higher ups but not getting it
• Iterative production for projects where there is not a lot of direction - expect changes
• Don't become too wrapped up in the dysfunction and withdraw
• Need to have a positive attitude or move on

• "Planned vs. emerging projects"
• Articulate costs so everyone understands the costs of random projects that come up
• Pressure for web-based projects - everything needs to be web-based
• Written organizational policy to include IT from the beginning to avoid too many emerging, high priority projects
• Establish strong boundaries - give people rules to follow when working with you
• "Become the constant buzz-kill" to people's last minute project ideas

• Mixing formal and informal communication - email, meetings, and ad-hoc calls and chats all help do the job
• Project Management is not a series of switches, its a series of dials - gentle adjustments
• There are some people you have to circumvent

• How to get everyone involved in an IT project - even if they're not interested
• Feed them to get them involved in training/testing
• Logmein.com - website with shared desktop tools to help train remote people
• You may need to try different things to get them involved - face to face interaction
• Find someone at the organization who knows how to work with some of the more difficult personalities

*** IT is a great lens into what's wrong in the organization

AH-HA's!

• Educate end users to ease anxiety
• A picture is worth a thousand words
• Understand that you have to become the constant buzz kill to "emerging projects"
• Project Management is not a series of switches, its a series of dials - gentle adjustments