Chapter 11 • IT Project Management 429Behavior Dos and Don'ts
Dos: Be proactive, be positive, respect, celebrate success, be compassionate
Don'ts: Blame, embarrass, say one thing and do another, be defensive
Communications
Seek first to understand ... then to be understood
Feedback: give honestly, accept with grace, be constructive, provide frequently
Priority order: face-to-face, phone, e-mail—as appropriate
Organization
Understand your role and process
Share priorities and goals
Work within the organization defined
Continuous improvement
Relationships
Be supportive: cooperation, affirmation, give credit to others
Teamwork: be inspirational, take ownership, strive for excellence
Value diversity: understand, leverage, blend, value styles
Trust: be trustworthy, understand others, give benefit of doubtFIGURE 11.15 Global Teamwork [Adapted from Ranganathan et al., 2007]Many organizations are adopting an IT portfolio
approach to IT investments to help identify the “right”
projects to work on. A project management office (PMO)
structure can help ensure that the company utilizes stan-
dard practices for managing approved projects across an
organization. Today’s IT project managers therefore need
not only technical skills but also more general project
management competencies—including the nine compe-
tencies identified by the Project Management Institute
(PMI). Two business stakeholder roles—the project spon-
sor and project champion—have also been associated
with successful project implementations.
The planning phase for an IT project includes project
scheduling, budgeting, and staffing. PERT charts, Ganttresearchers, communication risks are intensified when
there is a greater likelihood of imprecision in commu-
nicating project requirements or other deliverables
with high information content, and interpersonal
relationships are less developed due to communications
that are not face-to-face and often asynchronous.
Kostner (1996) recommends that leaders use commu-
nication techniques such as creating symbols that
unify a work group and using online tools for team
members to learn more about each other (both profes-
sionally and personally). Cultural differences include
crossnational social differences as well as differences
due to an organizational style, even if team members
are from the same country. Training programs to in-
crease awareness of potential cultural differences and
their impacts on “virtual” project work can help reduce
this source of project risk. An example of the topics
that might be included in such a training workshop can
be found in Figure 11.15.
Trusting relationships are also key to effective collab-
oration across team members. As personal trust increases,
team members and other project stakeholders exchange
information in more detail and more freely. They are also
more likely to endorse mutual goals and use common
processes. All of these behaviors increase a team member’s
confidence that unanticipated problems will be surfaced
and misunderstandings will be avoided. Kostner (1996)
recommends that project leaders think about how every
interaction with a remote worker can be used to help build
trust across team members.