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The fact is that effective project management resources are hard to come by, as I discovered while studying for the PMP and CAPM certification. If you're lucky enough to have more than one good resource on your team, consider yourself fortunate. This, however, should come as no surprise. After all, if the whole project team was of the finest caliber, a Project Manager would be nothing more than a glorified administrative assistant!
I should point out that as you advance in your profession and begin to manage more high-profile projects, this becomes less of an issue. The best employees in an organization are usually assigned to the most critical initiatives. They must be supplied on time not just because they must be delivered on time, but also because the solutions that must be delivered are frequently the most difficult.
Unfortunately, the smallest initiatives are generally confined in terms of the number of resources and their skillsets when you first start out. So, if you don't have the essential team resources, what can you do to deliver successfully? There are three things you must remember. These are the following:
- Take Control and be a Leader
This means that you must not only take charge of the delivery but also seem to do so. As I discovered when studying for the PMP and CAPM certification, your resources must be clear about the goal they are delivering and when they are delivering it. They also need to know that you won't merely listen to their problems and then file them away in risk and issue records, but that you'll go out of your way to remedy them.
- Foster Team Spirit
The total of the parts is always more than the sum of the parts. As a result, get your team to work as a unit to solve the experience problem. Encourage a "blitz spirit," which means "let's support one other since we're all in this together." This also applies to you. Being an additional pair of hands and pitching in where needed, from defining requirements to running scripts, everything helps, and the outcomes will surprise you.
- Locate the Experts
It's all too simple to be duped by your co-workers. You have an innate sense that you're being led down the garden path, but you can't really contest what you're being taught since you're not technical enough.
In this case, you should look for "centers of excellence" both within your organization and on the internet. After all, just because you don't have the greatest resources on hand doesn't imply no one else does. You'll quickly discover that there's always someone who is an expert in a particular field or has produced something comparable to what you're doing whose mind you can pick.
Need more tips on successful project delivery? Take on project management or business analysis professional certification today!