I’ve been a project manager since 2007, and over the course of my career since then, I’ve managed a lot of projects. I’ve also been part of the team on certain projects, and from both perspectives, I’ve experienced a similar problem. There’s a gap between the project managers and the team members. Here is what I’ve noticed:
Project Managers love to use their tools and techniques, and Team Members just want to get their function, or piece of the project, completed. Team Members often comment that they don’t like to use any project management software because it takes too much time to keep up to date.
Adding some complexity to the Project Manager side of the gap, project management software is far too feature-rich and complicated to understand unless that’s what you do all day as a Project Manager. Since they understand most of the features and how they can benefit managing a project, Project Managers try to use all of them. When there’s such a selection of features, even two Project Managers within the same department may use a project management software just a little bit differently. That makes reporting to management teams difficult.
Also looking at the Team Member side of the gap, we start to realize the project management systems and software are quite old and still look and feel like old spreadsheets in many cases. Those older formats make it difficult to compete for a Team Member’s attention because of all the advances in software and apps. Team Members seem to consistently say project management software feels clunky or not very user-friendly. I believe that from the team member’s point of view, it does take more time than it should to enter information into the software because it’s not simple, feature specific, or intuitive.
I thought about this problem and realized it’s similar to how I use a computer. I don’t fully understand how a computer is built at the hardware or software level, but I do expect it to work so I can get my work done. So then I started to model how to establish a project management system in a similar way by having all of the complicated tools and features running in the back end, and focusing on the team member’s user experience in the front end. I believe establishing a simple project management system will narrow the gap, so let’s take a look at what the front end and the back end should look like.
The Front End:
The team is the focus and the project is the reason the team exists, not the other way around. Without a team being effective to get the work done, it really doesn’t matter how powerful the tool is. Team members need to feel like the tool they use is at least somewhat modern and easy to add updates, track tasks and give them the data they’re looking for. Getting into the details of the front end of a system, it must be something like this:
- Simple
- Direct
- Easy to use and habit forming
- Accurate
- Specific to the user
- Delivers the content they’re looking for as quickly and plainly as possible
The Back End:
The back end is where all of those goals come to life. The proverbial tip of the iceberg is the front end, and in cliché terms, the back end is the 80% under the water. There are four elements that I believe are the most important when starting a project management system. These foundational elements support the structure the user experiences and are outlined as follows:
- Change management system.
- Outline of project management principles to use in the system.
- Documentation retention system.
- Outline of project processes to complete work.
Each one of these pieces of the front end and back end are important when setting up a simple project management system. Some of these things are based on my experience to this point, and others are based on research I’ve recently done. I plan to get into more details and focus on why I feel these are the most important pieces of a simple project management system. In fact, I’m working on a project currently doing exactly what I’ve outlined here; how to establish a simple project management system. I’m excited to be working on this project so we can narrow the gap between Project Managers and Team Members and be able to write about it along the way.
More in depth articles will branch out from this outline article getting into more details on each project management element and explain my experiences as we move through this process. Let’s get started on How to Establish a Simple Project Management System!