Page 179 - Project+

by the project manager, formal training provided by an outside company, or training

from an internal PMO on the standard methodologies, tools, and templates all project
members are expected to use.

Conflict management is an important aspect of team building, communication, and
team cohesiveness. We’ll look at this topic next.

Project Management 101

One of the more successful experiences I’ve had with project management training
involved a project team in an organization that was just starting to implement
project management disciplines. Based on the chaos surrounding earlier attempts
at running projects, it was clear that the team members needed a common
understanding of what project management was all about.

We contracted with a professional project management training company to teach
a beginning class in project management concepts. All project team members were
required to attend this session. All of the exercises associated with the class were
based on the actual project the team members were assigned to. Not only did the
team members gain knowledge of the project management discipline, but they
were able to contribute to the project itself while in class.

Although this took some time and money, it was well worth the effort. All the team

members used common definitions of terms, and it was much easier to talk about
the meeting requirements, the project baseline, scope creep, and other
fundamental project management concepts. The success of this project resulted in
the organization-setting goals regarding project management training for the
entire department.

Conflict Management

One thing is certain: if you have people working on your project, you’ll likely
experience conflict at least once, if not many times, during the course of the project.
Conflict is the incompatibility of desires, needs, or goals between two parties or
individuals. This can lead to one party resisting or blocking the other party from
attaining their goals.

Conflict may arise on a project for any of several reasons. As I’ve discussed in several
places throughout the book, resources in most organizations are in high demand.

Competition for resources can cause conflicts among the project managers, functional
managers, and even project team members who may not be happy with less stellar
selections as teammates.

Work styles can sometimes cause conflict. For example, we’ve all worked with team

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