Project Management Best Practices

Jacob Matenaer
MIS 441
9:30am T/TH
Tech Musing 1

Article Title: 5 Ways to Get the Best Production From Those Around You
Author: Brad Egelan
URL Link: http://www.cio.com/article/3026335/project-management/5-ways-to-get-the-best-production-from-those-around-you.html
Date Published: Jan. 26, 2016

As a manager or project manager you want to surround yourself with the smartest people possible and rely on their expertise as you bring them all together as a cohesive team. Author of CIO.com article, Brad Egeland, touches on this point in his article stating that “It is always in my best interest to try and get the best and most productive work out of those who work with me and around me.” Having 30 years professional experience, mostly in project management or management positions, Brad went on to talk about the five ways he found most effective that allowed him to best manage the people on his project teams. The five points he touched on in the article were as follows: Practice effective and efficient communication, recognize and reward, be open and honest with everyone, be an attentive listener, and keep everyone informed. He recognizes that your teams will be made up of people with varying backgrounds and skill sets, however he goes on to summarize saying that “The best of the best are able to get the most production and efficient work out of those around them.”

One point that I found most interesting was his stance on being open and honest with everyone. He feels that “Honesty breeds consistency and that’s where real confidence, satisfaction, production and dedication is derived from.” I found this interesting as I would have thought that as a project manager you may need to be a bit of a salesman, revealing only select positive truths, when interacting with your customer or team. I believed that being overly open with a customer could potentially cause you to lose their business. That being said, Egeland was very adamant about this point in the article stating that “It’s hard to follow someone who isn’t truthful or who you don’t believe in.” Ultimately, he is showing us that being honest is always the best option as it will keep you in a positive standing with your customer, as well your team will hold you in higher regard as their leader.

Our slides define project management as “Organizing and directing other people to achieve a planned result within a predetermined schedule and budget.” This definition directly relates to this article as these five methods Egeland presents to us could help any project manager in “Organizing and directing other people.” As a project manager you could potentially be working with an IT professional, an engineer, a finance person, a supply chain person or many others all on one team. These diverse skill sets bring different personalities to the team. However, Egeland’s five universal tips will help anyone in managing diverse teams and projects to success.

This information is important not only to MIS professionals or project managers, but to anyone in a management or leadership role. As I eluded to in the previous paragraph teams can be made up of diverse skill sets and backgrounds. Being able to bring them all together and work cohesively is no easy task. By forming your leadership approach around these five main points allows you to better overcome the many challenges and stress associated with overseeing a project start to finish. More specifically, in the IT world where your team may be made up of IT professionals, challenges may arise trying to understand some of their technical terminology. As Egeland puts it in the article “Failure to properly and accurately communicate is the basis for many failed projects and tasks.” By using his five methods and making the extra effort to effectively communicate with your programmer, system admin, engineer etc. will help prevent your team from falling into one of many failed projects due to bad communication and hard to understand technical terminology.

Citation:
Egeland, Brad. "5 Ways to Get the Best Production from Those around You." CIO. N.p., 26 Jan. 2016. Web. 29 Jan. 2016.