The key to being an effective project manager on an agile based team is creating and maintaining project communication within your team. Not only is it important for your job but it is also important for the success of your project. Along with making sure that important information gets to the correct people at the correct time, the reports and feedback are effective and helpful and the planning, managing and controlling communication processes within your team are formalized, you should also ensure that the communication within your team is not only effective but also improving. This blog will discuss ways to improve communication within your agile based team so that even if it may be working within your team, you are able to take a step further and ensure that all methods and forms are properly working the best way possible!
When many people enter the IT fields, they do so primarily relying on their technical skills. While this is crucial to have for their professions, it is also crucial that they have the corresponding soft skills to assist them in their journey through the IT field. One of the most important soft skills, not only in IT but also many other fields as well, is communication. Many large organisations and companies these days look for and invest in workers who have good communication and or train their workers to improve on their communication, by providing training. Additionally, organizations will also look for ways to improve communications with workers from different backgrounds and countries. Communications within different parts of the world varies in many ways and when organizations are not aware of this, they end up hurting their establishments and businesses. For example, there are some parts of the world where being outspoken and speaking your mind is offensive and if you are doing business or communicating with others within these cultures, it would be very difficult to cooperate because you would not be able to build the best relationship with them. Another aspect of communication being crucial is that without a good example of good leadership in communication, others will not be keen to follow in that approach. More so, if someone is leading a presentation that is short, unclear and not very detailed, other workers will most likely follow in those footsteps. This is just one example, others could include leaders within an organization sending poorly written reports, behaving poorly in meetings or discussions or offending others from different backgrounds. This pattern of behaviors and lack of communication will likely discourage their employees from improving their own communications or set very low standards. To be successful in your project and be an effective team, it is important to ensure these things can be avoided. As a project manager, you can help by ensuring that there is enough time to review reports before submitting them so that they are not poorly written forms of communication or incorporate feedback on them to improve them. Additionally, you can ensure customers and staff and form good relationships by making time for informal meetings. In all, it is an important duty as a project manager in an agile based team to have a goal of improving communication within your team and organization and it is possible to attain this goal.
One of the examples used earlier in this blog post is making sure meetings or presentations are run properly to avoid a lack of communication of information. Running an effective meeting not only helps in team building, but also strengthens roles, expectations, relationships and project commitment. Many stakeholders will withdraw their support from projects if there are poor meetings conducted. Therefore as a project manager, it is important that you ensure meetings are executed effectively and efficiently. To do so, you want to start by determining if you need the meeting in the first place. If there is a better way to achieve the goal at hand, there may not be a reason to have a meeting in the first place. If you do determine that a meeting is necessary, you should try and define the purpose and intended outcome of the meeting. By making the purpose of the meeting clear from the start, everyone in the meeting will be clear on the topic and be able to successfully focus on it without being confused or using it for their own agenda. Another key thing to remember is to decide who needs to attend the meeting and who should not. Meetings are more effective when the right people and only the right people are in it. If there is someone that doesn’t need to be there, may waste their work hours or if someone needs to be at the meeting is not, it may lead to an unsuccessful meeting. Also, ensure that you provide agendas to everyone in the meeting before the meeting. By providing the agenda beforehand, you make sure that everyone is one the same page and prepared. You can also pass out visual aids, book the correct room, have the needed equipment ready and even provide refreshments if possible, to ensure that everything is well prepared through the entirety of the meeting. When running the meeting, it is important to be professional throughout. This means you introduce yourself and everyone, facilitate discussions, encourage participation and provide clarification if needed. You can even build group rules for the meeting to help with this. For example, setting a rule that phones should not be used during the meeting or who will lead the discussion. This ensures there are no issues during the meeting. However, everyone meeting is different so it is best to make rules accordingly. Lastly, build relationships within the group or even the organizations to make the experience of meetings not be a dreadful experience for everyone involved including you. Since online communication has grown to be tremendously popular within the last few decades, it is important to ensure that these communication tools are also being effectively used. One of the most used tools in communication is email. When writing emails or responding to emails, it is important to make sure it is an effective tool within your team or organization. Some key things to consider when doing so is ensuring that the right people are receiving the emails, the subject lines are clear and a good indication of the content matter, content is one main subject, body is clear but as concise as possible. Also many times when you finish writing an email, it can be easy to click send like you are sending a text message but remember to re read the email before sending. Additionally, it is best practice to limit email attachments to as few as possible, deleting unnecessary emails that you do not need and having a good virus protection on your device to avoid unwanted malware to enter through bad emails. Another important aspect of online communication through email to consider is keeping track of your response time. If you are slow to respond to emails, it may impact your delivery time on your work or others. So ensure that you are responding as quickly as possible. Lastly, it is best to keep your mailbox organized and clutter free by using folders with clear names and getting rid of ones that are taking up too much space.
In conclusion, being an effective project manager means you are maintaining and improving communication within your organization so that all processes and functions are running smoothly and your project has greater chances of success. Hopefully using some of the key considerations mentioned above will help you do so!
Work Cited
Schwalbe, Kathy. (2007). Information technology project management. Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology.
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