Do you know what the tasks mean?

We have to have a project plan don't we? What's the real value? There are numerous benefits the project plan provides. The real issue is to realize these benefits. One benefit is an inherent understanding of the change project and how the pieces fit together. Take a test yourself and then administer it to the various levels of your team. The basic question is to describe each task on the project plan. Granted, any one individual should know their tasks better than someone else's but we achieve positive critical mass when the people working on our project know the dependencies outside their influence and anticipate roadblocks in the plan. Planning software can help, but the people really make it work. Most project planning tools are terribly inadequate at describing the tasks to be completed. Project success is enhanced if project team members as well as outsiders can access a description of the tasks and begin to see the big picture. We also find that procrastination many times is merely a misunderstanding of what is to be done. Unfortunately, many times we find out about this after the original due date. A valuable exercise is to have those assigned a task write up a description of the task. This description should be informative for someone uninvolved in the project. Publish this on your Intranet and you're on your way to expanding the universe of knowledgeable people watching out for your change project.

Back to Change Leader Bytes Index