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Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part II
November 4, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Lessons Learned, Project Management Best Practices, Project Management Musings
Lessons Learned for Project Managers - Part II (#2 in the series 128 Lessons Learned for Project Managers)
By Jerry Madden
- Know who the decision makers on the program are. It may be someone on the outside who has the ear of Congress, or the Administrator, or the Associate Administrator, or one of the scientists — or someone in the chain of command — whoever they are, try to get a line of communication to them on a formal or informal basis.
- You and the program manager should work as a team. The program manager is your advocate at NASA HQ and must be tied in to the decision-making and should aid your efforts to be tied in too.
- A project manager should visit everyone who is building anything for his project at least once, should know all the managers on his project (both government and contractor), and know the integration team members. People like to know that the project manager is interested in their work, and the best proof is for the manager to visit them and see first hand what they are doing.
- Never ask management to make a decision that you can make. Assume you have the authority to make decisions unless you know there is a document that states unequivocally that you cannot.
- Wrong decisions made early can be salvaged, but “right” decisions made late cannot.
- Never make excuses; instead, present plans of actions to be taken.
- Never try to get even for some slight by another project. It is not good form — it puts you on the same level as the other person–and often ends up hindering the project getting done.
- If you cultivate too much egotism, you may find it difficult to change your position — especially if your personnel tell you that you are wrong. You should instill an attitude on the project whereby your personnel know they can tell you of wrong decisions.
- One of the advantages of NASA in the early days was the fact that everyone knew that the facts that we were absolutely sure of could be wrong.
- Managers who rely on the paperwork to do the reporting of activities are known failures.
Reprinted with permission from NASA. This article first appeared in NASA’s ASK Magazine, the NASA source for Project Management and Engineering Excellence.
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