Sometimes I feel like I spend most of my day just following up with people to do the things they said they were going to do. Most project plans are created by facilitating from the team members the activities that need to be accomplished. Usually these team members also provide dates by which they will complete the work. During the project, the Project Manager asks about the dates as part of obtaining status. This is where the harassment part comes in and takes a large part of the day because there are many moving parts and people to get updates from.
Therefore I find it somewhat ironic (and frustrating) that most people, without follow up, will not meet the dates that they provided. I realize people are busy and have many priorities, but what happened to a sense of commitment and ownership? What this does is to put the onus on project managers to follow up versus individuals having a sense of accountability.
"Ok, raise your hand if you met the date that you provided to me when we planned the project..."
Just think about how productive our projects would be if all team members made their own commitments. There would still be the need for project managers but we could then focus on resolving issues, forward planning and looking for other ways to add value.
I can sympathise
You are only as good as your follow ups.
By: Shoaib Ahmed on April 16, 2011
at 4:48 am
I think team members start to get really annoyed when the project manager asks them every day about the status of their task, when there hasn’t been much progress from the previous day.
By: PM Hut on April 20, 2011
at 7:41 pm