Internal Communication

Communication is to Project Manager as water is to living organisms. Without it, the full potential is not realized and life fizzles out. Communication from the team members to the Project Manager and from the Project Manager to the team members is a lifeline for the project that must be established and maintained, with a strong beginning initiated by the Project Manager, that carries through to the very end.

With our current project, our team members have been (thus far) very good about communicating promptly and thoroughly, responding to my correspondence. A few members are a bit slower, but this is understandable as they work less at a desk and are more directly involved in the production floor. A few, however, are extremely slow at getting responses back to me; most exceptional is the Engineering manager. Throughout the entire move, I have yet to receive one response from him – well, I did receive one, in the very beginning, when I asked him for task begin/completion dates. He responded that he would have to get with production and quality and material – understandably – to get those correct dates. However, since then, I have not heard from him. It’s a little bit frustrating because I know that the way they begin the project is often the way they will finish the project (although this is not always completely true).

On the home front, between Rick and I, there was a recent major miscommunication resulting in a huge waste of time and resources. We had discussed printing out the MS Project schedules in order to lay them all out on a table and link dates. However, we couldn’t print them at Kinkos because they don’t have the MSP software in their system, and their only laptop station was full. I suggested that I could print them at home, and Rick agreed that that might be the best plan. Then we changed the subject and started talking about other things, and I never realized that Rick assumed I actually would print them. Oops! Next week, Rick asked if we could meet on Monday, and I showed up after my morning class at the college. “Do you have the schedules?” Rick asked. Uhh ... no … was I supposed to bring them? Major error on my part. I drove back to Mom’s house to print them, but the laptop I was using was unable to connect to the printer – after an hour of technology struggles, I gave up and packed everything back into my car and drove to Gary’s (my fiancé’s) house to print on his excellent printer. This took an excessively long time. By the time I returned to Tully’s with the schedules, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. Rick was tired and annoyed, so after we briefly went over the tasks for the next few days, he took the schedules and headed home to work on them himself. I stayed at Tully’s until 6:00, working on the forms and schedules for the War Room at Company X, and sending out e-mails regarding task schedules.

Lessons learned -- communicate, communicate, communicate. Never assume. Call ahead. E-mail more than necessary. Ask questions!