“We know what to do, we just need to do it!”
I believe that experienced project managers understand the core practices that lead to project success. The existing methodologies, frameworks, and tools are intended to lead to consistent outcomes. However, projects continue to be delivered late, over-budget, and lacking the desired functionality. Failure is rarely a surprise. We could have or should have seen it coming, but we didn’t.
“Back to Basics” is a series of articles that outlines foundational project management practices that lead to better, more consistent outcomes. My goal is elegant simplicity—reducing complexity and enabling autonomic responses. The first four articles discussed the state of the industry, the importance of establishing guiding principles, advice for selecting the approach, and a framework for organizing project work.
This article outlines the essential way of working and ongoing activities. These activities are the fabric that builds the team’s capabilities, engages the stakeholders, manages the details, and ensures improvement.
Lead the Team
Contents
A project manager’s primary responsibility is to lead the team and foster a culture that maximizes performance. Peter Drucker famously said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In Good to Great, Jim Collins argues that getting the right people on the bus and putting them in the right seats is management’s most important role.
I identify psychological safety, empowerment, and simplicity as the requirements for creating high-performing teams. Pushing decision-making to the lowest responsible level enables empowerment. Reducing complexity and eliminating unproductive rules and processes allows teams to thrive.
Psychological safety is the foundation for creating high-performing teams. Tim Clarke outlined a four-level model—inclusion, learner, contributor, and challenger safety. His work aligns with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The presence of psychological safety fosters trust, engagement, innovation, and creativity. Its absence leads to negative work environments, poor results, and, in extreme cases, tragic disasters.
Foundational steps to building an empowered and trusting team environment can be achieved by:
- Setting clear objectives and trusting the team to find the best solution,
- Assuming “best intentions” and treating mistakes as learning opportunities,
- Encouraging and valuing diverse perspectives, and
- Shielding the team from external distractions.
Engage and Communicate with Stakeholders
Engaging and communicating with project stakeholders is critical. User involvement and executive support are the two leading indicators of project success. Too often, actively managing these relationships is an early casualty of project busyness. The team prioritizes tactical execution issues over strategic engagement—the project may be on the right track, but the stakeholders are not on board with the direction.
Stakeholder and communications management should be an ongoing daily, weekly, and monthly set of activities that incorporates the following:
Stakeholder identification and analysis. The project manager should actively maintain and update the stakeholder register. New stakeholders will be identified, existing ones may be retired, and their desired involvement may shift.
Stakeholder engagement, communications, and monitoring. Stakeholders are engaged through communications. The communications management plan is developed to identify the most effective way to inform and involve stakeholders. These communications can include formal and informal, written communications, and meetings. The project manager should periodically confirm that engagement and alignment are as planned. If not, then adjust.
Regular communication prevents missteps that can cause failure. Agile incorporates a regular cadence—backlog reviews and iteration demos. Predictive and Hybrid communication plans should also include similar feedback loops.
Manage Risks, Actions, and Issues
Proactively managing risks, actions, and issues prevents projects from being derailed by unexpected events and ensures that items don’t slip through the cracks. Discipline is the watchword. Small actions can make a big difference. Establish a process and a schedule. Assign ownership and follow-up to maintain accountability.
Risks are future events that have a likelihood of occurrence and potential impact. Risk events must be clearly articulated, documented in a risk register, assessed, and response strategies developed. Using IF/THEN statements to describe the risk focuses on the outcome, which simplifies identifying specific triggers and responses.
Issues and action items are items that need to be addressed. Issues are concerns raised by stakeholders. Action items are steps needed to address concerns.
There is a hierarchy or concentric circle of concern and influence, spanning from project teams to sponsors and executive stakeholders. Risks, actions, and issues are organized for visibility and potential response at each level. Operational and project-level items can remain with the team. Items needing executive action or having strategic impact must be escalated. How items are expressed and communicated should be customized for the target audience.
Transfer Knowledge
Knowledge transfer leads to consistent execution and serves as a lever for future team growth and maturity. There are two types of knowledge: explicit and tacit.
Explicit knowledge is straightforward to document and share, such as practice guides, templates, and FAQs that define standard operating procedures. Tacit knowledge consists of experience and wisdom. Project teams require mechanisms to manage both types.
Explicit knowledge acts as the lubricant that keeps operations running smoothly—people understand what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Large organizations typically have enterprise project management tools, onboarding processes, and guidance for project lifecycle management. Project-specific procedures and practices should be documented in the project management plan.
Tacit knowledge is best communicated orally. Creating an environment where wisdom and experience are shared requires proactive management. The design of the working environment, proximity to colleagues, technologies, and formal and informal interactions all play a role.
Improve Continuously
Kaizen is a foundational Lean principle and promotes making regular, small incremental process changes and improvements. Traditional project lessons learned are conducted at the end of the project and are rarely reviewed and applied to future efforts. Agile introduced post-iteration retrospectives to quickly identify and address issues.
After each iteration, Agile teams assess their performance. They review people, processes, technologies, and relationships. Then, they propose and implement solutions to the most pressing problem(s) in the next iteration.
Retrospectives empower teams to address their problems. It shifts ownership from management to the team. This increases buy-in and the likelihood that the solution is viable and effective. It also shortens the time from “pain to gain.”
Enabling a continuous improvement culture requires effort. Teams may need training in process improvement, facilitation, and problem resolution skills. Our experiences inform and bias our approach. Exposure to “better practices” through tools such as the Disciplined Agile Browser can help teams think outside their box.
© 2025, Alan Zucker; Project Management Essentials, LLC
See related articles:
- Are We Aligned?
- Back to Basics, Part 1: State of the Union
- Back to Basics, Part 2: Principles
- Back to Basics, Part 3: The Approach
- Back to Basics, Part 4: Project Phases
- Empowering Your Teams
- Engage Your Stakeholders
- Knowledge Management: Share the Wisdom
- Managing Project Assumptions & Risks
- Simple Rules for High-Performing Agile Teams
- Simple Rules: Psychological Safety
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