Project Management Complexities: Four Plus Four Equals Thirteen

A Sea of Project Management Complexity: Fuzzy Math

      Projects involving one or two people are pretty simple. In the case of a single person project, communication with others in the organization is less than likely. A two-person team has only two interactions. But adding a third person to the mix means complicating matters quite a bit.

      Teams with at least three members will eventually have to interact with each of the other two members, for a minimum total of six interactions. Now, as project teams dive into the planning stages, it is likely that the entire group participate in team meetings to communicate together. These meetings discuss execution of strategies, planning, development, and evaluation of results. This necessary group dynamic now increases the number of interactions to at least seven – six one-on-one interactions and one group meeting.

      Now, put four people in a project team, and there is a minimum of eight one-on-one interactions. Plus, there are four different ways three team members might need to communicate with other members, plus the interaction of the entire group – a total of thirteen ways to interact. Four plus four equals thirteen.

      And that’s just for starters. The reality is that projects probably involve many more than four people working on interrelated tasks all at one time. Interactions between team members are constant and take place on multiple occasions. This is necessary to ensure that everyone that is part of a team remain on the same page and is kept up-to-date with current date.

      Now, if distance and time is added to this scenario, the number of interactions can be overwhelming and regarded as “untrackable.” Throw in vendors, customers, and bosses – and the scenario becomes unbearably complicated.

      Given these numbers and scenarios, it is no wonder why many projects fail and tasks get overlooked or simply “fall through the cracks.” Tracking these interactions and activities is enough to make any project manager insanely busy. Luckily, there are ways to solve this problem while tracking it all through the use of technology, specifically, business productivity software.

      Business productivity software can solve many business communication and process problems throughout the organization. In fact, small to mid-size project-based organizations are more frequently seeking cross-platform business productivity software solutions at higher rates than ever before because of the many immediate and tangible benefits they offer. This is because business productivity software eliminates clerical inefficiencies, cuts administrative overhead, and enables project-oriented organizations to deliver work more reliably and manage changes.


Initial Questions: A Good First Step to Simplify Things

      Before implementing a software tool to streamline internal communications and alleviate the pressures of tracking activities, timelines, schedules, budgets, and related tasks, there a number of questions a project manager must ask:

* Who gets information from whom?
* Who needs information from someone else, but isn’t getting it in a timely manner because too many interactions are taking place at the same time?
* What kinds of interactions are taking place?
* When are these interactions taking place?
* What kinds of information would be useful to the team as a whole, but simply isn’t available because it would require too much time to gather?

   Answers to these questions are a critical first step, but it won’t solve the problem. There are other issues to worry about in regards to project team dynamics.

      Consider the complexity of the jobs project teams are assigned to complete. Factor in the myriad of tasks that must somehow come together into a single deliverable result to the inherent complexity of communications in an organization of reasonable size. It becomes clearly apparent that, while one team member perceives their jobs as being fairly simple, the jobs the entire organization does and the things that must happen in order for work to get done at all are anything but.

      Any organization larger than a handful of people is swimming in a sea of complexity. There is a synergy of activities taking place – while a team member is working on their task, another is working on their own, while yet another is talking to someone else of the team about a topic that’s related. Without a coherent, centralized system that keeps everyone in a team up to date on what’s going and on who’s doing what, the risk of incomplete tasks are increased. Multiply all these interactions, with the number of people in a team, and throw into the mixture some client changes, and soon, chaos abounds – that is, of course, without the right tool.


Business Productivity Software: A Calming Breeze

      The right business productivity tool is designed to help organizations cope with all that complexity. It provides not just the information a single person needs, but delivers the information everyone in the team and organization needs. Additionally, the tool has to be able to adapt to organizations, regardless of size, and must also be flexible enough to grow as the organization expands.

      It is natural to think that a tool designed to calm the storm is complex to use in itself. Logically this is true. And many tools out there are extremely complex. But the right tool is simple-to-use, straightforward, and uses concepts anyone in a team or organization can master in a few hours. Each piece works like every other piece of its type, and the pieces are connected to one another in a way that makes intuitive business sense.
    
      Furthermore, only the pieces essential to getting the job done need to be utilized. When selecting your tool, it is imperative that team members are not forced to use aspects of a tool, which will add work to their life and are not necessary for their jobs.

      The right tool allows one team member to focus on a piece of the package, while another can focus on another. Additionally, at anytime, in case it’s necessary to switch gears or tasks, the tool must enable any team member to easily learn those pieces needed to complete the work.

      An organization’s needs are certainly complex. Therefore, the right business productivity tool is complete, offers powerful automation of administrative tasks, flexible to meet the changing needs taking place in an organization, and adapts to be as complex or simple as work demands it, but no more. It should never be unnecessarily complex.


The Learning Process: Reveal What’s Beneath the Surface

      The process of learning how to manage interactions via the use of technology is also learning about the organizational process – what works, what needs to change, what should be implemented. Ideally, a business productivity tool, while moldable to fit the needs the needs of an organization, brings to light explicit concepts and interrelationships in the organization that were always there, but just beneath the surface.

      These hidden dynamics are not in the conscious of project team members during the planning phases. The process of learning how to use a business productivity tool should be one filled with enlightenment. Perhaps a new way of taking on a task is discovered. Essentially, the ideal business productivity tool will help project teams and individual members understand their own job better and to see how individual roles fit into your organization’s “big picture.”

     Please email if you have any questions.

     Victor Siegle