“I’ve sent out the email about production cutover, and if they didn’t read it – it’s their fault; not mine.”
S was a box ticker, which I think is one of the worst attitude a Project Manager can have.
As a PM, you need to be an outstanding communicator, and that includes making sure that your communication has been received and digested in the way that you’ve intended.
You need to make sure that it has been consumed and understood, otherwise you have failed as a communicator.
As a Project Manager, you have a lot of emails and communication to send out, as a consequence of meetings, decisions made, agreements etc, and it is very important that they are understood by the correct party.
In the above scene, the project was heading towards go-live, and S sent out an email with the cutover activities, and crucially – the parties who had to be available on-hand to support the deployment activities.
And because she hadn’t checked, the person who would have helped ensure that the integration points were turned on and working… was on paternity leave!
She had expected everyone to have read her email, and raised their hands if they weren’t going to be available. However, it’s her job as a Project Manager to make sure that the team was available, and that they were there… ONLINE and ON-HAND during go-live.
But she didn’t.
And they weren’t.
And it went a bit wrong.
So Go-live was postponed, with much damage done in terms of how the project was perceived by the business and the user base.
Sadly, she still did not believe it was her fault.
Don’t be a box-ticker.
Don’t be an S. 🐴
Nobody likes people with ‘slopey shoulders’.
#onthepeiroll
#projectmanagement
#accountability