Change the Culture in Your Organization ... Project by Project

Cultural change can "trickle up" from project participants and spread throughout your organization. Here's how.

by Neal Whitten, PMP, Contributing Editor

MOST ORGANIZATIONS ARE in need of a "culture" makeover. Members are uncertain about the behavior expected of them on projects. Members commonly do not have the basic project management skills of planning, tracking, and interpersonal communications that are required to work effectively. People complain about the unproductive culture within which they must work. Furthermore, there is a myth that touts that the only way to change the culture of an organization is for the change to come from higher management.
You want to change the culture of your organization? You can. Project by project. Here’s a highly effective method you can use, which doesn’t require permission or intervention from higher management.
When a new project is started, a culture-training class should be mandatory for all project members assigned to the project. Culture training is the formal training of all project members in key hard skills, soft skills, and processes that are essential in helping to ensure a successful project. Culture training provides all project members with a common understanding of how the project will be run and the role that each is expected to play. A Project Management Office or training organization is a likely organization to conduct culture-training classes or to find suitable instructors to do so. The project manager can teach a portion or all of the class if desired.
Culture-training classes typically are one to two days in length, depending on the size and duration of the project and the "culture maturity" of the project members. Very small projects of five or less members may require classes only a half-day long. Let’s look at some topics to address in a culture-training class:
Roles and Responsibilities of Project Members. These positions include the project manager, resource managers, product architect (chief technologist), business architect (client’s advocate), product manager (sponsor), team leaders and team members.
Project Planning Process. Includes discussion of the development process to be followed, how the project plan will be developed and approved, and how the plan will be maintained.
Project Tracking Process. Includes discussion of project tracking meetings, metrics to be tracked, identifying high-risk/high-priority problems, and creating problem recovery plans.
Escalation Process. Includes discussion of the process to be followed when escalation is required to resolve an issue.
Project Reviews. Includes how to conduct project reviews, their frequency and timing. Performed at selected points along the project cycle, a project review is an independent review that examines the health of a project.
Post-Project Reviews. The process to be followed in conducting the project review at the end of the project.
People Communications. Includes discussion of common interpersonal communications problems that can arise on a project and how to avoid or deal with them. Examples include attacking problems and not people, asking for help, being willing to help others, and asking questions rather than assuming.
Soft Skills. Discusses attributes and behaviors that one can adopt to become a more effective project member. Topics include how to deal with criticism, managing time, how to make and meet commitments, and being accountable for one’s own actions.
Lessons Learned. A discussion of the lessons learned from the most recent post-project reviews and how to apply the most significant lessons.

CULTURE-TRAINING CLASSES provide uncommonly great benefits to starting a project and its members on a productive footing toward launching and implementing an effective project. Culture-training classes not only can give new projects a jump-start, but can also help power projects through to a successful completion.

Neal Whitten, PMP, president of The Neal Whitten Group (www.nealwhittengroup.com), is a speaker, trainer, consultant, mentor, and author in project management and employee development. His books include The EnterPrize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success and Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success.

This material is reprinted from PM Network magazine (August 1999) with permission of the Project Management Institute Headquarters, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-2399 USA. Phone: (610) 356-4600. Fax: (610) 356-4647. Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world’s leading project management association with over 50,000 members worldwide. For further information, contact PMI Headquarters at (610) 356-4600 or visit the web site at www.pmi.org. "PMI" and "PM Network" are trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. © 2000 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

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