![]() When time becomes a scarce resource, it’s essential that teams are unified on which projects to which they should give preference. Wouldn’t it be great if teams could work on one project at a time? While some teams have that luxury, others aren’t as fortunate. Without the initial conversation about process expectations (and the opportunity for your team to clarify with questions), something as important as regulation requirements could go unspoken, to the project’s detriment. ![]() If you’re dealing with third-party stakeholders (like a client or regulating body), they may have a certain way of communicating progress and feedback that needs to be shared with the team. While teams learn about the project’s expectations while clocking in on the project instead of during a dedicated onboarding time, everything slows down, pushing the project back and straining the budget (especially if the requirements also aren’t clear). If your team isn’t properly introduced to the procedures and equipment that will get used over the course of the project, the team will be scrambling to orient themselves while the project’s clock ticks forward. Onboarding is a time to make sure that everyone is on the same page with how a project is going to move forward. If you don’t define expectations for how often stakeholders should expect updates or provide feedback, your stakeholder communication can quickly disintegrate over the course of the project. Project onboarding isn’t just for team members. Want to make sure that a new website uses lazy loading for its images or that your LEED-certified building lays down eco-friendly flooring to complete its remodel? What might seem obvious to a PM might not be so clear to project team members. If you’re lucky enough to have never tried to brush off project onboarding, here are a handful of warnings of what could happen if you do. If you’re smirking like I am right now, it’s probably because you’ve tried this once (maybe more than once) before and discovered that this system of project onboarding doesn’t work. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just hand team members a project, communicate all the project’s requirements and expectations through a quick email, and then kick back and watch it get done perfectly? Project managers often don’t have a robust tool like Resource Guru that provides insight into their resources’ workloads. What are the most common project onboarding problems? For example, an IT contractor might need to learn about their client’s legacy system before committing to a third-party software implementation.įurther, teams often expand and contract with new projects depending on the resources needed to get it done.Īll project management methodologies, from critical chain to Scrum, require project managers to introduce their team to the project in some way. Project managers often introduce new processes and tools during the onboarding period. The project manager establishes due dates, deliverables, and requirements. It’s a time to define why the project is important, who the stakeholders are, and which people on the team are responsible for what tasks. Project onboarding is the process of gathering the right people and the right resources to make sure a new project is completed on time, on budget, and within scope. Why should you consider software for project onboarding? What is project onboarding? Project onboarding checklist: 5 tips for project managers So let’s ask the basic questions: what is project onboarding? How can project managers get it right?īelow, I’ve deciphered what project onboarding is, common problems with project onboarding (and how to correct them), and a list of tips meant to be used as a project onboarding checklist to get started. All because the onboarding process had failed from the beginning. Due to a poor onboarding process, the kickoff was riddled with delays due to misunderstandings of the goals and milestones of the project, many teammates felt they were working in the dark on their tasks (missing major specs because of this), and everyone felt stressed because of the general lack of communication in my so-called onboarding process at the time. In order to onboard my team, I linked everyone to the project brief, added them to the project task board, and held a hasty all-hands meeting imparting the urgency of the deadline and asking everyone to let me know if they had questions after they read through the project docs. Years ago, I was handed a brand-new project to manage and needed to get my team up-to-speed-with a tight two-month deadline to launch and no room for errors.
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