Keeping team accountable and connected to project
For some projects, keeping all who are contributing to the project connected and committed is not a major issue but for others it can be a major task for the project manager, particularly if some of them are working on other tasks as well and your project is only a part of what they do.
On such projects, regular team progress meetings will be needed. These serve a dual function:
• as a means of checking how individuals are progressing
• and updating everyone on progress and possible problems.
On large projects, a formal communications system may be needed.
Communications and leadership are the two keys to this whole area. As in many other things it is a matter of balance. The project manager needs to keep team members and key contributors up to date with the project, but without overloading them with unnecessary information and e-mails. To keep a team connected and committed, one has to have regular team meetings. Experienced Project Managers hold regular team progress meetings as a means of checking how individuals are progressing and also updating everyone on progress and possible problems. On large projects, this will be supplemented with a formal communications system.
Likelihood is that SME resources would like to help but overloaded with other, possibly more important, priorities. They are also likely to have workloads that fluctuate so that although they will be able to help you in one month, the following month they are full.
This means that to agree to anything they will need to know what you want them to do and when. Which means that usually they will not agree to anything until they see the Project Plan with it's Time Schedule.
At this stage, your main task is to sound them out:
• give them an overview of what the project is about
• indicate the sort of help you are likely to need,
• ask them how you should go about getting their help,
• get a feel for their likely workload
• and ask them for any ideas/thoughts to raise their interest in your project.
As a generalisation, most professionals like to work on interesting projects and if you can capture their interest then your task becomes much easier.