No matter which Project Framework (traditional or agile) you use there are a number of things you should keep in mind concerning innovating, growing and improving your project practices. I think if you follow the suggested steps (e.g. SCRUM) of a Project Methodology rigidly in the beginning it helps. Over time though you should adopt and adjust them to the project and team to make them most efficient. Here some idea's that might help you in this continuous improvement quest
- Make idea gathering part of your daily, weekly and monthly schedule. Include this in project meetings and include all stakeholders.
- Know what is meaningful to all your stakeholders. To do this you should have regular contact with all stakeholders. This is kind of Project Management by wandering around. For international and/or distributed teams that could mean flying to visit your teams regularly, have regular, alternating conference calls with them etc. Note that this should not only be business related, get personal and open up so that you get a real relationship with the stakeholders. Once you understand what is meaningful you can work to implement these changes for the benefit of the stakeholders and the project.
- Determine the most important values (e.g. improve quality, improve customer experience through better performance) of your Project Team? What can you do to improve further? Or should you focus on other areas? How do you ask for feedback? You need to determine what the organization said they will do in the past and what they actually did.
Some possible ways to do this are
- Use a Project Newsletter and ask for feedback
- Use a Questionnaire (e.g. http://www.surveymonkey.com/)
- Conduct a "Pre-Mortem" meeting to learn what could go wrong with your project.
- Introduce a "Suggestion Box"
- Setup a regular meeting to discuss continuous improvement. When you do this determine ahead of time how to keep this interesting and engaging
- Recognize submissions through Senior Management involvement
Once you have a reliable, steady process in place to gather improvement proposals and to decide how to accept and implement them don't forget to celebrate the people who submit the proposals. All stakeholders should know that their contributions are vital and significant for the projects success. Think about something special and don't hand out standard awards. Customize it to the people who receive them and they will participate much more willingly and effectively.
