PMP Certification Training: Build a Shared Understanding
Free PMP Training: Build a Shared Understanding
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Summary
One of the first goals in onboarding a team for a project is to ensure that they build and maintain a shared understanding about the project’s desired objectives and outcomes. In this’s lesson, we’ll discuss how to do this most effectively.
Something you may notice is that the enablers of this ECO task have an implication that building a shared understanding is all about fixing issues and misunderstandings that have already occurred. But in truth, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," as the old saying goes. Building a shared understanding needs to happen from the get-go, as early as your project kick-off meeting, and ultimately comes down to having good written documentation, efficient communication, regular meetings, and proper feedback. This will help prevent misunderstandings. As such, our lesson will focus on communication theory to identify and avoid misunderstandings, and on facilitation techniques for finding consensus in order to get to a shared understanding in a project.
Until Next Time,
Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, CSM
President, OSP International LLC
Transcript
F02.10 Shared Understanding
[00:00] [Introduction]
Hello and welcome to The PM PrepCast™, where we communicate the concepts, tools, and techniques that you’ll want to understand while learning about project management, and I’m your instructor, Cornelius Fichtner. One of the first goals in onboarding team for a project is to ensure that they build and maintain a shared understanding about the project’s desired objectives and outcome. So, in today’s lesson, we’ll discuss how to do this most effectively. Build a shared understanding falls within the people domain, and it has four enablers.
[00:49] Build a Shared Understanding
First, break down situations to identify the root causes of a misunderstanding. So, when a problem arises, you’ll need to gather the team and work to identify the source of any misunderstandings and its consequences. Misunderstandings can easily escalate to conflict. So, it’s important to act quickly. Root cause analysis, conflict management, and team meetings are just a few of the many tools and techniques that can be leveraged. Survey all necessary parties to reach a consensus. We should be able to work with all the people involved in our project to create common ground. Surveys, brainstormings, voting methods, these can all be used to generate ideas and make decisions about different aspects of the project and achieve a consensus where possible. Support the outcome of the parties’ agreement. When a new project commences, the team must decide on a set of desired objectives, outcomes, and processes. Documenting these agreements in a project charter or a team charter helps to keep team members accountable to one another. Investigate potential misunderstandings. The ultimate failure to build shared understanding is conflict. Conflict often arises from a misunderstanding, that leads to a perceived mismatch in needs, desires, and values or perspectives. By finding the causes for a misunderstanding, we can try to avoid similar issues in the future. Something you may have noticed is that these enablers all have an implication that building a shared understanding is all about fixing issues and misunderstandings that have already occurred. But in truth, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure as the old saying goes. So, building a shared understanding needs to happen from the get go, as early as your project kickoff meeting, and ultimately comes down to having good written documentation, efficient communication, regular meetings and proper feedback. This will help prevent misunderstandings. As such, our lesson right now will focus on communication theory and how to identify and avoid misunderstandings and on the facilitation techniques for finding consensus in order to get a shared understanding in a project. Let’s get going.
[03:47] [Quote]
So, to build a shared understanding, we need to take a look at how we communicate. A lot of communication feels like common sense, but how you communicate is one of the biggest critical success factors on a project. There are some key concepts to understand, but much of this topic may seem like just normal business practice. And that’s a good thing. Nevertheless, don’t underestimate the importance of good communications. If you mess up your communications, you will likely mess up your project.
[04:24] Communication
That’s why I want to start our discussion with some communication basics. All communication regardless of the type of media we are using, either via devices or face to face, follow the same pattern --- sender, message, medium, receiver. Or, to translate, someone, the sender, sends a message to someone else, the receiver, through some kind of communication medium. That doesn’t always go well, however. The act of communication can be derailed by what Shannon and Weaver described in their model of communication as noise. Noise also called interference distorts the message between a sender and a receiver. Noise can be anything, internal or external, that interferes with the transmission of a message or an acknowledgement. For instance, distance, unfamiliar technology, lack of background information, a mental distraction, or language. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever been on a website or a blog trying to read something, perhaps a recipe or something, and then suddenly, you’re interrupted by a pop-up ad? Well, that pop-up ad is noise. And isn’t it really annoying and distracting when that happens? I hated when companies do that. I would never think that low.
[6:00] How to Avoid Misunderstandings
So, what can we do then to avoid misunderstandings from the get go? It helps to have a common glossary. If everyone is using the same definitions and terms on the project, many misunderstandings can be avoided. Having a common language in project management is not to be underestimated. It’s one of the reasons why terminology is crucial for exam success, by the way. Another way to mitigate the risk of misunderstanding in project communication is to have clearly delineated roles. When everyone knows what’s in scope and what is out of scope in regard to their role, definition and responsibilities, then communication, they often go much, much more smoothly. Responsibility assignment matrix can be used to clarify roles and responsibilities in cross-functional departments and projects, and also within processes. A third good practice for avoiding misunderstandings, especially if there is already a conflict due to miscommunication, is to involve a third party such as a mediator, arbitrator, auditor, or another person who can support the process with their neutrality, expertise and experience. And then lastly when it comes to avoiding misunderstandings, it is extremely important to consider the context of any communication, which occurs between people understanding why and in which situation something is communicated helps put that communication into perspective, and makes us less likely to misinterpret it.
[7:53] Communication Methods
Next, I would like to take a look at communication methods with you. There are three rather broad ones to begin with. Push communication is where you push information to others. It’s a one-way street. The drawback is that the sender has no way of ensuring that the recipient has, indeed, received the information and consume the information, let alone understood the information. But the advantage of this approach is that you can push the information to a large number of recipients at the same time. And the recipients can access the communication content at their own discretion. Common examples of push communication include reports, voice mails, email, press releases, blogs, memos, letters, and if you are still using them, telefaxes. Pull communication happens when the recipient of the information has to pull the information from its location. Again, you don’t really know if the recipient has, indeed, sorted out the information, absorbed it or understood it. However, the advantage here is that you can place large volumes of information into a repository, and then the recipient can choose what to pull. Pull communication can include things like web portals, wikis, internets, bulletin boards and e-learning tools such as, well, right here, The Project Management PrepCast that you are using right now. The PM PrepCast is an excellent example of pull communication, from your perspective. I have uploaded it to our learning management system, and you pulled it out of there and you are not consuming it on your device, whatever it is that you may be using. Interactive communication is where you have a multi-directional exchange of information in real time. Only the people needed should be involved in this method of communication. But all participants must be available at the same time to communicate. The volume of information that can be exchanged is limited but the advantage is that feedback can be given right away. And I’m sure you have used interactive communication before. Common uses would be, for example, instant messaging, phone calls, video conferences, or any direct face-to-face communications like meetings.
[10:30] Major Forms of Communication
In addition to these three general communication methods, you will also need to consider and define the major forms of communication that you will use in your project management plan. Here are five to consider starting with interpersonal communication, which is generally face to face like a one-on-one meeting with your colleagues. Then small group communication where you involve a group, typically three to six people like a team meeting. Public communication for example giving a presentation to a large group of people. Mass communication where you share information with a large group, but there is little connection between you and the people receiving the message like sending an email newsletter to the whole company. And lastly, social networks and computer-driven communications such as LinkedIn of Twitter or Slack might be an appropriate use for your project if it helps meet your communication needs. All of these are different methods to communicate with stakeholders on your project. Don’t forget to document these approaches in the communications management plan.
[11:45] Communication Mediums
Let’s also take a brief look at what kinds of communication mediums are at our disposal. A medium in communication is a system or channel through which a speaker or writer addresses their audience. It can include written, verbal, or non-verbal elements, and can either be virtual or physical. It may address either an individual or a group of people or contain more than one element or communication type. Some common types of communication mediums in the workplace include face-to-face communication such as voice and body language, social media communication and remote communication, for example, email, phone or video conferencing. And there are, of course, many more, and I’m sure you can think of some others. And then lastly, using the right medium to communicate your message allows you to contact the right people in the way that best serves your communication goals. For example, you might choose to do an in-person presentation to train a group of new employees, so you can reach a large audience while also providing immediate opportunities for the participants to ask questions for clarity. By comparison, sending an email maybe better for a less urgent communication context, or if you’re communicating with someone remotely.
[13:17] The Communication Method
But let’s not forget whatever tool and whatever method you choose, it must be appropriate for the person receiving the message. Make sure that you understand your stakeholders’ communication needs, and then align them with the necessities of the project.
[13:36] Tips for Choosing a Communication Medium
And now, here are six things to consider when choosing the right medium for your communication beginning with urgency. It is an emergency or can your message wait? People, in general, tend to respond faster to face-to-face communication versus written forms of communication. So, if you’re trying to contact a team member outside of work hours regarding an urgent matter, then they maybe more likely to respond to a phone call rather than an email. Next, we have formality. Some types of communications may be more formal than others. Emails and text messages, in general, tend to be more informal or semi-formal, while a memo or report is typically very formal. For example, if you need to deliver a serious message to someone, then a face-to-face meeting maybe preferable to sending a text. Taking the time to meet with that person shows additional effort and consideration, whereas a text message or other informal communication mediums will not show that effort. It also depends on the context, of course. Third in our list is purpose. Knowing the purpose of your message can also help you choose the right communication medium. Therefore, if you want your audience to be able to ask questions or provide a detailed response to your message, then having a phone call or a face-to-face meeting might be more appropriate than sending a text or an email. And don’t forget your relationship because your relationship with your audience can influence what type of communication medium is most effective. For example, when asking your boss a question, you might send a semi-formal email, whereas, you may use an informal chat message to contact a PM. Also consider how easily your audience can access your message based on your chosen medium. If you work for a company with many remote employees, hosting an in-person meeting may not be possible. Or, if you work with an in-person team, it may be quicker to have an impromptu in-person meeting rather than emailing or scheduling a video conference. Finally, you want to consider the information type. Some types of information are more easily expressed through search and mediums. As an example, if you’re trying to share data with your audience, that includes complex charts and graphs, it might be better to use a visual medium like PowerPoint or a written report, that will make it easier for your audience to comprehend the data.
[16:32] A Good Rule of Thumb
And with the communication you use, how can you make sure that the motivation of your colleagues and team members is maintained and supports building a shared understanding? Well, when talking to your project team members, a good rule of thumb is praise in public, and criticize in private. So, in most cases, let everyone hear when someone did something well and you think they deserve praise. However, if you are not so happy with what someone did or how they performed, it’s often better to choose one-on-one setting to deliver that message and clarify the situation. That way, you avoid public embarrassment in your colleague and you give everyone the chance to settle matters more privately. In any case, criticism should, of course, be respectful and constructive. This can lower the risk of the other person reacting defensively and keeps the confrontation on a more factual level.
[17:40] Finding Consensus
When building a shared understanding, it is helpful to see how much consensus exists among team members and other stakeholders with regards to priorities and other important project decisions. We can support this process by using voting techniques such as Roman voting. This is the classical simple and fast ‘thumbs up – thumbs down’ gesture. Then, there is fist of five. Here, you hold up a number of fingers and depending on how many fingers people in the room are holding up, it becomes clear who is supporting the decision and who isn’t. And lastly, dot voting. Dot voting, an especially democratic way of voting in favor or against a decision. Especially helpful when there are several options for a group to choose from. In dot voting, participants vote on their chosen option using a limited number of stickers or marks with pens. You know, dot stickers, those are most common. Participants are each given a set number of dots. Maybe, you give each one five. They place dot stickers next to the options that are presented to them. Once that they like, they may place any number of their dots on any number of the options. So, if you look option one really well, you put all five dots right next to that. And those options with the most dots at the end of voting, well, they win. This is a great technique to use for ranking ideas after brainstorming them.
[19:14] Integrative Thinking
Oh, and speaking of making decisions, an important aspect of building a shared understanding both with the project team and with other stakeholders is defining priorities and common goals in projects. To support this process, Roger Martin developed a theory of integrative thinking claiming that it is helpful to know what customers want, what is technically feasible and what someone in charge of creating these desirable and feasible things can actually afford to invest in. And what you want to do is to try and find the sweet spot there in the center of these three aspects. This is where you want everyone’s understanding to focus on. You want a solution that is viable, desirable, and feasible.
[20:10] Project and Team Charters
Project charters and team charters can be useful in building a shared understanding both with the project team and with other stakeholders by defining priorities and common goals on projects. A project charter, that’s a document issued by the project sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project and authorizes you, the project manager, to apply resources to your projects’ activities. A project charter is developed prior to project planning. Therefore, a project charter helps stakeholders very early on to gain a common understanding of the project milestones, deliverables and roles and responsibilities. A team charter can also be helpful as it may specify how a team chooses to handle certain issues and disagreements when they arise. As we know, achieving consensus is not always possible so it’s better to come up with ground rules in advance about how conflicts and disagreements will be handled. Though, this tend to be informal documents, project charters and team charters still act as a contract holding everyone accountable to the agreements that they have made. This reduces the likelihood of future conflict or misunderstandings.
[21:34] Vision Statement
Another way to help build a shared understanding amount of project is to create a vision statement. A project vision statement often developed along with the project charter is a description or declaration of what an organization or a project team wants to obtain or accomplish upon the completion of a project. So, it is the desired end-state. It answers why we’re doing, what we’re doing and gives project team members a reason for contributing. It clarifies the project’s purpose, eliminates confusion, unifies the team and inspires them to do their best. Unlike project requirements and project activities, which are subject to change especially if you’re using an Agile approach, a vision statement serves as a more consistent guiding light for the project. Even as projects change or adapt, the over-arching vision for the project usually remains the same. And then when formulating your own project vision statement, try to create one that is simple, specific, actionable and collaborative. That last one is especially important. Don’t just create a vision statement on your own. Solicit input from many stakeholders including your team members and customers. This will not only produce better ideas, but will help them own and agree to the vision.
[23:15] The PM PrepCast™ Vision
Let me give you a real, live example, the project vision statement here for the PM PrepCast, the course that you are watching right now. I have taken this from our project charter. Here we go: “Assist PMP candidates around the world in reaching their goal of becoming certified by offering a range of PMP prep products that are based on PMI’s Exam Content Outline,” that’s the ECO, “and help prepare them for the most current Exam.” So, you can see that we have a clear idea of what we want to do, in general. We want to assist you to help prepare you for the most current exam. But, we’re not specifically saying how. We knew we were going to create a recorded course with lessons like the one you are watching right now, and we also had our exam simulator. But at some point, we realized, you know what, our PMP Exam Formula Study Guide is really not up to date for the most current exam. So, we updated that and we created a new version of our Formula Study Guide. And in case we find any other types of products that would be helpful to assist you and help you, we would also be able to develop those because our vision statement is pretty broad in regards to what the final output is going to be.
[24:46] MoSCoW Prioritization Method
Sometimes, despite our best efforts in planning, our team may not always agree on priorities, which can lead to conflict and misunderstanding. An easy way to decide between conflicting views and priorities is the MoSCoW Prioritization Method. It also helps to reach a consensual agreement of work to be done, and in which order it should occur. MoSCoW has four categories and they are, first of all, ‘must have.’ Are there any requirements, which have to be fulfilled to the degree that you or your stakeholders cannot do without them? Because it’s so important or simply because it is necessary. For example, if a customer’s checkout procedure cannot be finished without the customer registering first, a functional registration option is a must-have before finalizing the checkout implementation for your shopping chart. Then there are the ‘should haves.’ Everything that stakeholders and the project team thinks is important, be it not a must. These items are second priority but still high. Then we have the ‘could haves.’ Any work prioritized as could have, could also be called nice to have. They are the cherry on the cake and can lead to a higher customer satisfaction, but not doing them will also not result in a real catastrophe. And lastly, we have the ‘won’t haves.’ And, this might actually be the most important category in this list of four here to have for the team. Make sure you know and communicate what not to do. Keep it simple. Keep it manageable. Some things will consciously not get implemented, and it should be okay. They might be added to a wish list for later on maybe.
[26:53] Using MoSCoW in UX Research
Let me give you two examples of what ‘must, how, could’ look like in real life. My thanks go to Eva Schicker, she is a user experience specialist and blogs about this and she has gone to two very well-known website and in hindsight, she has done a MoSCoW analysis of the must haves, you see those at the top left corner there; should haves; could haves and won’t haves in a clockwise around the quadrants there for this website. So, my question for you is: What website is this? You know it. It’s probably the best known website in the world. And if you look at the top left there with the must-haves, right. This is so minimal, so small. There is so little there. There is a search field, the secondary search field. Maybe, a tertiary profile access. And then at the top right, we have some services, store, about. So, this very, very little on the page and which page do you know that has very little on them? Well, this is MoSCoW analysis of Google. You can clearly see at the bottom left there, won’t have --- sports event, infographic, ticket sales, background graphics, right. So, this is the way that if you were designing Google. Now, you would obviously do this ahead of time, and you would create this list of ‘should have, must have, could have, won’t have’ features before you design it. Here is our second example using the same approach. This was done retroactively. Again, another well-known website. You can already see that at the top left, in the must-have corner there, a lot more features. So, this is a much more feature-rich website --- headlines, daily lead stories, secondary stories. Based on that, you can already tell, this has got to be some sort of a news portal, stock market, hyperlinks, scroll bar, listed stories, embedded videos, right, that we have at the top. What won’t we have at the bottom right there, bottom left, excuse me --- emojis, chat rooms, e-voting, right. So, what could this be? Any idea, other than what, it could be a new website? Well, this is in fact, the New York Times MoSCoW analysis of their website.
[29:28] Eisenhower Matrix
Having clear priorities is extremely important when building a shared understanding in a project. In 1954, former US President Dwight Eisenhower made history by citing a university professor of his with the following words: I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent. This seems to be the reason why the Eisenhower Matrix for prioritizing work has been given its name. It consists of four quadrants --- high importance, low importance, low urgency, and high urgency. And then in 2012, Stephen Covey interpreted the Eisenhower Matrix as you can see here on the right. It can be used as an aid to project scope and work prioritization as follows: Do everything with high importance and urgency first. Plan for things with high importance and low urgency, so that you do not forget them. Delegate tasks with high urgency but low importance. And lastly, eliminate any tasks with low importance and low urgency. Those things, we’re just not going to do at all.
[31:04] Kano Modeling
In 1984, Noriaki Kano defined customer requirement prioritization criteria, which could be mapped to the MoSCoW categories. First, let’s look at the must-be features. Similar to the must-have features in the MoSCoW model, the customer expects these basic features often as going without saying. So, they must be included. Meeting them is not satisfactory for the customer. But, not meeting them makes the customer angry. For example, being able to send text messages with your phone or having seatbelts in your car. I mean, I’d be pretty upset if I bought a phone that doesn’t have SMS. Next, we have the one-dimensional features. These are features that give you a proportionate increase in customer satisfaction as you invest into them. One example would be increasing battery life for a cellphone. Dr. Kano described this type of feature as one dimensional because of the direct linear correlation between how much you invest in it and the amount of customer satisfaction that it delivers. And then finally, there are attractive features, which bring delight and make the customer smile. If you don’t have these attractive features, which Dr. Kano calls delighters, customers might not even miss them. But, if you do include them and continue to invest in them, you create happier customers. You can also think of these features as the unique innovations and surprises that you include in your product. For example, a phone coming with a built-in app for digital well-being and screen time limitation can surprise and delight customers, who in turn want more. They come back and they tell their friends. And they in turn, become customers. There is even a special Kano questionnaire for the identification of these levels. And, there is also a rule about how these features shift from delighters to basic needs. Let me show you.
[33:31] [Kano Model Graph]
As customer expectations change with the level of performance from competing products, attributes can move from delighters to performance need, and then to the basic need. You can see this is symbolized here by these two big, red arrows right there. So, we have the delighters here. This is this thin, red line here at the top. So, we have all the features that are delighters here. But overtime, these delighter features, well, they move down, especially if all your competitors also have these delighters. They move down and now, your customers move here to the thin, green line. These are the basic needs. And everybody expects these. So, what used to be a delighter in the past, moves down and is now pretty much just a basic need. Let me take you back to the example of the phone charge because back in 2009, mobile phone charges would last 12 hours. As each new mobile generation improve battery life, the attribute of having a 12-hour battery life has shifted to delighter to, well, probably not even a basic need. This is less than a basic need. Or, think about the camera on your phone. Nowadays, you simply expect to take pictures in the megapixel range at an outstanding quality. Ten to fifteen years, this would have been up here, right. But right now, it’s down here. This is a basic need. And yeah, for the even older ones among us, you might still remember a time when having a rear-view mirror in the car was a delighter. Well, I think would agree that today having rear-view mirrors in a car, that’s just a must have. So, what is attractive at one point, overtime will become one dimensional here in the middle. And then it will come a basic need at the bottom. Whenever this happens, new delighters should and often can be found in order to stay competitive.
[35:42] Takeaways
It’s time for this lesson’s takeaways. Communication is essential for project success. Project excellence requires your whole project team to have a common understanding of what you are doing. Without the team members and stakeholders, we’ll all be pulling in opposite directions. The ultimate failure to build a shared understanding is conflict. Building a shared understanding requires good communication tailored to the situation at hand and the people involved. Learning about different communication methods and mediums can help you choose the right one for your message and the right one for your stakeholders. Vision statements, project charters and team charters are all documents to help capture the intent and vision of the project and prevent misunderstandings between stakeholders. And lastly, make priorities clear, and try to create consensus whenever possible in order to build a shared understanding with all relevant stakeholders. Helpful tools to support this among others are the MoSCoW Prioritization Method, the Eisenhower Matrix, and the Kano Model. And with that, we conclude our coverage of building a shared understanding. Until next time.
[End of transcript]