The Most Effective Ways to Prepare Your Team for a Project

It’s safe to say that preparing your team diligently for a new project is an essential component of a job well done. While new projects can excite and challenge us, they also insufflate a sense of fear. This is the main reason why preparation is imperative.

Starting the project on the right foot will also eliminate a considerable amount of issues that may haunt us in later on in the project. A well-prepared team will normally have the correct priorities established, which will ensure that the entire team follows the same common objectives.

In this article, we’ve compiled 6 essential things you need to do, in order to ensure that your team is ready for a complicated project.

1. Setting the right expectations

When it comes to establishing the right expectations, there are two critical aspects that need to be discussed. Firstly, we need to define the goals in terms of deliverables; you need to discuss all of the visual peculiarities of the deliverables, their form, structure, and other important aspects.

Secondly, you need to give an in-depth explanation regarding what the team is trying to achieve. How this product, optimization, or app will make the customers or end user’s life better and easier. This is why a thoroughly discussed set of goals are a central component of a successful project. Don’t forget to set a due date too; otherwise, your deliverables will take way too much time to be executed.

2. Establishing communication schedules

Just as your team and yourself have established the common and individual goals that everybody should be working towards, it is essential to set the time for recurrent meetings. These meetings should aim to calibrate and maintain those goals as the project advances.

3. Identify potential risks and plan your response

Just like any project a team can undertake, this one will have imminent risks that need to be addressed ahead of time. More importantly, you need to identify the ones that you can’t rectify right away and establish a course of action for the moment when they arise.

“It is imperative to have a transparent conversation regarding the issues that you as a team of individuals will have to confront. This will decrease the tension at the very beginning of the project. Furthermore, the fact that there is a pre-established response to a large set of issues will increase the team’s confidence.” — Emily Sanderson, a Project Manager at Trust My Paper.

4. Establish project milestones

A set of clearly defined milestones will considerably increase the project’s efficiency. Breaking the project down in milestones implies separating it into logical, equal parts, which are implied to be manageable. However, if your milestones aren’t inherently manageable, you should consider defining them by ensuring that your goals are SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

Dividing large tasks into smaller subtasks will, in effect, make them easier for many of your teammates.

5. Establish the best means of communication

When it comes to teamwork, not having a medium for efficient communication will most certainly be detrimental to the project. It’s safe to argue that a very large spectrum of issues in many projects arises due to an improper exchange of information or even misreading emotions and intentions.

There is an impressive body of research that suggests that businesses lose a total of almost 40 billion dollars due to poor communication between coworkers and departments.

It’s also a good idea to establish multiple communication channels for different types of issues. Sometimes certain mediums can’t handle complex problems. Therefore, there should be a protocol for straightforward and more intricate ones. One way of approaching this is to have one or two mediums where coworkers would communicate when confronted with simple problems, and discuss in person or via video call when handling more complex problems.

6. Ensure an environment suitable for work

It seems that businesses of all sizes have started forgetting about the importance of a suitable workplace. Since we’re now living in a very noisy era, being flooded with information and distractions, we tend to forget how important a quiet office actually is.

If you’re about to work on a high-impact project and you have the funds to do so — don’t hesitate to improve the office for your team. In a study recently published by HBR, respondents have stated that they’re deeply unhappy with cubicles, mostly due to lack of sound and visual privacy, noise levels, and the overall amount of space.

Conclusion

Preparing a team for a project is always about proper communication, project management, and dealing with potential risks well before they arise. Moreover, it’s critical to ensure that your team has a comfortable office to work in. Once you have all these elements covered, you will have done your best to ensure a successful project.

About the Author- Marie Fincher is a digital content director at Trust My Paper company with a background in marketing, technology, and business intelligence. She frequently writes about data science, BI, new marketing trends and branding strategies. Marie gradually changed her focus from working in marketing to writing about it.