Best Practices for a New Project Manager to Establish Themselves and Build Relationships Quickly
Read Part I for background information.
In his part, we’ll share some best practices to help Sydney ensure her first project starts off well.
As we learned, Sydney does have some base knowledge – she attended a week long onboarding program and had conducted some research about the company during the interviewing process. Additionally, she can certainly rely on her manager – the head of operations – in order to get to know key players in the organization.
Here are some things for Sydney to consider to help increase the success of her first project:
- Reach out to her manager and ask her to provide insight and support as follows:
- Insight on the managers in new service development and client engagement as well as provide a formal introduction to the managers.
- Recommendations of employees she believes would have the skills and knowledge to be on the project team
- An overview of past process improvement initiatives and whether or not they have been successful
- Reach out to her peers (other project managers) in the company:
- Their perspective on how to best approach this project
- Their thoughts on potential team members
- Ask about lessons learned on similar projects within the company
- Learn about common tools, templates and technologies used within the organization
- Research past projects to learn more about the types of projects that have been done and whether or not they were successful (including what makes a project successful or not within the organization)
These conversations and research around past projects will enable Sydney to be better prepared to manage her first large project within the organization.
