Read Part I and Part II of our story for background information.
They scheduled another meeting with the team and this time showed that they were in agreement. They collaboratively presented how the project would be managed and reviewed roles and responsibilities with the team.
They are now four months into the project. Their plan for how to work effectively together in managing the project seems to be working well. They have done the following in order to continue to work together successfully and avoid conflicts:
- Meet each week to review progress in their respective areas and discuss team issues and other problems that have arisen in their areas and how they have resolved them.
- When major problems arise, they work on them together with the team members as they have found that by doing so they have been able to come to agreement on a solution much quicker and the solution has been much better overall.
- Share the same status reporting formats and ensuring consistency in the selection of tools, templates and technology used to ensure ease of sharing information and enabling increased effectiveness for team members who move back and forth on the project.
Rather than letting conflicts grow, Samantha and Eric have determined that they will each immediately address any potential conflict and work together to come to a resolution. This has been effective in keeping communication channels open and ensuring a comfortable working environment for the team.
As the project moves along, they have found that they are becoming stronger project managers by learning how to work together effectively. They agree that they have learned quite a bit from each other and also agree that they would not be as successful as they are on this project without learning how to work together and resolve their conflicts.
