PM-502, Management Characteristics of Successful Project Managers
A. Session No: 4		Short Title: Harnessing the Power of Teamnets

C.  Learning Objectives: The students will learn to accomplish the following: a) develop teams with network characteristics; b) design the work of larger and more complex teamnets; c) leverage tools to help make planning as effective and painless as possible; and d) avoid failure.
D.  Reading Assignment: Lipnack & Stamps, Section II
E: Session Description: In the first session on teamnets the focus was on “what is.”  In this session the focus is on “how-to.”  This session will provide the structured approach and guidelines to create and sustain a successful team-net within your teamnet organizational scale (small group, large organization, enterprise, alliance or economic mega-group).

F: Point One: 
	a) Question: How long does it take to build a house?
b) Key Point: This first step is to get your team-net to click.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) The four-hour house is a superb example of a team-net.
2) Review: Check your team-net against these criteria:
     a) The members of the group cross traditional boundaries
	b) Members cooperate for mutual benefit in at least one area.
	c) Members can survive independently in business, sometime competing against one another.
3) For team-nets, “beginning with the end in mind,” is not an optional exercise.  Iterate, iterate, iterate.
4) Check list:
	a) Common view - Does your organization have a clear purpose?
	b) Colleagues - Are there other people, besides you, working toward the purpose?
	c) Connections - Do you have sufficient communication and relationships among you to effectively achieve the purpose?
	d) Voices - is there more than one leader in the group?
	e) Inclusion - Can you “look up” and see that your organization is a part of a larger one?  Can you “look down” and see the smaller parts that make up yours?
5) The team-net how to:
	a) Step 1.  Clarify purpose by agreeing on mission and goals.
	b) Step 2.  Identify members who will be involved.
	c) Step 3.  Create links by connecting people to one another in as many ways as necessary.
	d) Step 4.  Multiply leadership to maximize the responsiveness of the group.
	e) Step 5.  Integrate levels to maintain dynamic balance within and without the group.
6) Think team-nets:
	a) Mission and goals: Be explicit.
	b) Customers satisfaction: Your customer’s customer is also your customer.
	c) Players and stakeholders: Who’s in the game?
	d) Leaders and decisions: There is no single person on top all the time.  Team-nets maximize leadership.
	e) Group dynamics: Remember the T-Group?
	f) Stages of growth: Consider the life cycle, teams take time to grow.
7) Phases to growing your team-net:
	a) Phase 1: Start up
	b) Phase 2: Launch
	c) Phase 3: Perform
	d) Phase 4: Test
	e) Phase 5: Deliver

G. Point Two:
a) Question: What is the most difficult transition that a group makes?
b) Key Point: Projects need sufficient momentum, commitment, and critical mass to take off.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) The first step is being asked to dance - a “close to the customer” approach is essential.  Digital’s experience with the MD-12
	a) The three-day plane plan
	b) The three-week plane plan
	c) The three-month plane plan.
2) Planning is doing -
	a) Invest in beginnings - Get it right early and often.
	b) It is always cheaper and better to fix something upstream.  Find the right fix early.
	c) The five questions: Where journalism comes in hand (why? what? when? who? where?)
d) The process of bing the design - it takes time and patience to ask and answer basic questions about goals and work.
	e) Gain the power of work process design from iteration.
3) The first run-through
	a) Why?  (find the source; express the need; determine the readiness; broadcast the benefits).
	b) What? (Scope the work; sketch the system; list the tasks; estimate the size).
	c) When? (Rough out the phases; initialize milestones; check givens; think critical).
	d) Who?  (Spark o life; team types; fluid leadership, strength of weak ties).
	e) Where? (Nowhere or somewhere; meeting places; shared data; connection technology).

4) Turning questions into answers.
	a) Targets result from translating “why”, the purpose, into specific actionable goals.
	b) Tasks result from answering “what” questions that convert purpose into specific chunks of work.
c) Time results from estimating “when” questions for task durations, forming a schedule based on task dependencies.
	d) Teams result from answering “who” questions, linking people’s names to specific tasks.
e) Territories result when “where” questions are settled, putting names on common places, physical and electronic.
5) The Second Run-Through - Its the second iteration that usually gets you close to a real working plan.  Call a launch session and go through these steps:
	a) T1. Set the Targets - Something catalyzes a need and crystallizes into a mission.
	b) T2. Design the Tasks - Tasks are micro-missions woven together.
	c) T3.  Estimate the Time - How long will it take and how much will it cost.
d) T4.  Select the Team - Most tasks require only a small cross-functional subset of the whole network at any one time.  The trick is to get the right people together on the right task at the right time.
1) Name the organizational functions.
		2) Identify the functional dependencies
		3) Name at least one functional owner.
e) T5.  Choose the Territories - One critical element of independence is territory - People bring their places with them, or they need to be provided space and support staff and infrastructure.

H. Point Three:
a) Question: How do you bring discipline to team-nets?
b) Key Point: Remember the 4-hour house?  The key to this project’s success was planning in intimate detail.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) If the product RS (first revenue shipment) is to be met, a late delivery of one-quarter might mean the difference between a FTM (first to market) and LTM (last to market).
2) A good way to kill a plan - ask one group to put it together and one group to carry it out.
3) Planning is about doing the job right the first time.
4) Purpose - Where it all begins.  Business groups form for a specific purpose.  As people absorb more information, the better they understand their purpose.  Purpose is basic to groups.
	a) Make the implicit very explicit - purposes, goals, tasks, plans.
b) Quantify quality - Uncover the customer’s needs; measure the process of transforming inputs into outputs; evaluate the customer response to the output.  Team-nets depend upon open, shared, accurate, unbiased information.
	c) Quality depends heavily on scientific data.
	d) A great team-net combines science with heart.

5) To manage changes to the plan, manage the data of change.
	a) T1 - Targets	  Timelines and milestones
	b) T2 - Tasks	  Lists and frameworks
	c) T3 - Time	  Flow diagrams and duration schedules
	d) T4 - Teams	  Cross boundary chart and directories
	e) T5 - Territories	  Handbook
6) You did your planning by tasks - now manage you plan by tasks, (i.e., manage by the WBS and the OBS) and by project phases.  The project manager has to integrate.
7) Some planning guidelines: (those that do, plan)
	a) Plan, plan, plan - but only as necessary.
	b) Iterate, iterate - get the big picture first - fill in details later.
	c) Use the 80/20 rule - critical few.
	d) Use the 85/15 rule - the system is most often the cause of the problem - not the people.

I. Point Four:
a) Question: Why do some team-nets fail?
b) Key Point: Just when you think things are perfect, there’s always some little horrible thing to mess it up (mosquito’s in paradise).
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) The Sydney Opera House - bureaucratic hassle.
2) Outcomes are rarely either successes or failures.  Most projects have failed in some respect - the world is not perfect.  Project Management and the quality movement is all about seeing how to do it better the next time
3) Five good ways to fail
	a) Purpose: From no glue to group think.  Perceive short-term needs push long-term benefits aside.
b) Members: From no independence to stubbornness.  The most difficult thing for many people is to give up control in favor of influence.
c) Links: From no connection to overload - communication is key to team-net success, and information access is critical to meaningful communication.
d) Leaders: From no leaders to no followers.  Team-nets succeed when they ellevate more than one leader.
	e) Levels: From no uplinks to no downlinks.  When team-nets neglect to manage up, they fail.

J. Point Five:
a) Question: What is the critical success factor?
b) Key Point: First, get the purpose right!  Then structure your organization to meet the purpose.  Restructure when the purpose significantly changes.  Match organizational type to your need.  Know your glue.
c) Instructor Notes: 
1) Three fundamental organizational structures: 
a) Functional - vertical integration in an industry or market.
b) Divisional - horizontal linkages in an industry.
c) Matrix - both stable and changing features
2) Your team net sits somewhere among these levels - locate its type, then learn the lessons from other companies that have gone before you.
3) Review the tools (page 323)
4) The purpose is the vital center.
5) Invest in the beginnings - Those that plan do.
6) Manage to the plan
7) Use your plan to integrate tasks (WBS), functions (OBS) and processes (inputs, tools and techniques, outputs).
8) What to do?
	a) Maintain boundaries and cross them.
	b) Strengthen the co-opetition dynamic for balance.
	c) Travel the levels and “walk the talk”.
	d) Lower the cultural barrier to co-opetition.
	e) Make work fun again.