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Taking over a new Project Office

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by gerhardvw

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I will shortly take over a project office with permanent & contract workers. All staff is under pressure each running at least 4 - 6 IT projects in various stages of completion. The previous manager had been asked to leave as his work ethics had been questioned & the senior staff in the department accused him of various wrong doings. All staff are demotivated and seeking strong guidance. Some of the staff had been brought into the project office from administrative type positions and therefore had little formal project and / or technical training and background. How do i hit the ground running and make a good impression from day 1 to get staff & management on my side.

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by timwalsh

Don't expect to be able to instantly solve all the exisitng problems. You are going to have to take some time to research the situation to determine what are the root causes of existing problems.

First, make sure you have a clear understanding of managements expectations of you. Also try to determine what it was your predecessor did wrong (whether in fact he had ethical lapses, or maybe this was an excuse used by management).

Next, see if you can determine (quickly) through observation of day-to-day activities, what factors are affecting employee morale. If it isn't readily evident, you are going to have to conduct some more in-depth research (possibly with one-on-one meetings). If you are lucky, your research will show that all problems can be traced directly to poor leadership by your predecessor. However, it may show that the problems have deeper roots (i.e. company culture and politics), and that your predecessor was merely a scapegoat.

If at all possible, don't jumpin an start making changes merely for the sake of making changes.

You can make the best impression (both to employess and management) by showing that you genuinely want to solve the exisitng problems, but need to understand (thoroughly) the causes of those problems.

by penguinsrule

Get some project management training and knowledge. Even if you don't think PMP means anything, I promise if you were a PMP, you wouldn't be asking this question, you'd know what to do.

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