Win-Win Project Management

In my experience, when you’re dealing with multiple stakeholders, viewpoints and motivations, it’s important to try and find the best way for teams to work together and negotiate the challenges of project delivery.

It’s rare to find a project that doesn’t encounter issues during its delivery but approaching the resolution of those issues with a win-win mindset will help to produce great outcomes, happy teams and satisfied clients.

The following are some ways to make sure issues don’t derail your next project.

Work collaboratively

Understand and share the project vision and goals, remove obstacles and commit to creating a trusting and productive partnership that allows project issues to be openly discussed to achieve a pragmatic and reasonable resolution for all parties.

Approach negotiations with an open mind and focus on goals

Think creatively about options that minimise project impact and be prepared to compromise or make changes to improve outcomes e.g. re-plan, change resourcing, revise processes, or even consider an entirely different approach.

We recently accomplished this with a large government client, revisiting assumptions with the contracted process and pivoting the delivery approach in a way that is still consistent with the project budget and time constraints. The outcome has been a delivery team that is more focussed, quality gains in the processes and products and a substantial uplift in client confidence and satisfaction.

Seek feedback

Ask probing questions and listen to the answers carefully to identify areas for improvement, and maintain an open dialogue. Retrospectives involving the client are a great way to solicit regular feedback and identify opportunities for improvement. Collecting project metrics can also provide a gauge on performance in key delivery areas, and expose areas for discussion or review.

Be honest and transparent

The quickest way to identify and resolve any looming issues is to have all the information needed to accurately understand the status of the project. Providing factual and timely information on key metrics, and reporting risks and issues promptly and honestly, allows informed decisions to be made about how to resolve problems on the project.

So what does this mean if you work with Kiandra? It’s all in our values.

Be a straight shooter

We give you the information you need to understand your project's progress, honestly and transparently: status reporting on progress, risks, financials, milestones and quality.

We have the hard conversations about scope but remain open to change. We are clear about deliverables, timelines, acceptance criteria, approvals and quality gates.

Be client obsessed

From the project kick-off to closeout, Kiandra Project Managers establish a communication plan that keeps you informed throughout the project. We seek your feedback and act quickly on areas that are of concern and always aim to exceed your expectations. We work with you to manage risks to ensure that your project runs as smoothly as possible. If things do go wrong, we collaborate with you to get the project back on track with minimal disruption.

Bring your A-game

We leverage our experience and lessons learned to avoid common pitfalls. We listen to your concerns and monitor our performance to ensure we are working optimally and delivering a high-quality solution. We build a project team with the skills and experience best suited to your project.

Look out for each other

By establishing a partnership with you from the outset, communicating regularly, and being open and honest, we form a team that will support each other to achieve project success.

We’d love the opportunity to help out on your next project. Contact us and let us know your plans.