Chapter 14 Solving Common Project Problems

When people work for neither you nor your sponsor, it is hard to have them responsible for what they are doing for the project. For example, when I had to conduct usability testing for my final project, the people who participated in the testing had no responsibility on my project. It was beyond my authority.
How can I enlist them in my project team to have responsibility?

Ask your sponsor to publish a charter for all the stakeholders. Make sure that it strongly designates your authority on this project.
Explain the reason behind the project, and give them the background necessary to understand its importance to the organization.
Involve them in setting up your primary means of communication. Make sure that this is a two-way medium so you’ll know that they are up-to-date and involved.
Make assignments easy to understand and track and involve them in estimating the cost and duration of tasks and in defining completion criteria.
Show them how they fit into the project; emphasize the importance of their input and the probable impact on the project.
Invite them to status meetings when their tasks are near enough to appear on the open task report.
Develop a strong relationship with your sponsor by keeping him or her informed of your plans and your progress.

When you tell the managers that the project is not realistic but they tell you make it possible, how will you handle this situation?

Be extremely clear about the project’s purpose, scope, and deliverables.
Putting on your best can-do attitudes, develop at least three options for what can be done.
Because this project will have risks that affect both cost and/or schedule, you will need to perform risk assessments at both the high level and the detail level to find your danger points.
If you are attempting to meet a schedule that you believe is impossible, don’t give up on changing your stakeholders’ expectations.

At my workplace, DLI, raised the graduation test goal and all teachers disagreed on the new project because it was impossible to achieve, but our opinion was not accepted. So, team leaders had to get to work to make the project successful. I think following the principles mentioned above will help the decision makers understand the difficulty of the project.