Conventional project management invokes a series of processes and tools that are often run by specialists with great expense of resources, like for example scheduling, cost control, project risk, scope management, etc. Most conventional project practitioners make sure that those processes are followed with application. What they don’t realize is that these tools are only there for one reason: allow the project leader to have effective conversations with its team, and in general, catalyze effective conversations.

The value of these tools actually lies more in these conversations than in the actual formal result of the tool. This perspective changes everything in how these tools should be run.

In our new White Paper 2013-12 ‘Actual Project Leadership is About Organizing Effective Conversations – not to Run Properly Complicated Tools’, we discuss how to leverage the full value of all these processes.

The project leader cannot just be like an orchestra director ensuring the coordination between a number of specialists according to a predefined partition. The role of the project director is to ensure that effective conversations lead to effective decisions.

You can’t afford not to have these meaningful conversations

Having more of these tough conversations, more often, needs to be a constant objective of the project leader. It needs to be supported by appropriate outputs from all the tools that are run at great expense of resources. Understanding that the ultimate goal of all these tools is effective communication of major issues is key in implementing them in the right way. Never keep this objective out of your mind! Read our new White Paper 2013-12!