Results Without Authority: Controlling a Project when the Team Doesn't Report to You

Tom Kendrick

Jan 2006 · AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

About this ebook

When you're a project manager with a team of people who don't technically report to you, your challenge is to get Results Without Authority. This book delivers proven techniques for controlling projects and managing diverse teams in a wide variety of situations, and bringing those projects to successful closure. The concepts in this book are essential for all project managers, with and without authority, because they offer a productive alternative to "command and control" management techniques that can easily backfire. Tom Kendrick's system will help you get successful project results from diverse, cross-functional, virtual, outsourced, and other types of project teams by showing how to establish and build: Control Through Process. Key project management processes, infrastructure, and the role of the project office. Control Through Influence. Productive leadership styles, reciprocity, and maintaining relationships. Control Through Project Metrics. Quantitative, predictive, diagnostic, and retrospective metrics for project control, motivating desired behaviors, and avoiding potential problems. Control Through Project Initiation. The role of the sponsor in project control, the importance of project vision, project launch documentation, and the project start-up workshop. Control Through Project Planning. Collaborative planning as the foundation of project control; planning as a key factor in setting baselines and establishing metrics. Control During Project Execution. Measurement and interpretation of project status, informal communication, and maintaining relationships as keys to maintaining control. Control Through Tracking and Monitoring. Controlling scope and other project parameters; formal project communication and reporting, rewards and recognition, and project reviews. Enhancing Overall Control Through Project Closure. Sign-off, evaluating retrospective project metrics, celebrating, and rewarding the team; improving long-term project control through lessons learned. Packed with invaluable guidance for controlling projects of all scopes and in any field, Results Without Authority will help novice and experienced project leaders get the best from their project teams.