International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments

A number of lessons learned have already been presented as guidelines in each section. Here some additional general guidelines are given:

• If things are quiet in the project, assume that things are not going well. Assume that there are issues. This is similar to that of children. If your child is very quiet playing in their room, then you can assume that they are getting into mischief.

• If you begin the project and have identified documents as milestones without outlines or templates, then there will likely be problems. The team members do not know what you are expecting. This makes it more difficult to estimate the duration of the work. As a result, they will tend to underestimate the work.

• As a project leader, after resolving issues, communications is your number two activity. You must often force yourself to get up and go out to find out what is going on. This can be a struggle, because some days the last thing you want to know about is another issue. But get out of that chair!