Bored out of my brains, I decided to ask people the following questions.
- Do you find project managers working on web projects rarely speak your own language? Are they full of buzz words?
- Would the following phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” be translated to “The strategically streamlined and proactive brown opportunity expert leverages an important sea-change and diversity shift over the project manager’s highly inefficient domestic security investment (in the end game, and by the end of play today)”
Here are the responses so far:
The answer is to talk slowly and quietly and don’t let them have any sharp pencils, as they may hurt themselves.
IT “experts” are the same in my book as accountancy and finance “experts” – they like to dress up something quite simple as something complicated to justify their existence.
A “project gateway meeting” is “explaining why we are already delayed and over budget only two weeks into the project”.
A “critical path” is “the quick way of doing this, which is what we should have been doing to start with”.
The “project risk log” is “getting our excuses ready so we can blame someone else whet this goes badly wrong”
Similarly in finance a “hedge fund” is simply “gambling with other peoples money”, and “investment bankers” are “bookies in nicer suits”
If we were all a bit more honest about what we were doing we would have fewer business disasters, but the “experts” may have to be a bit more honest with their salary expectations
Neil Smith
Territory Manager at Caterpillar Inc
I would suggest explaining to them that you have different backgrounds and will need to find a common language to communicate. Most IT folks will try to keep it jargon-free if they are asked…nicely.
Josh Chernin
General Manager, Itinerant Writer, and Decent Little League Coach
Fortunately, our PM’s behaving like humans
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My vision, as PM is to get thing simplier for public. I urgently need people to understand what I am talking about. I use metaphores, but not to look smart, mysterious and almighty. I use it for better understanding and comprehension. Especially Managers demands human language instead of geek-speakMaybe it is the influence of Zen and Hannibal Lecter.
Kamil Brzak
IT System Administrator, TRCZ s.r.o. – Tokai Rika Group
I like Jean Luc’s answer so far. I’d add that it’s important to remember that the Project Manager’s role is defined as:
“The person responsible for delivering the project in the agreed schedule, to the correct technical specification, i.e. defined to meet user requirements, and within the approved budget and other specified criteria, e.g. Key Performance Indicators. The project manager is the individual ultimately responsible to the end user.”
So, as Jean Luc wrote, the PM should do everything in his/her power to ensure that good communication is fostered.
One other thing I would note is in regard to the DiSC profile. We have all of our employees complete a DiSC assessment and have found them to be extremely valuable in both evaluating individuals’ role suitability as well as the larger team dynamic. Because certain profiles tend to recur among particular roles (i.e. developers tend to have high “S” profiles, while Project Managers tend to have high “I” profiles), we can shape the team intentionally with complimentary personalities and roles in mind.
Christopher Butler
Vice President at Newfangled Web Factory
One of the biggest challenges in project management is “translating” industry jargon. Ideally the project manager will be able to help everyone communicate clearly.
A few tips:
- Become well-versed in the jargon used in your company (by different departments, vendors, etc.)
- If you don’t understand what a team member is saying, try to meet one-on-one to ask questions and get clarification
- If someone is unclear (in a meeting or in a written statement) try rephrasing what they’ve said or offer a concrete example of the situation
- When possible, include examples or plain English (“Customer-oriented terminology”) in project documents
- Be patient and willing to listen.
Jasmine Stotts
Consultant- Process Development at Alltel Communications
It is the Project Manager’s responsibility to select the most effective communication style and techniques for each stakeholder, to ensure that his/her messages are correctly received with the less possible distortion.
Each field might have its specific terminology, which might make no sense to a person from a different field. Therefore, to facilitate the communication, the project manager could start with a glossary of terms and some details explanation for the non-initiated members.
Your responsibility is to make sure your project manager understands your difference of communication and helps you to reach a common language.
Communication gap between two project members can be a cause of project failure. This should be avoided as much as possible.
Jean Luc Creppy
Senior Manager at BearingPoint Consulting
Jean-Luc puts the point quite nicely… I would expand on this and say that the role of the PM (IMHO) is to be “the” node for communciations between the key stakeholders. As such it is indeed their responsibility (duty even) to ensure that the message is clearly stated in terminology that is relative to the listener, and that the message has been understood.
If you have PM’s that are not able to communicate clearly in the different situations then I would respectfully suggest that you (as their manager) need to organise some training for them.
Personally I exhort the PM’s that I interact with in my organisation (and others) that the most important rule of good project management is clear communication – and if the listener does not understand you (due to terminology or buzzwords) then you are only talking…
Now to go find my rifle and get myself a nice fox-fur coat
Mark Gray
Senior Project Manager at NXP Semiconductors
