Previously a letter from project managers to team members was featured here on pmStudent (https://SPOTO.com/dear-project-team-members/). It seems only right to feature the response from hardworking team members who made project completion possible.
Dear Project Managers:
We appreciate your open letter. It is always a pleasure to get to know you better and understand your expectations. You are correct, “We are all here together.” We would like to share some information with you, your team members. Maybe we can all set aside some time for a team meeting to discuss expectations.
1) Your project is also ours. We don’t think your project is important if we haven’t started working on it yet. Guess what? If the person who wrote our performance appraisal gives us another assignment, it is because they are not satisfied with our progress. We must follow their instructions first. It’s not what we like anymore than you do.
2) We know that you require your status reports on time. It would be amazing if you all agreed on the same template for your status reports. It would be even better if all of you could share the same status reports so that we only have one status per week. It can be difficult to create multiple status reports for each project manager, and one for each functional manager.
3) We know you are often given impossible deadlines. Our estimates will not be reduced by any wishful thinking. We will do our best to meet these crazy deadlines. But if we could change the space and time continuum, we might just be doing something different for a living.
4) We tell issues because we want to help you solve those issues, not because you are a good listener.
5) We know that you attend approximately a zillion meetings. You are allowed to live your life. We won’t make you look for us. If you have any questions or concerns, let us know how we can reach you. It would be much more productive to spend that time working towards a deadline, instead of trying finding you.
6) We prefer to attend as many meetings as possible. We love it when meetings are organized and held on time. It is amazing when you can attend meetings and then bring back information from those meetings. This brings us to number 7.
7) Share information with me Don’t keep important information from us. We can discern which information has an impact on our work. Don’t think we don’t want to be bothered about the details. These details are required for our work. It really bothers our hearts when you try to make that decision for us.
8) We appreciate a strong, competent project manager. We can focus on the work we love and do our best work when we work together. We all enjoy success together.
Wow! It’s so much more enjoyable to see all of this in the open.
We are humbled by your sincere admiration
Your Team Members
