Communication is Key – The Funnel Effect
For those of you who are formally trained project managers, this post may seem a bit elementary. For many who work on web projects with different departments within an organization without such training or experience, this could be a very handy tool.
Have you ever been involved in a project where things are running smoothly right up until the end? As the close of the project looms, everyone scrambles to get their piece completed and off to whomever is putting together the final project. Messages are exchanged fast and furiously and communication devolves into a cacophony of confusing and sometimes conflicting information. In the end, the project ends up taking longer because of the relative chaos.
To help alleviate this situation, allow me to introduce what I call “The Funnel Effect.” The idea is simple: appoint people as gateways to facilitate communication between departments during a project. These points of contact are the primary, though not the only, interfaces between departments for that particular project.
Here’s how it might work:
A company is working on a web site project where the marketing department is responsible for the content and the IT department is responsible for putting the site together according to the already agreed-upon design. The marketing department has assigned a few people to gather the content together and the IT department has 2 people working on their end.
Instead of everyone sending their messages and copying the entire team – which would probably work out well on a smaller project – one person is chosen from each department to act as the point of contact (or funnel) for that department. Most of the exchange between departments is made between these two so that they can direct the received message to the appropriate person on their team. This helps ensure that the messages going back and forth are going to the right person and are double-checked by someone before being passed.
This Doesn’t Mean A New Bureaucracy
I do not advocate a total cutoff of direct communication between members of the teams across department “lines.” I do not recommend setting up a total bureaucracy, but, rather, project managers in each department to track communication and progress towards the goal of completing the project as quickly and accurately as possible.
Are you doing something like this in your organization? Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments.
