It’s a big week for the staff at Falafel who has been cooking up a course certain to whet the appetite for project teams everywhere.  With the release of ActiveFocus, the Falafel team has once again demonstrated their ability to deliver as promised.

ActiveFocus reflects many years of down-to-earth project management experience at many levels.  Having involvement with numerous projects across diverse industries, we have benefited from experiencing first hand the differences between teams. 

Even so, given all the great tools, methodologies and experience, we at Falafel are no dummies. We know that at the root of any successful project are people.  This fact is central to the ActiveFocus philosophy.  What do I mean by this?

Well, of course methodologies and tools can be extremely helpful. It would be unwise, however, to stake one’s project success in the claims of the methodology or tool du jour.  I’ll briefly discuss what I consider four core attributes of the people component to managing projects. Over time, I’ll elaborate on these themes as I write further about project management in general.

Leadership in Management
In this regard, I’m not merely speaking of the role, position or authority of the leader/manager. I’m speaking about the ability to inspire, instill vision and to motivate the efforts of the people they lead. This type of leadership promotes project success. This is in contrast to the authoritarian leader/manager that discourages and almost guarantees project failure. 

Integrity
The relationship between team members must be one of trust and mutual respect. If anything will kill a project it will be an attitude of “us and them”. Integrity implies that people are honest with each other in all matters. This gets real practical when discussing project components like effort, scope, cost and risk.

Clear Definition of Goals
It’s one thing to get people to buy into a great idea. It’s a totally different matter to tell them how to implement it. Projects that have the charismatic, inspirational leaders yet  are lacking in the definition area are sure to become the never-ending moving target.  To get to the point, this component has to do with giving people clear definition of what you want them to implement.

Talent
I see this as the complimentary component to leadership. Talent has to do with matching the right person to the needed task.  Many projects that fail do so because people are filling roles for which they have little or no experience.  This is often justified for reasons of necessity like funding or time constraints. Unfortunately, that is exactly the time that the right people for the job are needed more than ever.
 
There are many other attributes to the people component of project management. These four just happen to be my favorite. 

So how does ActiveFocus fit in? Active Focus is not about the tool itself. It’s not about our (Falafel) methodology which you have to follow perfectly to succeed. It’s about you, your business, your projects, your people and your success. It’s about empowering teams by enabling collaboration and aligning the focus of project members towards that common goal. 

By the way, if you have a PM success/fail story to share with me, please do.

Xavier Pacheco
ActiveFocus Product Manager