Five Keys to Great Relationships!

Everyone has had the experience of “connecting” to someone almost immediately when you meet. This is the art of building solid relationships. When you feel this connection you are glued to the conversation and sometimes can finish each other’s sentences.

 

Just about everything you do relies on teamwork. It is vital to a well working Project team, a family, lasting friendships etc. These are five things to look for in a solid relationship:

 

1.   Respect: Everyone wants to feel important and that they matter. The key is that you show respect to others even before they have done anything to warrant it. You respect others because they are simply human beings. At the same time, you should have to expect to earn it from others. This makes working through conflicts much easier.

2.   Shared Experiences: Respect can lay the foundation for a good relationship, but it’s not enough. You can’t be rational with someone you don’t know. It takes shared experiences over time. This is easy in families, but if you have a project team with high turnover, you need to work at building those relationships.

3.   Trust: When you respect people, and build shared experiences, you are in a position to develop trust. It is essential to every relationship.

4.   Reciprocity: One sided relationships don’t last long. If one person is the giver and one person is the receiver, there is no win-win dynamic. You should ask your teammates, colleagues and friends about their dreams and hopes. Give people your full attention and look them in the eye when you are in conversation.

5.   Mutual Enjoyment: When relationships start to grow really solid, the people begin to enjoy each other. Just being together can turn unpleasant tasks into positive experiences. Becoming a master at building relationships brings individual and team success.

Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)

When doing Risk Management Planning, one input you need is a Risk Breakdown Structure. The model is similar to the Work Breakdown Structure. It may change during the Risk Management Planning Process. Here is an example Risk Management breakdown:

 

• Technical
  • Requirements
  • Technology
  • Complexity
  • Quality
  • Performance
• Management
  • Resources
  • Company Vision
  • Capital
• Organizational
  • Dependencies
  • Budget
  • Prioritization
• External
  • Contractors
  • Vendors
  • Customer
• Project Management
  • Estimating
  • Planning
  • Controlling
  • Communication

 

Risk Breakdown Structures will vary between projects. One benefit of doing one is to remind those people engaged in the Risk Identification process of areas to think about. It will also be an input to Qualitative Risk Analysis where probabilities and impacts are assigned.  The impacts can be numerical or High, Medium, Low.

 

Risks are then prioritized according to their potential implications for affecting the Project’s success. Other things to take into account are stakeholder’s risk tolerance levels, reporting formats and how you will track the risks. The next step in the process will be Risk Identification.