Quick Tips: Critical Elements to Ramping Up a Large Team
In today’s environment, it’s critical to ramp up large teams quickly and efficiently to ensure your customers, whether internal or external, are pleased with the end deliverable.
“A properly ramped up team provides many benefits, least of which is a project being completed successfully, on time, on budget, and with great quality,” says Innovative Learning Group Senior Director of Client Solutions Gayle Holsworth. “This will allow the team to focus on creating solutions that truly improve performance and business results.”
TIPS ON HOW TO RAMP UP A LARGE TEAM
Staffing Select team members with the right skills and experience in the industry, subject, delivery method, and role they’re playing on the project. Most important, choose a dedicated, qualified project manager.
Process Figure out the steps you want to follow, and map out the phases and milestones. Determining project steps is critical to creating an accurate schedule.
Communication Decide, as a team, how and when to communicate. A project can rise and fall, be best in class, or be just average, based on communication.
Quality Ensure the team knows the project owner’s and stakeholders’ quality expectations. No one ever started a project by saying, “we need to strive for poor quality.”
Schedule Understand how the work is done and how long each step will take so you don’t just add random dates to a plan.
Budget Ensure the team understands the budget for which it has responsibility. If you develop an awesome solution, but it costs double the original budget, it probably won’t help the organization.
Templates Establish working and deliverable templates, which are built using the appropriate software and branded for the initiative, prior to starting the project.
Facilities Determine the physical space(s) and location(s) needed to complete the project. Do you need a dedicated “war room,” storage space for materials, etc.?
Equipment Ensure the team has access to the equipment the training is being developed for, e.g., a medical device, software program, etc. If the team can’t “work” with actual equipment, it’s difficult to create practice that mirrors real-world application.