One of the best things that you can do whenever you are working with a new team or group is to have a conversation on how best to work with each other. Even if you know each other really well, you are now in a new situation and it is best not to make assumptions on how things will work. What should you consider?
- Communication
- How will the team stay connected on the latest information?
- Will the team have a centralized place for documents?
- How will decisions be made and communicated?
- Who are you key stakeholders and sponsors and what information will they need?
- How will people be impacted and what do they need to know?
- Who in the group is responsible and accountable for communication?
- Roles and Responsibilities
- Who will own what work areas?
- How will the team members work with the key stakeholders, vendors, internal teams to get things done?
- Will the reporting relationships be the same or change?
- Who will perform all of the administrative functions for the group or will they be handled independently with oversight monthly?
- Who is the escalation point for issues, risks and changes?
- Meetings
- How often will the team need to meet?
- Will there be certain meeting formats that need to be followed?
- What will the outcomes of these meetings look like? (knowledge sharing, decision making, status updates)
- Will there be senior management reviews and updates? (sometimes known as a steering committee meeting)
- How will clients meetings be structured to provide updates and get decisions made?
Although these areas are more tactical, they are important to ensure success to the work you are doing together. This is not an all inclusive list, but it does include some of the key area that can cause issues. Depending on what type of focus the group has, the way that people need to work together may need to be more formal or less formal. The most important thing is to have these conversations at the beginning, so that there are less issues later.