KORONAKRISEN
viously held locally and often hybrid, were now
virtualized, which led to many additional hours of
work. Despite my 5+ years of experience in pure
home office (globally virtual distributed programs
or project portfolios) in my 20+ years of experience
in project and program management, virtual
work during Corona was another dimension.
I would like to go into this in the course.
This personal (including capacity-) crisis has, as
often, also led to something better. What exactly
has changed?
Changes in governance et al.
When it comes to governance, many people
think first of meetings and the committee structure.
This is fundamentally correct, but it is not
complete. My calendar was overloaded the first
3-4 weeks of purely virtual work, because now a
meeting was often set up virtually for many “little
things” and then 30 minutes with colleagues was
the lower limit. Thanks to Outlook. I immediately
remembered the 22-minute meetings. The goal is
to have meetings in
• 22 minute slots,
• to have a clear agenda,
• ideally, distribute written reading material on
the topic of the meeting in advance and in good
time,
• start the meeting on time and have a clear
focus.
I have configured my Outlook so that meetings
last either 25 minutes or 50 minutes by default.
Here the settings in Outlook help to ensure this.
My experience in the virtual environment is that
meetings last until the planned end. On site meetings
last until someone has to leave because they
are changing rooms. Moving from one room to
another demand time. In the virtual environment
this is usually not granted. Often there is not even
time for bio breaks. Criminal!
In order to avoid the overcrowded calendar, a
daily stand-up meeting of the teams should also
be planned in the virtual environment. Here it is
important that appropriate video conferencing
and collaboration tools are used. I use Planner
from Microsoft or Trello in my volunteer work
to support backlog, spintplanning and standups.
With both boards, the daily stand-up meeting
with a core team of a program or, as with me currently,
the project portfolio management team
of typical up to 7 direct reports can be supported
very well. Sprint planning and retroperspectives
are of course also included.
Another proven meeting sequence is to schedule
escalation and decision meetings ideally several
times a week and, in the best case, cancel them if
nothing needs to be decided or addressed. These
fixed regular dates allow for quick decisions, even
in times when the calendars of our senior management
are full. Should the need arise to be more
than once or twice a week, the role descriptions,
RACIs etc. must be checked carefully. Then, in my
experience, there is not enough information and
decision-making authority at the right level. Basically,
my remarks on governance and escalations
apply here, of course.
Due to the complete virtualization of all meetings,
I have noticed a democratization of these
meetings. Anyone, even everyone, can switch on
the webcam and be present in a prominent position,
unlike in hybrid meetings. Anyone can use
the “raise hand” function in the collaboration tool.
Everyone can see what is being drawn on the virtual
whiteboard and not somewhere on a locally
available flipchart. Everybody – and not just the
local senior management at the table – can be
seen equally in the gallery view of the video software.
Quietly and secretly, this changes the style
of the meetings and, above all, the greater participation
of formerly “never-in-meeting room attendees”,
because they are, for example, offshore.
PROSJEKTLEDELSE • NR. 3 2020 25