{"id":3095,"date":"2015-03-10T13:57:45","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T13:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cmwlab.com\/blog\/?p=3095"},"modified":"2023-02-15T09:40:49","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T09:40:49","slug":"collaboration-bottom-project-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cmwlab.com\/blog\/collaboration-bottom-project-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaboration Through Bottom-Up Project Management"},"content":{"rendered":"Over the past several years, project management (PM) has experienced a paradigm shift. The frameworks in place for planning and organizing have been moving away from the traditional waterfall approach and towards more flexible, democratic approaches like agile, lean, scrum, and kanban.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIt\u2019s hard to pin down any one of these terms as the embodiment of modern PM since each of them have their own unique practices and areas of application. That said, most of the recent innovations in PM process and technology have one attribute in common: bottom-up planning.<\/strong>\r\n

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\r\n\"CMW<\/a><\/p>\r\n\"Content\r\n\r\nBottom-up project management isn\u2019t necessarily a workflow as much as a methodology. While it still requires strong leadership, bottom-up feeds on input and planning from the team members directly involved with the work.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nIs this superior to \u201ctop-down\u201d project planning? Will it replace the former entirely? Are the two mutually exclusive? The answer to all these questions is yes . . . and no. There are some distinctive advantages to the bottom-up approach in almost any industry, but it\u2019s important to have a thorough understanding of where the two theories overlap as well as where they contradict.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nTwo Kinds of Government<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nTop-Down<\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn top-down project management, decision-making happens at the senior management level, with the project manager as monarch, for lack of a better word. The project manager (or other senior manager) starts with a business strategy and moves into the project<\/strong>, breaking larger goals down into tasks and subtasks and assigning them to team members with guesstimated deadlines.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nDuring the planning phase, there is no direct involvement of lower-level employees, which has led some critics to paint the top-down approach as shortsighted. Without focused expertise from individual team members, project managers can have a difficult time accurately assessing risks and resource requirements. This can cause bottlenecks, or worse: project failure.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nBottom-Up<\/strong>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nBottom-up projects are still led by a project manager or decision-maker, but this person is primarily a facilitator, defining overarching goals and values, then letting team members set their own tasks and to-dos \u2014 in some cases even their own deadlines.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThere is a noticeable demand for this kind of structure in the current workforce. A recent ESI International report revealed that over 65 percent of workers think better <\/strong>team collaboration<\/strong><\/a> could improve their organization\u2019s project performance. <\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nIn contrast with top-down, bottom-up project governance starts with the project itself\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (tactics) and moves into strategy. Proponents say this helps decision-makers set more realistic expectations.\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nBottom-Up Planning Bolsters Collaboration<\/strong>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\r\nA \u201cState of Workplace Productivity\u201d report by Cornerstone OnDemand revealed that some 38 percent of workers feel there is not enough collaboration in their workplace\u2014among the top opportunities for improvement: a better ability to share input with different departments.\r\n\r\nMany companies have already realized the benefits of project collaboration and are moving towards a more democratic process, with technology at the helm. For example, about 75 percent<\/a> of companies were using social collaboration tools in 2013. Tools like these will continue to gain prominence as they prove their value to efficient project completion<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\"Collaboration_v2\"\r\n

\r\nThere are a number of ways that bottom-up planning cultivates better collaboration:\r\n\r\n

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