:AACE CERTIFICATION 2009-2010:

This is the 2nd AACE study group that I am participating in. I was part of the first team that Klaus was in which famously fell apart. Truth be told, we never really got going. The team did not even survive the forming stage, everybody just went their separate ways after leaving the course. There was a flurry of emails on the first couple of days, and then things started to cool down, responses from people became slower and slower, and then the excuses started to come in - "I was travelling", "I was tied up with work", "my children/wife/parents were sick/hospitalised"…. etc. And finally SILENCE. In a way, I am worried about our current team because things are starting to show a familiar pattern here.

I believe if we are to be successful in this project of getting certified, we need to avoid the pitfalls of the failed team that I was part of. And I'll briefly summarise them below as the 3 "C"s:

Conflict: I am speaking about the conflict that doing this will invariably cause in our daily lives. For many of us, it was easy while we were still at Gran Mahakam to be gung-ho and say "no problem" to spending 10 or 15 hours per week or to committing to do the 5 questions per week, or to writing a weekly blog etc. Reality sets in the moment we are thrust back into our daily routine and are faced with work, family and other commitments preceeding our commitments to do the AACE course. We need to be able to do proper stakeholder management and resolve the conflicts between each of our stakeholders so as to be able to progress in our certification bid. My first team failed miserably here, and 50% of the team dropped off at this primature stage of the project.

Commitment: "critereon to team success is the extent to which team members are satisfied and committed to one another, the team, and the project on which they work." (Cobb 2006, p85). The AACE certification prep course is a tough challenge that requires us to invest time and effort. We need to commit to it, else we would never succeed. We have all given our commitment to the project, but how committed are we to our commitment? I personally face a huge challenge where this is concerned. Between my family, the AACE course, my commitment to my church and my commitment to my work/employer, the commitment to the AACE course is clearly the 4th in my list of priority. However within the confines of what is a reasonable amount of time and effort, I am committed to this course, to you my colleagues in this course, to the project and deliverables I committed to at the start. It's my challenge now to manage my time, and to ensure that the amount of time and effort spent on this does not exceed my own threshold of tolerance.

Communication: For a team to be successful, communication is vital. This is especially true for a virtual team environment that we are working in. My 1st AACE team had more than 60% of its members homebased in Jakarta, yet we still failed spectacularly because nobody was communicating. Communication is supposed to be the core competence of project managers yet we did not even tell each other when we were going to be out of contact. Our current team is even more scattered than the last team. We need to realise that we have the duty of care toward each other and start communicating. Make arrangements when we know we're going to have difficulty meeting the weekly deliverables; inform when we know we are going to be away/ travelling; consult each other when we are stumped by any problems. We would only be able to collaborate with each other (another C word) better if we communicate effectively.

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Cobb, A 2006, LEADING PROJECT TEAMS: An introduction to the Basics of Project Management and Project Team Leadership

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