Establishing rules for accountability and responsibility are critical to a project management team’s success.
The short version: Project teams perform best when expectations are explicit from day one. An operating agreement that defines decision-making, meeting management, accountability, conflict resolution, and the leader’s role gives a diverse group of contributors a shared way of working—whether they sit in the same room or work remotely.
- Agree on communication channels and norms at kick-off.
- Set clear goals, scope, timelines, and budget before work begins.
- Build a culture of accountability and trust, and lead by example.
When team members come together for a project, they are bringing with them a variety of skills, experiences, preferences, and behaviors. In the world of project management, establishing the team’s rules of engagement will set the tone for courtesy and respect. It typically starts with an operating agreement that includes guidelines for decision-making, meeting management, accountability and responsibility, conflict resolution, and the role of the leader. Another important aspect of a project management team is communication and engagement.
During the project kick-off meeting, the team should agree on forms of communication. For example, will it be through email only or will it include instant messaging? What about text messages? Consider what is best for the team and establish your rules for communication.
Project Management and Working Remotely
Accommodating remote workers happened quickly in 2020 and whether or not you were ready for it, the entire concept has taken hold. Still, it is possible to manage virtual workforces in regulated environments while maintaining business continuity and continuous compliance.
Rules of engagement for working remotely include defining clear goals and expectations for your teams. Because communication will be online, be sure that your emails and instant messages are specific about project objectives, goals, and expectations.
You also need to provide frequent feedback. If working remotely is new to any of your team members, it may take them a while to adjust to the circumstances. They might be stuck at one extreme or the other: working too many hours because it’s easy to check messages, or getting distracted by social media and streaming binge-worthy shows “for background noise.” Keeping your employees accountable and establishing the rules of engagement for doing so are critical to everyone’s success.
Rules of engagement are not bureaucracy—they are the shared agreements that let a diverse team move quickly without stepping on one another.
Five Essentials for Managing Any Project
Here are five essential aspects to effectively managing any project on-site or virtually:
- Ensure that you have executive approval and support.
- Establish scope, timelines, and budget for the project.
- Ensure that you have the right people with the right skills on your team.
- Create clear expectations and “ways of working,” and continuously monitor and communicate these expectations.
- Build a culture of accountability and trust.
- Define clear roles and responsibilities.
- Define clear metrics for success.
- Allow for some flexibility in your team’s schedules.
- Lead by example.
Compliance never goes remote. Distributed teams change how work gets done, not the standards it must meet. Bake validation, change control, and audit-readiness into your ways of working from the start so that good documentation practices hold up no matter where the team sits. For regulated projects, that often means aligning your approach with Computer Software Assurance (CSA) and keeping records that satisfy 21 CFR Part 11 electronic records and signature requirements.
Accountability is easier to sustain when the systems your team relies on stay in a validated, compliant state throughout the project. A data integrity mindset—complete, consistent, and attributable records—reinforces the same trust the operating agreement is meant to build.
How USDM Can Help
For more than 20 years, USDM Life Sciences has helped customers effectively manage and execute their compliance and IT projects. This tightly managed approach led by a virtual project management office ensures that a virtual team can meet your project deadlines on time with transparency and compliance. Using our flexible managed staffing solution, you can assign a new team or manage an existing team, while USDM handles the overhead and supervision of the team. A dedicated team lead handles the members' needs, issues, and concerns while you maintain business continuity and focus on strategic priorities.
USDM’s Project and Program Management Services and Solutions experts are the perfect fit to help guide, lead, and support life sciences organizations’ mission-critical project and program initiatives across highly regulated areas—where compliance, technology and business intersect—to attain desired business results. USDM can provide the services needed to successfully manage your projects, your programs, and your portfolio with consistent and standardized methods, processes, and principles. To keep systems and platforms audit-ready while your teams focus on delivery, many organizations pair project execution with USDM Cloud Assurance for ongoing, continuous compliance.
FAQ: Project Management Rules of Engagement
What are project management rules of engagement?
They are the shared agreements a team sets at the start of a project that govern how members work together—covering decision-making, meeting management, accountability and responsibility, conflict resolution, communication channels, and the role of the leader. They are typically captured in an operating agreement.
When should a team establish its rules of engagement?
At the project kick-off meeting. That is when the team should agree on forms of communication—email, instant messaging, text—and define clear goals, expectations, scope, timelines, and budget before work begins.
How do rules of engagement change for remote teams?
The fundamentals stay the same, but because communication is online, emails and messages need to be specific about objectives and expectations, and leaders need to provide frequent feedback. Allowing some flexibility in schedules while keeping people accountable helps remote team members adjust and stay productive.
How does USDM support life sciences project teams?
USDM Life Sciences has more than 20 years of experience managing and executing compliance and IT projects. Through a virtual project management office and flexible managed staffing solutions, USDM helps organizations meet deadlines with transparency and compliance while maintaining business continuity.
Ready to put strong rules of engagement to work? Whether you need to stand up a new project team or strengthen an existing one, USDM’s project and program management experts can help you deliver on time and in a compliant state. Contact us to talk through your next initiative.