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Celebrating Project Success

June is nearly over - and so are the summer exams.  Relief!  Everyone is out celebrating. How do you celebrate with your team once you have delivered your project?  During exam time the tension was stifling!  Everyone was on their best behaviour in the house: we could not upset the exam students.  We supported them all the way through, we sympathised when bad papers were received and reassured them they did well.

So they are now out celebrating.  It is good to celebrate.  After all that hard work we should reward ourselves.  Just like when a major project crosses the line we need to celebrate our achievements with our project teams.
 
It was a long and complex project, it was delayed and slightly over budget but senior management is pleased, the client has paid and the users are delighted.  Your project team did a great job and now it is time to reward them and thank the people who made it happen.  You have very little funds so how do you do it?
 
1. Ask them.  Ask your team how to celebrate; it might be a cheap night of pizzas and beers or a night at the races.  You could hold a dinner party with everyone bringing a dish.  You could hold it on site or have a picnic. Get them to decide how to celebrate, ensure everyone is included and their needs are catered for.  Appoint someone who is not a project leader to gather everyone's ideas and be the project manager for the party. This acknowledges a junior person's role in the team and gives them hope for leadership potential in the future.
 
2. Tell everyone. Nothing breeds success like success itself. Send an e-mail to Senior Management inviting them to the event, they might not come but your team will appreciate that their efforts are news to them.   Write up a short summary of what you achieved and send it out to the whole company.  Make sure everyone knows you are celebrating.
 
3. Relax.  Whatever your management style is, be it formal or informal do chill out and relax.  Be genuine and sincere in praising who achieved what. 
 
4. Tell War Stories.  Listen to your team; find out what were the low points of the project, when they thought they could not achieve the results, find out about the moments of inspiration and when and who got it all together.  This information will be very useful when you do the Lessons Learned Report.  Share your own war stories from previous projects.

Celebrating with your team will bring loyalty and create the hunger to do better the next time around.