Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate

I think you should think of good reasons to celebrate throughout the project and keep the team spirit high. For instance, any time a major deliverable is completed and approved why not have a celebration. It doesn't have to be a hugh celebration. It can run from just getting the team together at lunch to say how proud you are of the effort they put into completing the deliverable. Of course, if what you are celebrating is something big why not have senior management pop for an after work get together with a bottle or two of champagne, a few nibbles or dinner and speeches from them. Make the celebration fit the occasion

For instance, I once took over a large financial services project ,in the city of London, that was very late and over budget. Morale on the project was at an all time low. I started working with the team in putting a rescue plan in place. I made sure I asked their advice and in a lot of cases took it. The plan showed that to meet the required delivery date the team was going to have to work a lot harder than I would have normally wanted them to work. I negotiated a celebration budget with senior management. They thought they were safe and wouldn't have to spend the celebration money because they thought that we couldn't do it. The team thought otherwise, committed to the new schedule and got busy.

We had a couple of small celebrations as we worked through our plan and met some of our smaller milestones. However, when we completed the project on the date we were supposed to hit, we threw a real zinger. We ended up in a really great pub in London with food, drinks and music all paid for by senior management.

So, remember to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. Work hard and play hard and keep the spirits of the team high.