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This is a long, detailed post.

I am a non-manager on a european government social security project working in an IT project as Information Analyst. And having been a longtime practitioner of the MT concepts and now wondering:

* How to increase my visibility a project of 269-man/woman ?
* How to communicate effectivley in a such a project?

My localised "view";
* I am an external contractor.
* I am an immigrant, jobs are not in my native language.
* Our team: PM, 3 analysts --> lead analyst, and me + other analyst.
* Dependant on artifacts delivred from external project teams, and the client.

This is a big project. Stepping on the toes of senior people can get your feet burnt.

IT-program;
A lot of prestige is at stake on this project, becos a new social security policy bill has to be implemented in a record time of 8 months, compensating for innefectie/ancient IT-systems and adding new features of the Bill the PM's are pushing to get things done.
* It project to support social security program Bill, going live on 1-jan-2009.
* RUP-methodology, Use Cases for documentation and Enterprise Architect is the design tool.
* Various project teams, for a SOA-architecture.

My participation;
Since being employed on the project at the end of Nov-2007, reading up documentation, distilled processes and written some Use Cases it still is unclear to me on how to perform effectivley a project of this scale.

One-on-ones;
My team lead is hardly ever available for status updates, and PM also busy with whatever leaving me and my fellow analyst unguided. I often approach my PM, teamlead asking for guidance and new assignments. They often have no more than 60 seconds seconds available for discussions / feedback. I would have much like to dicusss quality of work, execution with my PM and Teamlead so as to increase my own work quality.

Odd outcome;
Recently i have heard form my PM that i am being removed from the project, because i dont communicate, and that my work quality isnt good. How is that? I have scheduled a meeting with my PM for clarification. Even though my PM may have a point i did explicitly asked for feedback so as to improve the quality of my work. I do make mistakes, as those were pointed out a few times (in a few use cases) and gladly improved on the faults. Those mistakes were fixed, reviewed and UC's accepted. I as happy to thereby improve my work quality.
Communicatins isnt optimal. I often (about 2 times per week) to make contact with my TeamLead. I verbally communicate weekly a status of work performed to my PM. Am I acting wrong?

Visibility;
I get an assignment (write a use case), do it and communicate back to both my Teamlead and PM. I fix the comments and send back to review. My PM and TeamLead are forever all day in meetings. What about? I dont know. With whom? Unknown. Asking for clarification usually involves a abrubpt answer in the line of: "nothing for you to worry about". Everyone is just extremely busy. I would like to get more proactivley involved. From behind my desk the world is going by me. Likely there is much blame at myself however some feedback would be greatly advance my quality, and my career.

Manager-tools comments;
I would appreaciate all comments, feedback on how to improve myself, becoming more involved.