Focus on Project Goals

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Long-term goals are what projects are all about. Daily project challenges make it difficult to keep focus on those goals. Here are tips to help you keep your eye on the prize of successful project completion.

  • Use two goal definitions. The first set of project goal definitions needs to be relatable to your stakeholders to maintain their interest and support. But what about your needs? To keep you moving toward completion of the project and your growth opportunities, write your own goals for project completion. What will you gain personally? How will this project’s success help you get your next assignment? What other benefits might you receive after the project is completed?
  • Track multiple milestone types. Milestones can demonstrate progress. Because that progress can take several forms, create milestones that show positive movement for your stakeholders. Create a second set of milestones that are significant for the project team, like getting interfaces to work, overcoming a problem, or settling team staffing. Acknowledging these accomplishments boosts team morale and recognizes the valuable contributions all of you are making to the project’s success.
  • Focus on learning moments. Projects offer a bounty of unexpected moments, many of which are great learning opportunities. The more difficult, the more learning! Reflect on what you and the team have learned from what the project has thrown at you. How can you apply that learning to your current and future projects? You’ll see the value of the project journey — and the destination.
  • Adjust your plans without shame! Projects present us with unique circumstances. Despite diligent planning, you may have to adjust mid-flight. That’s okay! It’s part of project management and increases your ability to deliver your project successfully. Ignoring the need to replan is a much worse sin. 
  • Hold celebrations along the way. Achieving milestones, learning lessons, and successful replanning are causes to celebrate. Don’t wait until the end to acknowledge your accomplishments. Get your team together, celebrate your progress, and enjoy the journey.

Be honest: are you still aiming for your project target or are you lost in the weeds of day-to-day project minutiae? If you’re lost in the weeds, take a moment now to try one of these tips. If you’re laser-focused, share one of your secrets with the rest of us in the comments section.

For more about goal setting, check out Todd Dewett’s  Performance Management : Setting Goals and Managing Performance course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 67,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Just Enough Project Reporting

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Lots of detailed and overwhelming project reports drain stakeholders’ confidence. Too few reports are even worse. How do you know when you produce the right number of reports at the right level of detail? Here are some indicators that you’ve hit the right amount of project reporting.

  • Positive stakeholder feedback. Positive feedback from stakeholders is the best indicator. However, stakeholders might only skim your reports, trusting that you’ll let them know if there’s an issue. Ask your stakeholders questions about details of the reports you distribute. If you get positive feedback and answers that show a knowledge of what’s in the reports, you’re on the mark with your reporting. Answers without that detail mean your reports aren’t being read. You can ask your stakeholders more questions to figure out how to modify your reports to satisfy their expectations.
  • Do stakeholders ask informed questions? Encourage stakeholders to ask questions. Intelligent questions about status reports usually means they’re on target. Think about the questions asked to see if you should include more explanatory text in your reports. Questions might mean you should make a report more understandable. Think about the questions people ask and use them to make your reporting more effective.
  • Is there a clear presentation of status? Effective reports include clear indicators of status — usually up-front with a color scheme. If there are status issues, include the actions and outcomes the project team is taking to correct course.
  • Do sponsor and status meetings focus on the reports? When project status conversations revolve around your reports, your reporting is likely on target. Because project managers rarely interact with every stakeholder, reports make up for that communication gap. Reporting is doing its job when casual stakeholder discussions include an accurate picture of project status, especially when the PM doesn’t interact with those stakeholders very often.
  • Is reporting effort and risk balanced? Ideally, report generation is automated, it doesn’t take much effort. Sometimes you need specialized reporting, which requires extra work. Suppose the project objective is leapfrogging the competition. You might need detailed reports on the performance of a new product. In this case, the extra effort to produce these reports is worthwhile, because it’s a way to manage risk. Contrary to the effort to produce a special report to satisfy a single stakeholder’s curiosity.

What other indicators tell you your reports could use tweaking? If you’re willing to share your secrets, what reports features do your stakeholders love?

It dives deep, but you can learn about data analytics with Robin Hunt’s Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 66,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Lesser-known Benefits of Quality Management

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Quality management is about ensuring your deliverables meet the expectations of stakeholders: meeting standards, performance and reliability business needs. But quality management delivers extra benefits you don’t often hear about: 

  • Enhanced stakeholder buy-in. Quality management requires a deeper grasp of stakeholder needs and expectations. That understanding comes from better conversations and learning about stakeholder’s challenges and hopes. These stakeholder interactions boost buy-in to the project and also improve the stakeholder/project team relationship.
  • Expanded risk management. Understanding quality standards and performance expectations leads to a better understanding of product requirements. That understanding broadens your view of what must go right and what might go wrong with the project’s products.
  • Increased innovation. Quality management encourages continuous improvement and expands problem-solving. A quality mindset fosters innovation. It also increases the capability of the project team and stakeholders. Project team capabilities increase through new and better ways to meet quality standards. Stakeholder capabilities are increased through enhanced requirements definition. This also improves outcomes by improving stakeholder’s interactions with project teams.
  • Increased product knowledge. Quality assurance activities, such as reviews, inspections, and testing, produce learning moments. They expand the understanding of the product’s strengths and weaknesses. And they also help identify potential areas for future development. So, you get better outcomes now and new pathways to improve your business in the future!

As you work on quality aspects of your projects, look for ways to use these added benefits.

For more about project quality management, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Foundations: Quality course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 66,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Alleviate Team Member Stress

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Project work isn’t for the meek. Pressure comes from management, stakeholders, and acute business needs and the resulting stress reduces team members’ performance. Helping your team alleviate their stress improves their performance and increases their loyalty to the project. Here are ways to decrease stress in your project environment.

  • Recognize people’s emotions. You might hear that emotion has no place at work. That’s total crap. We are human. We have emotions. And ignoring them is unrealistic. Acknowledge that emotions are present and can make us shine or stumble in the workplace. And yet focus on the work, rather than the emotion. Be compassionate, which demonstrates your concern for your team member while supporting the need to produce the work.  
  • Provide downtime. Under pressure, project managers often look to overtime, which can work for a short time. Yet, extensive over time (50+ hours/week) leads to stress. Recognize the need to take a break from work and re-energize. Downtime is like sharpening a saw — it helps increase productivity in the long run.
  • Acknowledge the work people produce. It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking only at the incomplete or late tasks. Instead, acknowledge what people deliver along with the good work and effort they’re contributing. This recognition boosts people’s spirits and helps them focus on making progress toward delivering project outcomes.
  • Meet and walk. Physical activity can act as a “stress off-switch.” Have one-on-one meetings while walking. Working virtually? No problem. Hold your video meeting or call with each team member walking in their neighborhood. Fresh air and a change of scenery can increase energy and generate new ideas, while exercise reduces tension and increases productivity. Use an AI meeting recording tool to take notes so all attendees can participate in the meeting.
  • Champion coaching. Allowing team members to work with a coach can significantly reduce stress. Team members can work through their concerns with their coach. They can also get tips from the trenches or work on skill development. With an external coach, these benefits come without fear of judgment from management, which can build people’s confidence. It also reduces team member stress and improves project outcomes.

OK, we’ve all been stressed out at some point on projects. Let’s share our knowledge on this incredibly important topic. What have you done to relieve your stress or a team member’s stress?

For more about decreasing your stress, check out Todd Dewett’s course Managing Stress or Dr. Judson Brewer’s course, Train Your Brain to Unwind Stress and Anxiety Habits 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 67,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Project Review vs. Project Audit

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During your career as a project manager, you might endure people poking through one of your projects, looking for things to improve. There are two typical approaches for this: a project review and a project audit. The differences are important, because a project manager needs to behave differently for each of these improvement initiatives.

A Project Review typically…

  • Is a supportive exercise. The intent is to discover improvement opportunities. It is performed with the project team.
  • Has unlimited scope. The review can look at any aspect of the project. The reviewers can interview any project stakeholder.
  • Examines management practices and implementation approaches. The review team searches for opportunities to streamline methodologies. Also, they look to enhance communications and create better business outcomes.
  • Focuses on improving future projects. Project reviews deliver recommendations that aren’t mandatory to put into action on your project. The intent is to enhance project management going forward.
  • Can be performed at any time. Teams conduct reviews while a project is running or after project completion.

When involved in a project review, the project manager should:

  • Collaborate with the reviewers. Work in harmony to achieve the goal of improving the current project and future projects for the organization. 
  • Negotiate interview schedules with reviewers for a current project. Leading a project efficiently is the best way to deliver outcomes for the business. Help the reviewers understand your schedule and the availability of stakeholders to minimize the impact on project deadlines.
  • Make information readily available and act on recommendations. Share any documentation you have available and seriously consider any recommendations for new project management deliverables that the reviewers suggest. This is the best way to improve project delivery.

A Project Audit typically…

  • Evaluates compliance, with a pass/fail outcome. The focus is on government regulations, internal processes, or specific project objectives. For example, have public funds for a project been managed per government regulations?
  • Has limited scope. An audit involves only stakeholders and management practices associated with specified compliance objectives.
  • Is conducted by personnel external to the project. These can be government officials or an organization’s internal staff with full-time compliance responsibilities.
  • Occurs during project execution. Because an audit often disrupts the project schedule, you will have to adjust some things. More significant audits are best managed as mini-project in parallel with the reviewed project to minimize the impact on project deadlines.
  • Yields findings that must be addressed. Responses to audit findings are mandatory. They adjust the execution of the reviewed project and projects in the future.

When involved in a project audit, the project manager should:

  • Focus on passing the audit.  You want the project found to be compliant with the target of the audit. Then, you want the auditors to leave you alone, so you can get on with your project. Being left alone is why it’s important for the project manager and team members to relay only information about the target of the audit. Going beyond the target area invites other investigations, which elongates the audit and further delays your project.
  • Figure out the auditor’s goal. Many auditors have one goal: to find an issue. They do that because they feel it validates their job. Others have a more balanced goal of finding issues if they exist, and not reporting findings otherwise. Collaboration might work when dealing with balanced auditors. Strictly sticking to the scope of the audit and “answering the question and only the question” is the best approach with less than balanced auditors. How can you tell if they are balanced or not? This is usually a judgment call, but the tone of the documentation you receive from auditors prior to the start of the audit gives you significant clues. If I am unsure of the auditor’s approach, I behave as if they are NOT balanced until they prove otherwise.
  • Accommodate the auditors schedule whenever possible. Auditors typically have a scripted approach to conducting an audit. Working within that script helps you get through the audit in the least amount of time, minimizing project disruption. So, strive to make stakeholders whose are relevant to the audit scope available to the auditors upon request. Push back if they request interviews with stakeholders whose role is out of scope of the audit.
  • Admit an issue if it exists and the auditors are en route to discovering it. Remember the goal of reducing the impact of the audit on your project. While dealing with audit findings is time consuming, if you are out of compliance, it’s better to resolve the issue. Reporting the issue shows cooperation. And the auditors may help you work through the best approach to resolution based on their experience. If auditors aren’t on a path to discover an issue, work to learn from their investigation. This can help you resolve an issue on your own, in a proper time, in a way that best serves your organization.

Have you been through a project review or audit? If you have any best or (if you’re willing) worst practices, share with us in the comments section.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 65,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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