Creating Meaningful Learning Moments

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Project setbacks are inevitable. The savvy project manager turns these challenges into learning opportunities. It takes finesse to add value in these situations, so here are approaches to turn setbacks into constructive learning moments.

  • Focus on psychological safety. The phrase “focus on the problem, not the person” is only the beginning. To create constructive learning moments, focus on how the problem is described, what triggered actions, what actions were taken, and what outcomes resulted. It’s important to use neutral, non-judgmental, fact-based language. This helps create an environment of psychological safety where people can discuss setbacks openly and truthfully.
  • Root causes are critical. Consider whether the team discusses symptoms or potential root causes. The “5 Whys” approach works well here. Asking “why” at least five times drives deeper discussions which helps identify the root causes of problems. Areas to focus on include processes and procedures (and what inspired their creation), unexpected actions by automated systems, unexpected or unusual reactions from stakeholders, and lack of education on project management techniques.
  • Use learning-related language. I like the phrase “fail forward.” It conveys that failing can be positive. Making discoveries and pushing the envelope of how things are done are two examples of setbacks being positive: you learn something you can use in the future. For example, you can try speeding up quality assurance processes by using knowledgeable stakeholders who haven’t been part of your project development process instead of performing user acceptance testing. In some cases, this might work well. In others, you might find shortcomings to that approach. The lesson you learn is which projects benefit from the new QA approach and which ones don’t.
  • Update lessons learned frequently. You need to update lessons learned as the project progresses (like other PM deliverables. As you implement improvements, update your documentation of root causes and ways to recover from setbacks. Include whether improvements worked as expected or further adjustments were required. Note: If you apply lessons learned from earlier projects, you might need to update those as well to ensure you get the most out of your learning moments.
  • Don’t gloss over repeated errors. Attention to psychological safety and root causes doesn’t mean you disregard repeated setbacks caused by team members who ignored lessons learned. In 1 on 1 conversations, work to understand why the team member ignored a lesson learned and address any shortcomings that arise from the conversation.

Think about a recent setback you experienced on a project. Take a few minutes to write up a description of the problem using neutral, non-judgmental, fact-based language. Recall whether your team described symptoms or root causes. Did they focus on the failure, or did they identify things they learned? If this setback wasn’t handled with a positive mindset, ask your most learning-focused team member to use this setback to practice these approaches.

For more about lessons learned, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

I am busy updating two of my courses. Later in the year, you’ll be seeing new and improved versions of Learning Microsoft Project and Project Management Foundations: Choosing the Right Online Tool. The latter course will review more tools than the original using a different format.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 72,000 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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How to Handle Fearful Stakeholders

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Stakeholders who fear bad project outcomes are tough to manage. It’s important to address these fears. Left unmanaged, your project could be delayed or even cancelled. Here are a few approaches to manage project fears.

  • Listen to fearful stakeholders. Their past experiences may have tainted their perceptions. You need to understand their concerns. Actively listen to these people: make eye contact, ask questions, paraphrase their points, use the terminology they use. Stakeholders will feel heard when you refer to the business implications at the source of their fears. When stakeholders feel their concerns have been heard and are taken seriously (that is, the project team is committed to addressing their concerns), their comfort level with the project increases.
  • Share your plans. Your project plan talks about how you will accomplish things and what you do to ensure obstacles don’t prevent you from achieving project objectives. Stakeholders become concerned when there is a lack of communication, unexplained changes, or drawn-out decision-making. So don’t be shy about communicating how your project plan will help avoid obstacles to successful project delivery.
  • Add risk items to your plan that directly address stakeholder fears. Add items to your risk management plan related to your stakeholders’ fears. Ask them to help look for trigger events and implement risk responses. This way, the project team will partner with these stakeholders to ensure their fears don’t come to fruition. Even if the risks occur, they will be addressed directly with pre-determined actions the fearful stakeholders have already agreed to.
  • Address areas of concern in status reports. In your status reports, address the status of stakeholder’s concerns. This reinforces that the stakeholders were heard and that the team is focusing on those concerns as the project progresses.
  • Highlight quick wins. Identify and communicate completed milestones as the project unfolds. Celebrating these wins helps stakeholders visualize progress and builds confidence in the project’s ultimate success.
  • ALWAYS support views with data. Trying to reassure fearful stakeholders with past experiences doesn’t work. They don’t relate to projects they weren’t involved in.  Objectives information is more reassuring than subjective opinions. Support your assertions and decisions with data, metrics, and evidence from industry best practices and actual progress with the current project. Stakeholders are more likely to feel reassured.

Have someone with a concern about your project? Of course you do! Take 15 minutes to plan how you will use these approaches to address their concern. And then, try it! Let us know how it goes in the comments section.

Coming Up

I am busy updating two of my courses. Later in the year, you’ll be seeing new and improved versions of Learning Microsoft Project and Project Management Foundations: Choosing the Right Online Tool. The latter course will review more tools than the original using a different format.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 71,000 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 methodology considerations

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Choosing the right methodology for your project is crucial for success. Agile methods are effective when iterative development is suitable for the product, capable technical team members are available, and access to client stakeholders is assured. But other considerations may affect which methodology you choose.

  • Do specific milestones have to be met? Consider a project’s date-driven key process indicators (KPIs) when selecting a methodology. The flexibility and adaptability of Agile projects is meant to support iterative KPIs to measure progress, focusing on incremental improvements. On the other hand, structured waterfall projects are more suitable for milestone-based KPIs, when an agreed set of pre-defined objectives must be achieved by a specific date. Agile can be used to deliver milestone-based KPIs. However, when specific and detailed requirements are in place, stakeholders are less likely to want to participate in project development to the degree that agile requires. If stakeholders aren’t committed, waterfall is the best approach, especially in larger organizations that often are reluctant to assign key operational personnel to longer-term projects. Waterfall methodology is also a better approach for industries or projects that have specific regulatory or compliance milestone requirements that require a more structured and documented approach. 
  • Is the project complex? Complex projects benefit from a waterfall approach, especially those with interdependencies between numerous internal groups or external entities. Planning interactions and timeframe commitments must be carefully structured and agreed upon beforehand. The fluid nature of agile can make these inter-organizational interactions challenging. Less complex projects, with few internal interactions, are more suited to agile, given its flexibility and short-term delivery mindset.
  • Are there many assumptions associated with the project? Project justifications that rely on many assumptions — or assumptions tied to crucial aspects of the business –are more suitable for agile because it promotes learning and iterative improvement. Risks are reduced via quick prototype features built to validate assumptions, diminish risks, and confirm suitability for business processes and outcome generation. A waterfall approach when many assumptions go into a project justification introduces risks that aren’t likely to be resolved in the short-term.
  • Is the project aligned with strategic or shorter team goals? Projects aligned with long-term strategic plans might favor a waterfall approach, because they must produce more extensive, non-flexible objectives. In contrast, agile is ideal for addressing shorter-term changing market conditions and achieving quick wins from a cost or productivity standpoint.

 

Have you used other considerations to choose between methodologies? What happens if the company wants to force a methodology that doesn’t suit your project? Share your experiences with us in the comments section.

For more about methodologies, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 71,000 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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How to prepare a project idea for primetime

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Project ideas are what support careers in project management — and present possibilities for moving your organization forward. Sometimes, project ideas need more work before they should or would be accepted. Here are indicators that a project idea isn’t ready and how to improve it:

  • The sponsorship prospects aren’t clear. A great question about a project idea is, “Who would be an appropriate sponsor for this initiative?” If the answer isn’t clear or several sponsors might be needed to fulfill sponsorship responsibilities, that’s a problem. A project is doomed without sponsor commitment. The fix: restructure the project idea to align with a potential sponsor’s scope of responsibility. 
  • Unclear benefits. For a valid project idea, 1 – who will benefit? and 2 – how will those benefits be realized and measured? If you can’t answer those questions, the idea might still be valid, but more work is needed before proceeding. Look for benefits resulting from changes to business processes, technology solutions, or customer support approaches. Then, document the answers to the questions above.
  • Unclear funding sources. For every project idea, it’s essential to ask, “How will we pay for this?” If the answer is not clear, more work is needed to determine where the project’s benefits will be realized. Analyze the project benefits to identify the business area that will benefit from improvements – that’s your candidate for funding.
  • Technology challenges exist. Some valid project ideas face technology platforms that struggle to handle change. Either the systems are too old or fragile, or the backlog of changes for the technology team is too large. In this case, you can consider two approaches. First, can benefits be obtained without extensive technology changes. Alternatively, if the benefits are large enough, consider contracting specialized technical or supplementary resources to address the technological changes needed to implement the project idea.
  • Lack of strategic alignment. Resources and/or funding shortages often constrain organizations. Project ideas that don’t support the organization’s strategic direction aren’t a good idea. If necessary, restructure the project idea to support the organization’s strategy — or dismiss it as one that doesn’t fit current business priorities.

If you’re a project manager who doesn’t hear about project ideas early on, the points in this article are great topics to discuss as you finalize your project charter. If the project rushes ahead before the points are resolved, incorporate them as risks in your project planning. That way, you can discuss risk response activities with your key stakeholders.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 70,000 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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How to Validate Project Assumptions

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Validating the assumptions included in the project justification is key to minimizing project risk. Sometimes, straightforward research is enough. For assumptions that aren’t easily validated, here are other approaches to validate or, at least, reduce the probability of an assumption being wrong.  

  • Consult experts. Reach outside your organization. Seek the opinions of LinkedIn contacts, peers in project management associations, or prominent individuals in industry bodies. Ideally, get multiple perspectives so you can analyze the results to identify project situations that could render an assumption invalid. If you get differing opinions, use the Delphi approach. Send the differing opinions to your expert panel and ask them to comment on the rationale for dissenting views. Use the results of that exercise to figure out if the assumptions present a significant risk to the project.
  • Perform an audit. Find situations where you can directly test the validity of the assumption. Then, test the assumption via a manual process, querying a customer, or performing any other action that might provide a “sample result” you can use for validation purposes. For example, altering the directions you provide to clients to solve a product issue, publishing an advertisement with a different angle to a small set of clients, or changing the parameters of a system function to see if the subsequent system or user action is expected. Note: this approach has risks. You don’t want to frustrate a client or have an advertisement yield an adverse reaction to your product. To minimize risk of adverse outcomes, select the clients and situations carefully, and if feasible, alert a trusted client that you are trying something new.
  • Build a prototype. Designing a prototype process or I/T system is an effective way of validating assumptions. When it works, it triggers enthusiasm for the project and its potential business results. Depending on the situation, the prototype can be a small, standalone project or a set of features in an agile project environment. With this approach, be prepared for the project to take an unanticipated direction — your stakeholders might create additional requirements. No worries, the result is often more effective than the original plan, so keep an open mind.
  • Conduct a survey. Query individuals who aren’t familiar with the project’s justification and current assumptions. Why? Because stakeholders who know the assumptions can answer the survey questions to confirm or invalidate them based on their views about the project. Also, don’t make the mistake of taking a casual approach to designing survey questions. Use people with experience designing survey questions: the wording of survey questions is vital to ensure you get valid results.

Have you come up with other approaches for validating assumptions? Or have tips for managing the nagging feeling that you haven’t even identified all the assumptions? If so, 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 70,000 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 Contract Management

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Contract management makes sure that you and your project vendors agree on costs, terms, deliverables, and conditions. Dig a little deeper, and contract management can help your projects in other ways: 

  • Enhanced vendor relationships. Time spent negotiating vendor contracts helps vendors understand project goals and your organization’s culture. This effort also helps set expectations that smooth the process when the vendor’s resources are needed in future projects. In longer-term relationships, the vendor will be able to anticipate future needs and train their staff to support your organization’s future initiatives.
  • Expanded risk mitigation. Contract management helps identify and mitigate potential risks by defining terms, obligations, and liabilities for everyone involved. By identifying and planning for these risks, you reduce the probability of issues occurring when vendor resources work on tasks. In longer-term relationships, vendors can develop skills that position them to work on more and broader tasks. Skilled vendor resources help in several ways. If skilled resources within your organization aren’t available, you can turn to a vendor – thereby reducing the risk of using less skilled people within your organization. Skilled vendor resources also lighten your internal peoples’ loads so they have time for cross-training. That way, you reduce future risks related to skills shortages.
  • Compliance support. Vendor resources can help ensure your organization complies with government regulations or industry standards. When you include compliance in the terms and conditions of a vendor contract, the burden of creating compliant tools and processes shifts to the vendor. That reduces your organization’s compliance risk. Note: Even though that responsibility is shifted to the vendor, the contracting organization (that is, your organization) is ultimately responsible for compliance. Be sure to review all deliverables to ensure that the vendor has maintained compliance.
  • Long-term cost savings. Contract management helps current and future projects. Contracts on file simplify the renegotiation of favorable terms during renewals and can identify opportunities benefiting both the contracting organization and the vendor. This can yield longer-term deals at reduced cost, shorter ramp-up times for vendor personnel who return to the same client, and increased efficiencies.

Because contract management provides so many benefits, it’s a good idea for project managers to be involved even if another department does the bulk of the work. If you don’t already know the contracts people in your organization, make a point of introducing yourself!

For more about contract management and procurement, check out Steven Brown’s Purchasing Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 69,000 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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Prevent Pseudo-Stakeholders from Hurting Your Project

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People who think they’re stakeholders but aren’t waste your time and distract your project team. Early on, you need to address these pseudo-stakeholders, so they don’t eat up your time and resources. This Project Pointer provides approaches to identify them and reduce their impact on your project.

  • Hold public consultations. After meeting with identified stakeholders, it’s time to hold open-to-the-public meetings to discuss the project’s scope and objectives. People who think they have something to lose or gain from the project can share their thoughts and concerns at this meeting. By addressing these concerns early, you save time later on (from minimizing distractions from pseudo-stakeholders) that more than makes up for the time it takes to plan and deliver a public consultation session.
  • Draft out-of-scope statements. Project charters typically focus on defining scope. An underused aspect of project charters is identifying what is out of scope. By clearly defining what is and is not in scope, you can help prevent pseudo-stakeholders from delaying the project with needless debates.  
  • Build a deliverables map. This is a visual representation of the deliverables produced in a project, showing the prerequisite deliverables that must be completed to produce the project’s final deliverables. This comprehensive overview of every item the project will produce can highlight the areas of the organization that will and won’t be affected by project deliverables—and from that, you can demonstrate who actual stakeholders are. Anyone else is a pseudo-stakeholder.
  • Focus on organizational politics. Be aware of internal politics, power struggles, or turf wars that might lead individuals to think they are stakeholders. You can proactively address people’s concerns when you understand who challenges scope statements or demands more for their business area. Politics will alert you to managers (beyond your project sponsor) who you need to work with to prevent pseudo-stakeholder objections.

Try these approaches with your current project to see if you have pseudo-stakeholders dragging your project down. If you do, it’s time to address them politely, firmly, and with your reasoning.

For more about stakeholders, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 69,000 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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Want to Expand Your Skills? Use Your Network!

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Conferences and courses can help expand your skills and enhance your project management career. There are other ways to increase your abilities as part of your everyday job. Check out these ways to increase your skills by using your network.

  • Swap project reviews. A fresh set of eyes can spot weaknesses, flaws, or risks you might have overlooked. Taking advantage of others’ experiences can improve your project foresight. From your project management network, offer to review one of your colleague’s projects in exchange for them reviewing one of yours. You’ll get to see a project you might not know about, and you and your project management colleague will benefit from the insights you share.
  • Engage a contact as a mentor or coach. Take advantage of others’ skills and experiences by asking if they will mentor or coach you. This can be someone within or outside your organization. Internal mentors can help you understand project histories within your group and help with navigating office politics. External coaches provide different perspectives, challenges, and solutions you can apply to your projects.
  • Schedule case study discussions with colleagues. Case study sessions allow you and your colleagues to analyze and discuss real-world project scenarios. This can improve your analytical and decision-making skills and offer deeper insights into handling project challenges in your industry and others.
  • Expand your network and start a discussion. A quick search on LinkedIn lists more than 17 million people on the platform who refer to themselves as project managers. That is an amazing skill base! Search by industry or in your city and reach out. You’ll probably find other project managers eager to expand their skills as well. Launch a discussion, ask a question about a pressing issue, and take advantage of the experience your network can provide.
  • Use LinkedIn’s resources. You’ve discovered my Project Pointers newsletter. I also host live discussions on LinkedIn. You can ask questions during these live events or listen to the recorded videos at your convenience. Other LinkedIn Learning instructors offer newsletters hold live events. Check out the newsletters by Bob McGannon , Doug Rose and Chris Croft  among others!

Not sure how to reach out to others? One thing to keep in mind is that lots of others feel the same way. Don’t be afraid to be the one to kick things off. For more about networking, check out Dorie Clark’s Professional Networking course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 68,000 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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What Domain Knowledge is Needed to Manage a Project?

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A project manager doesn’t have to be an expert in a project’s domain area to serve as PM. But they must possess some domain knowledge to be effective. Here is the general domain knowledge needed to manage a project.

  • Processes and regulations. Domain areas have specific approaches to work and standards that must be understood. For example, in the drug industry, processes for introducing new medicines are rigid. These must be understood to deliver project outcomes.  In construction, one must know the laws that restrict a building’s design. Without this, the building could become unusable without expensive modifications. In healthcare, managing and sharing data requires both health and technology process knowledge. Without this vital domain knowledge, project managers have reduced foresight. And they are unlikely to gain the respect of their project teams which makes it difficult to succeed.

  • Sources of risk. Effective risk management involves understanding the challenges that may present themselves. The project manager must know enough about the domain area to anticipate possibilities. They also should understand the probability of them coming to fruition. While having an expert team member as a management partner can help, it isn’t enough. The project manager needs to interact with key stakeholders without deferring to others. They must also react to situations that occur daily. Having to constantly refer to an expert partner impacts the project manager’s perceived authority. It also brings their abilities into question, reducing effectiveness.

  • Ability to assess business value. Projects are all about creating business value. Sometimes that value is obvious, like creating a new drug that cures a disease. Other times, value propositions are more subtle, requiring industry expertise to understand them. For example, the value of a great website is that it is easy to maintain after delivery to a client. So, website construction techniques are important. The project manager should participate in construction decisions to ensure maintenance is straightforward. This requires an understanding of the capabilities of modern coding languages. Knowledge about AI tools and search engine optimization is also useful. Unless the PM has some level of experience in these areas, they could overlook critical project activities.

  • Management practices and cultural expectations.  Domain areas have varying norms around how decisions are made. The expertise that is most valued, and how clients and their vendors work together also vary between domains. Industry trends might not be easy to identify without domain experience. Understanding these nuances are vital for a project manager to succeed. These can be learned on the job if knowledge gaps aren’t extensive, but that must be done quickly so project success isn’t impacted.

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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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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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