Boost the Power of Milestones

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Boost the Power of Milestones

Photo by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash

Project managers typically show progress with milestones that represent the completion of significant deliverables. But that only scratches the surface of what milestones can show for progress. Here are some other ways to highlight progress with milestones.

  • Progress points on the timeline. Particularly for longer projects, you can create milestones to denote that one quarter, one half, and three quarters of the tasks on your timeline are complete. It’s a great way to show high-level progress on your schedule. 
  • Circumvented risks. Risks make stakeholders nervous. Circumvented risks are high risk items that have been resolved — through successful mitigation or because the risk did not come to fruition. Create milestones to identify these positive events in your schedule. Along with adding these circumvented risks to your milestone chart, be sure to update the overall risk level of the project, too.
  • Positive stakeholder surveys. One way to measure the success of your project is to survey stakeholders about their satisfaction with it. Based on events surrounding the project, stakeholder satisfaction can waiver, particularly early in the project before they see results. Periodically survey your stakeholders. Then, create a milestone when you reach a pre-determined level of stakeholder satisfaction.
  • Significant non-deliverable items on the critical path. Not all critical path items refer to deliverables. Significant critical path items can include sink points where multiple paths through the project schedule come together, the acquisition of critical staff members, or a notable decision by a regulatory body. Add milestones to show these items on your schedule.
  • External dependencies. The acquisition of permits and certifications are worth noting. The conclusion of contract negotiations and other tasks involving external entities can be indications of progress. Use milestones in the project to identify and track them.

Note: Many technical projects use milestones only to show technical task completion. To make sure your progress reports are useful, include milestones for events that are meaningful to the business, such as process finalizations or positive business test results.

There’s really no end to what you can use milestones for. What other events and accomplishments do you highlight with milestones?

For more about milestones, check out my Project Management Foundations: Schedules course.

Coming Up

Office Hours: Great Meetings Build Great Teams July 11, 2023, 11am MT

Although great meetings won’t guarantee project success, poorly run meetings could lead to project problems. In this Office Hours broadcast, I’ll be talking with Jim Stewart, PMP and Rich Malzman, PMP about how to keep your necessary meetings from becoming necessary evils. Join us for a fun and informative session. (Bring your questions for a chance to win a complimentary eBook of Great Meetings Build Great Teams. Sign up here.

 

Office Hours: Gen AI: The Project Manager’s Edge July 19, 2023, 9am MT

AI is transforming project management in several ways, such as taking over the creation of complex and realistic schedules through analysis of all available data. As a project manager, you may wonder how to harness generative AI applications in your work and how to implement them successfully. Join me and my fellow LinkedIn instructors, Doug Rose, Dave Birss, and Christina Charenkova to explore how to put AI to work on your projects. Sign up here. 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 40,000 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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Creating Achievable Project Goals

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Creating Achievable Project Goals

Photo by UK Black Tech on Unsplash

Want to make project goals achievable? Start by making sure they’re clearly articulated and supported by key stakeholders. That’s no guarantee though because other conditions can affect their achievability. Here are actions to help ensure your project goals are reasonable and motivate your project team.

  • Include training and experimentation tasks in your plan. You will attract the best team members if your project offers learning opportunities. Include training and the chance to practice new skills with some experimentation in your project plan. This expands team members’ understanding. New skills also pique team member interest in project goals. Businesses must innovate to remain competitive. So, treating projects as learning opportunities in addition to enhancing business capabilities means more value that your projects can deliver to stakeholders.
  • Develop success measurement approaches before creating success criteria. A common mistake made by project managers is to define success criteria without understanding how those criteria will be measured. For example, some criteria can be assessed only with subjective measures. This often causes conflict instead of uniting the organization around success. Create the measurement process first, then determine what result will be considered success. Your success criteria will be meaningful and allow you to track your degree of success.
  • Focus on business processes, not tools or IT systems. Project staff are more likely to understand project goals when they’re tied to existing business processes. Focus on the new or revised business process objectives. This helps team members understand the direction they need to take to meet project goals. Difficulties occur when goals focus on tools. For example, the goal “Implement a new warehouse security software system” leaves out the problem that needs to be corrected, or what opportunity the business wants to achieve. 
  • Set practical timelines. Project team members are more likely to support practical, non-arbitrary deadlines. A practical deadline means the timeframe reflects durations proven achievable in past projects. However, a tight deadline for legitimate reasons can be considered practical if management supports new approaches to help meet the deadline. Tight, but practical timelines require motivated teams, so explain the rationale to them to gain their support. (Think Apollo 11 landing on the moon prior to the end of the decade!)

What else do you do to create achievable goals and obtain support for them? Share with us in the comments section.

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

Coming Up

Great Meetings Build Great Teams

Although great meetings won’t guarantee project success, poorly run meetings could lead to project problems. In this Office Hours broadcast, I’ll be talking with Jim Stewart, PMP and Rich Malzman, PMP about how to keep your necessary meetings from becoming necessary evils. 

Find out why you should create a project plan for a meeting, how to handle people who behave differently in meetings. Learn about the science of meetings and how to use it. Listen to lessons learned from real-life meeting experiences. 

Join us for a fun and informative session. (Bring your questions for a chance to win a complimentary ebook of Great Meetings Build Great Teams. Click here to sign up: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7079138489325268992

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 40,000 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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Organizational Factors to Consider in Project Requirements

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Organizational Factors to Consider in Project Requirements

The Jopwell Collection on Unsplash

Business needs aren’t the only things you need to look at when developing project requirements. Organizational customs and characteristics as well as the regulatory environment within an industry also come into play. Here are other elements to analyze as you work on project requirements. 

  • Language and process variation across the organization. To create requirements that benefit everyone, you need to look at and address variations in processes and terminology. Smaller organizations often don’t document processes. As a result, different people may perform the same job in different ways. They also might not use the same terms for describing events and process steps. To overcome these issues, plan to interview multiple people. You also need to do this in large organizations, but for different reasons. Large organizations might have process variations based on local laws and local habits. 
  • The regulatory environment. Many industries, such as banking and healthcare, have regulatory obligations, which will affect project requirements. However, there is a key point to identify with regulatory requirements: Do the regulations dictate processes that must be used to generate an outcome, or is it just the outcome that’s regulated? This distinction has a significant effect on project requirements. For example, investment bankers might need to produce a report on the changes they make to their client’s investments. How that report is produced might not be regulated, as long as the outcome is accurate and meets regulatory requirements. 
  • Decision-making customs. How requirements are developed will differ within organizations that use consensus-based decision-making versus hierarchical decision-making. (For a funny example of dysfunctional hierarchical decision-making, check out this Mr. Show sketch video.) The difference is sometimes referred to as “power distance.” In other words, the organizational distance between decision makers and non-management stakeholders. Let’s say a second-level manager in a hierarchical organization approves any requirements. However, the requirements should be more reviewed by others before that approval. For example, first-level managers and the “worker-bees” (non-management personnel) that report to them need to examine and provide feedback on the requirements.

Things are different with consensus-based decision making. You need to consult more people to ensure requirements are accepted. In most cases, you need to involve teams that feed into or receive information from a process. With consensus decision-making, that audiences that review requirements are more horizontal than vertical, such as across departments or business units.

  • add this link behind the text “sketch video” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyocQT4Vn2g
  • Degree of individual empowerment. Some organizations are very rigid about their processes. Employees must follow process to the letter, regardless of the circumstances. Other companies empower their employees to be more agile. Companies with empowered employees focus on outcomes over compliance. So, in the occasional case when a business process won’t produce the intended outcome, employees can vary standard processes. When writing requirements, understand the degree of empowerment employees have. If rigid compliance to process is in place, requirements should have restrictions around what people can execute. When embracing more agility, the ability to diverge from process standards should be part of the requirements.
  • The risk tolerance of the organization. When organizations are risk-averse, people might be uncomfortable with change, so they avoid proposing big changes that could be needed to meet business objectives. In this environment, persistence is helpful. To expand possibilities, ask stakeholders for options beyond conservative requirements that they request. The project team can then figure out if those requirements can be delivered within an acceptable level of risk. The benefit of doing this is to increase the value the project can deliver to stakeholders.

Do you have tips or questions about developing better requirements? Add them to the comments section.

For more about requirements, check out Angela Wick’s Requirements Elicitation and Analysis course.

Coming Up

Watch for more Office Hours broadcasts in July!

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 38,000 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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Are You an Overloaded Project Manager?

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Are You an Overloaded Project Manager?

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Project managers usually manage more than one project at a time, which means they provide more value to their organization. But problems can arise when a project manager has too much work to do.  The Project Management Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct recommends that project managers be honest and work within their skills and capabilities. So, if your workload is excessive, you should ask for help. Here are some indications that you are or could soon be overloaded.

  • Your PM workload adds up to more than your expected work hours in any given timeframe. A rough estimate of your PM workload is to calculate the total hours for all project work tasks (non-project-management) and then add 15% for project management. For instance, if the total hours for work tasks is 100 hours, 15 project management hours is a reasonable estimate. When you manage multiple projects, add up the 15% PM estimates from each project. If the combined total for any timeframe exceeds your expected work hours, there is a risk of overload.

    project hours.jpg

    Project manager workload with possible overload

  • Stakeholders feel ignored. Stakeholder management is an important activity for project managers. An early indicator of PM overload is key stakeholders saying they don’t know what’s happening on a project or say they are frustrated by their questions not being addressed. If this happens, look at the type of issues stakeholders raise and the complexity of your projects. Overly complex projects, even small ones, could require more time than the 15% rule of thumb suggests, which could cause PM overload.
  • Schedules aren’t updated. As a project manager, maintaining the project schedule is a fundamental, administrative project management task. As tasks are completed, you record progress and re-estimate project cost and completion time. If you’re overloaded, schedule updates are one of the first things that drops off your radar, even if you have a scheduling person to help you. If you don’t have time to update the schedule, it is time to ask to have some of your projects to be reassigned or to get some additional help.
  • Team synergy problems arise. Project managers need to ensure their team members are on board and working well together. They must understand their role, the responsibilities of other team members, and the relationships between deliverables. If this understanding breaks down, a PM typically notices these problems quickly. If not, you haven’t been paying attention to your team’s status, which could be due to your being overloaded.
  • Technical project issues arise and aren’t addressed. If you haven’t addressed technical issues that arose, this could be an indication of project manager overload. However, it can also mean you don’t have enough training or that you don’t have access to an experienced technical team member to address those issues. If that’s the case, you should ask for a technical resource to help you (because by that time training will take too long). 

Note: If you are supervising project managers, you can use these overload indicators to identify project managers that need help or to reassign projects to others.

What do you look for to determine whether you or one of your project managers is overloaded? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about project management effort, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

Coming Up

Keep on the lookout for more Office Hours broadcasts in July!

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 39,000 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 Leverage Organizational Change Management in Your Projects

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How to Leverage Organizational Change Management in Your Projects

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash

Projects drive change, so good change management is important for delivering project objectives successfully. Integrating project management with organizational change management means  that you manage the development of deliverables while also  making sure that stakeholders can use those deliverables to deliver business value. Here’s are some tips for  leveraging change management in your project plans.

  • Assess your organization’s change readiness. Success won’t be achieved if your organization isn’t equipped to handle the change that your project will introduce. One challenge for successful change is too few internal experts to both run the business and participate in the project rollout. Another challenge is change fatigue, which ambitious management teams often ignore. Your change manager should conduct a readiness study to ensure expertise is available and change fatigue won’t hamper your project.
  • Appoint technical experts as change agents. The change agent role often falls to the best communicators in the organization. This makes sense, because communication from and feedback to the project team is vital. However, technical experts have some advantages as change agents. Their technical expertise gives them influence. When they share their rationale for a change publicly, it carries weight with employees and management. If public speaking isn’t their strong suit, ask your change manager to help construct and deliver the technical expert’s message.
  • Leverage milestones. Like a project, change management is a journey. And just like a project, change management plans should include milestones to indicate progress. Change models such as ADKAR* have natural points for milestones, which you can include in your project plans. Emphasize the importance of reaching those milestones to make progress in your project schedule.
  • Deploy specific change-readiness criteria. Completion criteria are important for the change components of your plan. Tailor completion criteria (or readiness criteria) for different stakeholder groups who must absorb different types of change. Overall criteria like “the organization is ready” aren’t enough. Look at what each stakeholder group that’s absorbing change must accomplish. And create specific change readiness criteria for each group. Discuss the importance of meeting these criteria with management in advance. This will make it less likely for management to push out a solution without proper change readiness.

For more about change management models, check out the ADKAR site.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 38,000 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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Managing Virtual Team Members

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Managing a remote (virtual) team has some nuances over managing an onsite team. A few adjustments can make a big difference in your success with virtual team members. Here are a few techniques that can help your remote resources work as part of a productive team.

  • Hold frequent short meetings. Schedule meetings 3 times a week for 15 minutes. These meetings provide quick opportunities to understand what’s happening —  like conversations you have when you’re co-located with your team members. These discussions can identify problems early so remote team members don’t get stuck solving problems on their own. These meetings can be with small groups or 1-on-1 depending on the number of team members and their role on your project.
  • Foster a team the same way you do when you’re co-located. Reserve time for checking in on how your team members are doing and give them a chance to share with each other. Consider virtual coffee breaks where you don’t spend much time on business. Instead, encourage each team member to talk about what they’re doing outside of work or what their favorite work activities are. Or they can describe a book/podcast/video that they enjoyed.
  • Insist on good video conference capabilities. Phone calls are good, but video conference meetings are better…when the technology works. Seeing someone’s non-verbal cues helps you understand how meetings are going and connect with remote team members. If you don’t have video conferencing, make sure speaker phones work well. Nothing is worse than being remote and not hearing discussions, or not being able to contribute because you can’t be heard.
  • Arrange participation in meetings for all attendees. Give each attendee a purpose in meetings. Consider a role for every attendee in your virtual team meetings. Rotate coordination responsibilities for the meeting, such as delivering project status items or stakeholder perceptions. This approach relieves some project management workload while increasing meeting engagement.
  • Increase the frequency of feedback sessions. All team members benefit from feedback delivered by the PM. Virtual team members need this feedback even more, because they might not participate in other deliverable discussions. The sessions don’t have to be extensive. They can focus on one or two specific deliverables or presentations, and the impressions they generated. Feedback keeps virtual team members engaged and comfortable about their contributions.

Have you encountered problems dealing with remote team members? Or have you found ways to engage remote team members and improve their productivity? Share your questions or tips in the comments section.

For more about working with remote teams, check out  Cyndi Snyder Dionisio’s Leading Remote Project and Virtual Teams course.

Coming Up

Project success is driven to a large extent by healthy relationships within your project teams, which is why a lot of people skills go into project management. In this Office Hours on June 1, 2023, at 11:00am MT, Todd Dewitt will join me to talk about how to build better relationships – by learning to overcome our own fears and by building rapport with others through empathy and mutual respect.

Todd will be sharing some of the insights and strategies from his new book, Dancing with Monsters. I’m a big believer in relationship-building, so I’m looking forward to this conversation. I hope you’ll join us and bring your questions and challenges! Here’s the link to join: https://www.linkedin.com/events/betterrelationships-betterresul7060330084796170240

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 38,000 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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Which is Better: A big picture or detail-oriented PM?

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Which is Better: A big picture or detail-oriented PM?

Photo by pine watt on Unsplash

If you want to be a better project manager, do you enhance your big-picture thinking, or focus on being more detail-oriented? Ideally, both! For some types of projects, one style or the other can be advantageous. Here are some situations when big picture thinking and detail-oriented thinking are more helpful. 

Big picture thinking is best when:

  • The organization considers a series of inter-related projects to address strategic needs, and inter-project relationships have to be identified and managed.
  • Many stakeholder groups are involved, and you have to define and establish the relationship between the stakeholders’ needs.
  • There are many potential approaches for delivering the project. To be successful, you have to evaluate different methods and determine the sequence of high-level activities and high-level business risks.
  • Resourcing issues will arise due to demands from projects and operations. You’ll need big-picture thinking to figure out ways to satisfy the resource demands from both.
  • Continuous improvement is the motivation for the project(s). With continuous improvement projects, the outcome of each project is a new environment which future projects are designed in. 

A detail-oriented project manager is better suited when:

  • The PM needs to be in charge of building the WBS, task groupings and task sequences. This is often the case when the PM also serves as a technical expert, or when particularly careful project planning is required.
  • The PM needs to be a focal point for resolving technical issues and working with management to justify the project team’s proposed actions.
  • A strong focus on risk, budget, or quality practices is required. As the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” When a project is heavily constrained by the budget or timeline, attention to detail is crucial. Also, strict quality standards require a detail oriented PM.
  • Improving processes requires detailed analysis to be successful. The insights identified by a detail-oriented PM are helpful with this type of project.
  • Intricate or numerous specific requirements need to be satisfied. Attention to detail ensures that all requirements are captured and met.

I hope this information gives you a different perspective on project management skills and your personal tendencies.  Use it to identify your  areas for improvement and to recognize the need for different thinking styles so you can communicate to sponsors/potential hiring managers accordingly.

Remember, neither style is better than the other. And a big-picture person can be detail-oriented  and vice versa. Some people are naturally big-picture thinkers, while others tend to be detail-oriented. Being adept at both isn’t common. If you lean one way or the other, consider having someone of the other style on your project. That way, you get the best of both!

Have you tried to expand your thinking to include the style that isn’t your strong suit? What issues did you run into? What was most helpful to your improvement? Share with us in the comment section.

 

Coming Up

Project success is driven to a large extent by healthy relationships within your project teams, which is why a lot of people skills go into project management. In this Office Hours on June 1, 2023, at 11:00am MT, Todd Dewitt will join me to talk about how to build better relationships – by learning to overcome our own fears and by building rapport with others through empathy and mutual respect.

Todd will be sharing some of the insights and strategies from his new book, Dancing with Monsters. I’m a big believer in relationship-building, so I’m looking forward to this conversation. I hope you’ll join us and bring your questions and challenges! Here’s the link to join: https://www.linkedin.com/events/betterrelationships-betterresul7060330084796170240

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 37,000 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 Leverage Your Out-of-Scope Statement

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How to Leverage Your Out-of-Scope Statement

Photo by Mohammed-Alqarni on Unsplash

The Scope Statement may be the most important document a project manager publishes. It helps define the project, captures what the project will produce, and defines success criteria for those results. A crucial section of the scope statement doesn’t cover what is in scope at all: the part that specifies what’s out of scope. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your scope statement’s out-of-scope section.

  • Make sure it reflects project delivery realities. In the scope statement, be specific about what is in and out of scope. In the out-of-scope section, be sure to document why out-of-scope elements are excluded. Typically, out of scope items are dictated by time to delivery, complexity or the availability of expertise. Sometimes, business priorities might exclude items.
  • Explain the advantages of smaller scope. A smaller scope allows for focused effort, a smaller team to manage, reduced cost, and less need for integration. These reduce complexity and increase the probability of successful project completion. If the reduced scope causes concern with key stakeholders, create risk profiles for the proposed smaller scope and one for the larger project stakeholders may be looking for. The differences in risk might help you justify going forward with a smaller scope.
  • Trigger debate, if necessary. When it comes to project scope, the worst debates are ones that need to occur, but don’t. Succinctly documenting what is in and out of scope is likely to generate a debate between key stakeholders. That’s good because it’s probably needed to move your project forward. Remember, your job as the project manager is to evaluate risk and deliverability. So, your part in the debate is to inform the stakeholders, not choose sides! 
  • Share what a “Phase 2” might look like. When an individual project ends, it doesn’t have to mean that creating business value ends. Many practical project initiatives involve a string of projects, each delivering incremental value. In fact, that’s the premise of agile project methodologies. Note in your out-of-scope section what a future project, like a phase 2, might look like. This can make it easier for stakeholders to approve your scope statement. 

Have you used the out of scope section in other ways? Or has that section gotten you into trouble or saved your project from problems? Share with us in the comments section.

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

Coming Up

On May 18 at 4PM MT, I will be joining Christina Charenkova to talk about how Project Managers and Change Managers collaborate on things like scope, communication, and stakeholder management. We’ll discuss how to use and clarify roles and plans, avoid pitfalls, and collaborate better for awesome outcomes! Sign up here:

https://www.linkedin.com/events/7056412593510363136

On June 1st at 11AM  MT, Todd Dewitt will join me to talk about how to build better relationships – by learning to overcome our own fears and also by building rapport with others through empathy and mutual respect. Todd will be sharing some of the insights and strategies from his new book, Dancing with Monsters. I’m a big believer in relationship-building, so I’m looking forward to this conversation. I hope you’ll join us and bring your questions and challenges!

https://www.linkedin.com/events/betterrelationships-betterresul7060330084796170240

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 36,000 subscribers. 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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Determine Your Minimum Viable Product

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Determine Your Minimum Viable Product

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

A key to success in an agile project environment is to determine your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) — that is, the smallest, quickest-to-develop product that provides business value. With passionate stakeholders, keeping the MVP to a minimum can be a challenge. Here are steps to help you define your MVP.  

  • Understand the pain or opportunity. Take the time to understand the source of a problem (the pain) or the envisioned improvement (an opportunity). Analyze processes analysis to further understand the source of pain or opportunity. How can you generate value by adding/removing/creating new steps in a process? Your goal in producing a valid, minimal MVP is to minimize the number of process changes to achieve an improvement.
  • Sit at your customer’s desk (literally, if possible) and watch how they perform their job.  Watch for anything that represents manual activity: duplicate data entry, data verification or handoffs to another person or department. Many of these inefficiencies are taken for granted when collecting requirements. Observing someone at work can flag these as candidates to include in your MVP. If your customer shares other requirements during your “customer desk time,” ask them to show you what they envision. Be sure they use their current processes and tools to do so. Sketch things out on a whiteboard. Make sure you understand the advantages of their proposal.
  • Prioritize the features that surface. And be persistent! You may collect a lot of potential features while you sit at your customer’s desk. Use your observations to identify the most impactful features. If you are having trouble prioritizing, use the pairwise comparison approach. Take each feature and pair it with another. Then ask which one would you prefer to have. Do that for every possible pair of features, and you’ll have a prioritized list. 
  • Iterate building a prototype until you generate business value.  Generating ANY business value means you have created an MVP. That is, if your prototype shows evidence of delivering a positive business outcome, you have an MVP. Share it with your customers and assure them that you can continue to add more features and enhance business value. Doing this avoids the trap of an MVP not being a true minimum, but rather a set of features that address more than one point of pain or opportunity. Stick to the literal definition – a minimum solution – and you’ll be sure to generate the MVP agile was designed to produce.  

What else do you do to identify the minimum viable product in your agile projects? What questions do you have about identifying a true minimum product? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about minimum viable product, check out Daniel Stanton’s Project Management Tips course.

Coming Up

On May 18 at 4PM MT, I will be joining Christina Charenkova to talk about how Project Managers and Change Managers collaborate on things like scope, communication, and stakeholder management. We’ll discuss how to use and clarify roles and plans, avoid pitfalls, and collaborate better for awesome outcomes! Sign up here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7056412593510363136

On June 1st at 11AM  MT, Todd Dewitt will join me to talk about how to build better relationships – by learning to overcome our own fears and also by building rapport with others through empathy and mutual respect. Todd will be sharing some of the insights and strategies from his new book, Dancing with Monsters. I’m a big believer in relationship-building, so I’m looking forward to this conversation. I hope you’ll join us and bring your questions and challenges!

https://www.linkedin.com/events/betterrelationships-betterresul7060330084796170240

_______________________________________

This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 36,000 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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Communication Tips for Handling People’s Concerns

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Communication Tips for Handling People's Concerns

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Even with the best communication plan in place, your stakeholders might have concerns about your project. Here are a few common-sense communication tips to use when you’re addressing concerns. (These work equally well in professional and personal situations.)

  • Listen actively.  Your stakeholders should no doubt that you’ve heard what they said. You can do this by explaining how you think their concerns might affect the project. Make sure that your views reflect your stakeholders’ fears. Also, spell out the steps you are or will take to address their concerns.

Important Note: Explain your views and the actions you will take even when you don’t agree with the stakeholders’ concerns. Don’t try to convince a stakeholder that their concerns are unfounded. For example, say that the stakeholder is worried about a risk that you think is unlikely to occur. Normally, you wouldn’t add it to your list of actively monitored risks. But in this case, you would monitor what you need to track their concern – or take an action to track the risk. You will build trust and a stronger relationship by appreciating their emotions and acting on their concerns.

  • Provide regular updates through your stakeholders’ preferred medium. To reinforce that you’ve heard your stakeholders’ concerns, make sure that the stakeholders have up-to-date status of their concerns. Set up a schedule for updates that the stakeholders are comfortable with. Always use the communication method your stakeholder prefers. For example, you might use formal methods, like status reports, as well as informal methods like a specific message to your stakeholder. Keep your updates concise and make sure they address their concerns. Use the same vocabulary the stakeholder uses to reinforce that you listened and understand their situation.
  • Be transparent and share bad news early. To maintain trust, you must share both good and bad news in a timely manner. Also, don’t let stakeholders hear bad news come from anyone before you communicate it. If that happens, your relationship could be permanently damaged. Contact your concerned stakeholder whenever theirs concerns come to fruition. At that time, explain the issue and what you’re doing to address it. If you aren’t sure what action you’ll take, explain the investigation you’re doing and the alternatives you’re considering. Ask your stakeholders for opinions.  Let them know you’ve chosen a course of action. Schedule follow-ups to report on your progress.
  • Be realistic. While stakeholders may prefer to be reassured, don’t fall into the trap of trying to “fix their concern.” If things aren’t good, clearly state that. Don’t sugar-coat it or they might not get your message. Reaffirm the actions you’re taking. Tell them (and mean it) that you are dedicated to solving the issues that arise. 
  • Watch your mood.  Be mindful of your mood. Your stakeholder will catch your mood more easily than the words you use, no matter how wise your words may be. If you are feeling negative emotions, take time to improve your mood before you meet your stakeholder.

Do you have other tips for communicating when people are concerned about something in your project? What about when they’re angry or demoralized or overwhelmed? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about communication, check out Doug Rose’s Project Management Foundations: Communication course.

Coming Up

On May 18th 4PM MT, I will be joining Christina Charenkova to talk about how Project Managers and Change Managers collaborate on things like scope, communication, and stakeholder management. We’ll discuss how to leverage and clarify roles and plans, avoid pitfalls, and collaborate better for awesome outcomes! Sign up here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7056412593510363136

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 35,000 subscribers. If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications whenever a new article posts. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved).

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