The Money Files

Carrying on from my last article about career development opportunities for the coming year, let’s talk about something else you can build into your development plans: enhancing your competencies and key skills.

The first challenge when you come to work on skill development is to work out which ones are worthy of your time. Well, the good news is that many skills overlap. I did a survey recently on important skills for project managers and shared the results on LinkedIn. The comments pointed out that the ‘leadership’ skill was actually a collection of other skills. Other commentators said that it shouldn’t be a skill by itself at all. So truly for project managers, there are so many skills we use every day that it really doesn’t matter which ones you choose to work on. You will get benefit from developing any of them. As long as you aren’t already a super expert in that field with nothing to learn!

Here are some I think that it’s worth leaning into this year.

Problem-solving

Had any problems recently? It seems to be never-ending problems right now, am I right? I don’t know if it’s the time of year or whether it’s simply a sign that work is getting more complex, but there is never a shortage of problems to sort out.

Build your problem solving skills by learning different techniques for group facilitation, conflict resolution, root cause analysis and group decision making. Then you’ll have a toolbox of tactics to draw from whenever you hit a snag in the project.

Prompt engineering

Prompt engineering is the art of being able to ask AI for something and getting back a good quality result. When it comes to generative AI, it’s really important to be able to get the right kind of output, otherwise the exercise is not worth it – the results are too generic.

Use the PMI course in prompt engineering as a starting point and then if you want to take it further look into other resources and courses to help you develop good skills. Be aware that the AI field is developing really quickly so I would tend to rely on training videos, webinars and online materials over books simply due to the pace of change (and I say that as an author myself).

Communication

Communication is an old favourite skill, but it’s certainly one we can all do more to improve. The type of communication we use these days is also different. For example, it’s a lot more online, asynchronous communication, mediated through technology like messaging apps and collaboration tools. Which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it is a skill. And if you want to make yourself understood, then this is where I would be putting my time and effort, especially if you work virtually a lot of the time.

These are just three of the many skills you could focus on this year, and of course you could focus on all of them. If you are serious about professional development, you could choose several, or even one a month to give you a broad boost across many areas. Maybe brainstorm a few topics that you’d like to learn more about this year and plan some time across the months to make sure you have focus development time set aside.

We’re project managers, it shouldn’t be too difficult to block out time in the diary for development! However, I know that real life and projects get in the way, which is all the more reason to block out time now so you have it ready when you need it.

Fuzzy dates are dates that have a bit of wiggle room. They are approximate dates, placeholders, flexible time periods rather than a fixed date. For example, “week commencing 27 January” is a non-precise date, that offers some flexibility, and so is “Quarter 1”.

Why would you plan with fuzzy dates rather than precise dates? Precise dates can be better as they give more certainty, but sometimes you just don’t know. For example, if you are doing rolling wave planning, or any type of iterative planning, you might not have the right level of detail to commit to a fixed date at this point.

Managing risk

You might be dealing with a lot of risk, and fuzzy dates allow you to build risk into the schedule by giving yourself a relatively large window in which to complete the work, driven by unknown factors such as what the weather will be like and whether that will enable you to complete the work or not.

Using fuzzy dates can help reduce the risk of unrealistic scheduling by acknowledging potential unknowns early. You aren’t just guessing at what the risk will be or what impact it will have on the schedule, or hoping that you can hit the specific milestone. You’re building contingency into the schedule which helps keep the project timeline realistic when you can’t (yet) commit to specifics.

Probabilistic ranges and conditional dependencies

Sometimes, fuzzy dates are expressed as ranges (“2-4 weeks from now”) or probabilities (“likely to happen by the end of March”). That gives you an indicative time frame without a hard commitment, and I find it’s quite a good way to set expectations with stakeholders. You can always explain why you are presenting ranges instead of fixed dates.

One of the reasons that drives ranges is external dependencies (“The materials will arrive some time in the first half of February but the supplier doesn’t know exactly when…”). Another example is when you are waiting on feedback from either internal reviewers or external clients, and they haven’t committed to providing an exact date by which they will get back to you. A task might be due “two weeks after client approval,” where the actual start time depends on an external party.

Moving on from fuzzy dates

Of course, you can’t have everything as a fuzzy date, and there comes a time when you can switch out your ranges and vague commitments for something more concrete. Incrementally refine your project schedule and replace the fuzzy dates with specific dates as more information is known and your confidence levels improve.

Communicating fuzzy dates

In essence, fuzzy dates provide a way to communicate tentative timelines while keeping the schedule flexible and adaptable, making them valuable in early-stage planning or for projects with high uncertainty.

However, they are a pain to show on a schedule unless your scheduling tool allows for the presentation of earliest/latest completion dates. In one of my mentoring sessions recently we talked about using earliest/most realistic/latest date markers on a PowerPoint timeline or using a bar with gradient colours fading out at each end to show the ‘fuzzy’ part of the timeline.

Some software tools will display start and end dates with a range if you have these parameters set; others will only work with a specific date as the end date, which is why in the main the project managers I have spoken to tend to create another timeline (often on a slide) to show the concept. Or you just create a task that stretches out to the latest possible target date and use that, making the fuzziness opaque and avoiding talking about it at all.

How would you do it?

Got a new project? Typically, at the beginning of the year (if it’s your financial year starting as well) we end up with newly-approved projects and stakeholders who are raring to go. But what are we ‘going’ towards? That’s where goal statements and objectives come in.

It’s really important to set objectives so you’ve got something to hold the team accountable for. They act as your North star when making decisions as well: does the decision help you get closer to the objective? If yes, then it’s a good direction to be going in.

Let’s talk about goals (and I’m using goals and objectives kind of interchangeably here, although you might have specific in-house terms for them – generally goals are broader, objectives are more specific, but use whatever vocab suits your team).

A strong goal statement should:

• Include a clear outcome.
• Define metrics for success.
• Mention the deadline.
• Specify the responsible owner.

That all sounds straightforward, but it’s important to avoid these mistakes:

Being too vague or too broad: Having broad goals is OK, but when they are too non-specific your team won’t know exactly what they mean or how they are supposed to translate into jobs or deliverables they are responsible for.

Conflicting or unrealistic goals: People aren’t stupid and they’ll quickly realise that they’ve been given objectives that clash or that feel impossible.

Ignoring input from the team: Your colleagues are the people who will be delivering on these goals and they won’t feel the same level of ownership if they are simply given the goals.

You can address these challenges by:

• Making sure goals, objectives and targets are at a suitable level of detail so that people know what is expected of them.
• Aligning goals for your project with other goals across the organisation, so you avoid conflicting priorities and clashing objectives.
• Working with the team to gather their insights, concerns and considerations so that goals are co-created for the project and there is a strong sense of ownership for what is going to be achieved.

Writing goal statements

One way to get the team to help with the creation of goal statements is to work together to agree what it is that you want to achieve (or what the project will deliver) and then drafting some statements together.

A technique that might work for your team is where you present them with a few badly written goal statements and ask them to improve them. Do some sample statements as practice before they begin on the ones that are project-specific.

For example:

• Badly-written: “Improve cycle time.”
• Better: “Improve cycle time by 5 days for Product X by digitalising the invoicing process and training existing staff.”

Once you’ve got a few on a whiteboard, they will see what is expected of them and be able to craft their own goal statements. To be honest, most of the professionals I’ve worked with wouldn’t need much of a steer to start drafting goal statements from scratch – once you’ve worked in projects for a couple of years, you get used to writing objectives!

So give your team an appropriate level of support without it feeling patronising, and draft some great objectives and goals to get 2025 off to a strong start!

You’ve done your objective setting for the year, you’ve met direct reports and your line manager to discuss your corporate objectives. But did you include a personal development plan in your discussions? If not, now is a good time to be thinking about what you want to achieve professionally over the next 12 or so months – beyond those objectives you have to hit for work.

There is growing demand for project management skills, and staying current is more important than ever, especially if you’ve been around projects and delivery for a while. For example, I used to go to networking events and conferences a lot, and that was a great way to meet people, share ideas and learn new topics. Then I had kids and moved out of London and now it’s not so easy to get into the city for networking breakfasts or evening seminars.

I went to a conference last year and it was really interesting, and good to find time to do things for myself. It was a learning opportunity but also a way to re-energise myself about the profession and make a renewed commitment to professional development.

So, if you’re in the same position and want to look at what you could do to build your career and develop professionally, here are some ideas.

Take a certificate

Even if you don’t technically need one, it’s always good to expose yourself to different teaching methods and different tips. I took a RAID certificate this year and I got a couple of comments like, “what did you need to do a course on that for?” but I did learn new things and it was interesting to see how other people use their RAID logs.

Take a course

You don’t need to commit to a certificate (i.e. an exam) if you don’t want to. Even a short course would be a good start. PMI has a range of free training courses covering AI in project management and it’s worth seeing what is out there. 

Get a mentor

I mentor project managers and I know from what they’ve said to me that it’s a great way to learn new skills and have a safe space to try out ideas. If you are an early career professional, look into what mentoring schemes are on offer from your company, or find an independent mentor, or use the mentoring programmes from your local PMI Chapter. There really are plenty of people out there who will be prepared to help you.

Go to a networking event

Don’t feel like committing to learning or an ongoing professional mentoring relationship? Then how about just taking the small step of going to a networking event in your local area? Show up, listen to the talk, say hello and make small talk to the people next to you and leave it at that. You’ll feel more confident for having tried something new and you might learn something at the same time!

There are so many choices. Whether you are extrovert or introvert, prefer webinars or meeting in person, want to commit to a 6-month programme or get your training done in a lunch time, there is the option for you. Block half an hour in your diary now to identify some development opportunities that would work for you and help you get closer to your overall career goals. And then go for it!

If you didn’t do it at the end of last year, now is definitely the time to acknowledge and celebrate project successes – things you did really well last year as a team. And it doesn’t matter how big they are, every small step in the right direction should be marked if you can!

Why celebrating wins is important

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that when a senior leader recognises the work you’ve done, it has a positive impact on morale and motivation. I can’t be the only one who thinks, “Ooh, I’ll file that email away for my end of year review.” That’s what you want to create: a sense of, “they think I’ve done a good job.”

Not everyone needs to be praised all the time, but celebrating wins also helps reinforce behaviours that are positive and shows that people are watching!

The biggest challenges I hear from project managers is that there isn’t enough time to celebrate success, and they don’t know what’s worth celebrating – is it just project completion? Well, it doesn’t have to be.

Here are some examples of project-related wins:

• Finishing a project (obviously)
• Meeting key milestones
• Signing a contract with a vendor
• Overcoming a major challenge, hurdle or issue
• Taking delivery of part of the equipment required
• Starting the work (good if you are literally breaking ground or clearing out a space – take before and after photos!)

Those are all tangible achievements but there are intangible ones too, such as resolving a problem with creative thinking, innovation, collaboration (especially if you can bring virtual colleagues into this one), and so on.

You can also think of wins that are specific to a particular person, for example, marking their one year anniversary on a project, or starting or completing a relevant training course.

How to do the celebrating

This is another area where people get stuck, because (surprise, surprise) there often isn’t any budget for marking celebrations during the project (and often not a project completion either, to be honest).

If you can, put some budget aside to allow for employee recognition. If that isn’t possible, tap into any employee recognition schemes that exist within the organisation and lean on those. Call out colleagues for recognition within team meetings, send digital cards or simply an email of thanks.

Record the successes

One thing you can do is create a ‘wins report’ which will sit alongside your lessons learned report at the end of a project as a reflection of all the cool stuff you achieved and how that work was acknowledged throughout the project.

If you’re in the kind of organisation where you want to share success stories with clients when you are pitching for work, you could also use your wins report as input to those.

Starting out 2025 with a reflection on what you achieved in 2024 is a good way to generate some momentum for the first few months and help people feel good about coming back to work after the festive break! How are you going to take this idea and bring it into your meetings over the coming weeks?