Staying on message limits the impact of your message being changed as people share it with their colleagues – and this goes for positive marketing messages as well, not just crisis management communications. Having said that, ultimately you can’t stop people talking to others about your project, and from a marketing perspective when the message is positive, you absolutely want them to be talking about it.

These days everyone has an audience. They always have had, as colleagues have convened at the water cooler or around the kettle in the office kitchen. Today they have the tools to share information more quickly with their networks through social media, internal social networks and they’ll add their opinion there as well.

Remember that it’s people who stop projects, not crises. So being prepared in your communications planning for problems gives you a better chance of controlling gossip and unhelpful communications and thus limit the overall impact on your project.

This diagram is very linear but it’s important to recognise that the more you can hear what’s being said by the people hearing your message, the easier it will be for you to either correct the story or respond to their concerns.

Create Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are an essential part of your marketing communication because you need to know what is working. If isn’t working, ditch that method of communication and try something else.

A simple way to start gathering feedback today is to tell people how to give you feedback, for example in the last line in a newsletter article – provide your email address and a call to action to send you their comments. When you do receive and act on feedback close the loop by telling them what you have done with it.

On projects there’s also a formal feedback loop in the form of the post implementation review at the end of a project.

You do get more immediate feedback than that with communication activities, especially if you are talking to someone face-to-face, but I believe it’s worth building formal feedback loops into your marketing activities.

This gives you the chance to track how you are doing and correct your course if necessary. Here’s an example of a project I’ve done this on.

Feedback Improves Satisfaction

We tracked customer satisfaction results monthly. I gave each stakeholder group the opportunity to rate the project team across four measures: management of top issues, communication, planning and delivery. The stakeholder group that gave the project the worst scores was actually the IT department, and that’s the graph you see here. A bit embarrassing because that is the team I work in. The issue was spending so much time communicating to stakeholders outside the project team and my department that my immediate colleagues were getting a rough ride.

There were too many last minute requests from my project team, or assumptions made that didn’t allow the rest of the IT department to do their jobs efficiently. Once I put in place monthly stakeholder satisfaction scores and understood what was going wrong it was a slow but achievable job to turn around the perception of the project and build engagement.

We managed that by using each monthly conversation with department heads to explain how we were addressing their concerns and asking what else we could do to improve the experience of being on the project. We proactively marketed what we were doing differently so they felt listened to.

By taking the feedback into account and acting on it, I was able to manage expectations and improve the both satisfaction and project management practice. It was an exercise in marketing the project and the achievements and there’s a lot more about how it worked in my book, Customer-Centric Project Management if you’re particularly interested in that.

From this project we learned two things. First, you have to be able to adapt what you are doing. And second, satisfied, engaged stakeholders are a huge asset when things go wrong on projects. Putting in the effort helps you build great relationships and that’s a massive advantage when you need to take difficult decisions.

For more information on project marketing and the tools you can use to communicate about your project, watch my PMXPO talk on the topic. You can get it here (and claim a PDU at the same time).

Project cost management has a huge documentation overhead. Or does it? Below I breakdown the 5 cost management documents that are common across project management processes and tell you which ones you really need to.

1. Cost Management Plan

What is it?

The cost management plan is a component of your overall project management plan. It talks about how the project costs are constructed and controlled. You document your cost management processes, tools and techniques in the cost management plan as well.

Do you really need it?

It depends. On huge projects I can see the value. On projects that are using a new financing model or a different procurement approach to the norm – there’s a value there too. There’s a potential use if you are the first project manager in your organisation and you want to set things out clearly from the beginning. But in companies with established cost management processes then no, I don’t think you do.

The reason you don’t need it in those circumstances is that the information contained within it is implied in the way you do business. It’s not that there isn’t a cost management plan for your project – it’s simply that it isn’t written down in a way that a PMP following A Guide To The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Fifth Edition to the letter would recognise. It might not be written down at all, but it’s likely to be codified in the Finance processes that control how money gets approved and spent in your organisation.

A compromise position would be to put the relevant information into a small section your main project management plan and dispense with the need for a separate (albeit component) one.

2. Activity Cost Estimates

What is it?

Activity Cost Estimates are a way of documenting what each activity is going to cost. In A Project Manager’s Book of Forms (which, incidentally, I still find useful even though I have the Fourth Edition not the Fifth), Activity Cost Estimates are documented in a table with the following fields:

• WBS ID
• Resource
• Direct Costs
• Indirect Costs
• Reserve
• Estimate
• Method
• Assumptions/Constraints
• Additional Information
• Range
• Confidence Level.

You are supposed to fill in each column for each activity and then the ‘Estimate’ column gives you the proposed budget for that item.

Do you really need it?

No, I don’t think so. I’ve never produced a document with all the details in including things like cost of financing and inflation allowance for each item. It seems like an overhead to write it all down like this.

What you do need is a record of how you came to each estimate. Personally I used the comments functionality in Excel to add a remark to the cell with the figure in. This is a reminder of what version of the supplier proposal it relates to, or how many days effort I’m basing the estimate on.

You do have to work out how much each task or resource is going to cost on the project, but you don’t have to create a whole table to list every one – incorporate the data into the budget spreadsheet you need to construct anyway and save yourself a job.

As with anything, you’ll have to use your professional judgement to assess whether it’s worth doing this document on your project.

3. Cost Estimating Worksheets

What is it?

This is a document mentioned in A Project Manager’s Book of Forms. It helps develop cost estimates when you’re using estimating techniques like parametric, analogous or three-point estimating because it gives you somewhere to store the calculations.

Do you really need it?

It depends on if you are using an estimating approach that requires a lot of calculations, and you want a single place to go back and look at how you arrived at those estimates.

For projects with a supplier who tells you the work is going to take 62 days, then no, you won’t need to work out your estimates in the same way.

4. Cost Baseline

What is it?

A Guide To The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Fifth Edition defines this as:

The approved version of the time-phased project budget, excluding any management reserves…a summation of the approved budgets for the different schedule activities.

It’s your budget, and it’s what sponsors really want to see.

Do you really need it?

Yes. You need somewhere to consolidate the costs for the project. In my world, this is a budget tracker spreadsheet. It’s a working document and it has to be, because money gets spent and estimates change as you challenge your assumptions and find out more detail.

5. Cost Forecasts

What is it?

Cost forecasts in A Guide To The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Fifth Edition are the estimate at completion in monetary terms for the project. You should document this and share it with stakeholders.

Do you really need it?

Yes. It’s not difficult to work out if you are on top of your project tracking and you don’t need to be using Earned Value to do so. I wouldn’t create a separate document for it though. It’s just a data point, so include it as appropriate in your project reporting.

Managing virtual teams is a skill. You can learn how to do it better, but getting the best out of a virtual team takes practice.

Let’s give you a head start. I spoke to five experienced project managers about how they manage virtual teams.

Here is what they had to say about making working virtually a success.

Paul Nicholson

I have gone to great lengths at times to actually meet someone in person. This is particularly true of suppliers that don’t want to come in. I go there instead. The cost is worth it, especially if they are international.

We are increasingly working with European suppliers. Meeting them seems to be the key and conferences are good opportunities for this.

Paul Nicholson, MBCS, UK

Helen Curel

Keep the lines of communication open. Meet face-to-face either in person or via video conferencing as often as possible. Even conference calling is better than relying solely on emails.

Listen carefully to what the team are saying and seek clarification if things aren’t crystal.

Helen Curel, UK

3. David

Oooh, difficult one... This is a subject where I know I have lots to learn, but:

• Try to at least have a kick-off where everyone can attend in person. It's much easier to work with someone virtually if you've at least met. If a physical meeting can't be arranged (e.g. for financial reasons) do a video meeting where everyone introduces themselves, their background, what they hope to contribute, in what way they themselves hope to benefit from the project etc. (Inform everyone beforehand that this is going to happen so they can prepare).
• If there is a big time difference (e.g. between continents), do not just schedule online meetings to fit into the "overlapping" working hours, but also vary them.
• Action lists from meetings are especially important to make sure tasks are known and get done. A virtual Kanban board (e.g. Trello) is often a good idea.
• Keep track of who talks the least during the online meetings and actively "pull them" into the discussions.
• Schedule regular one-on-one online meetings with as many people as possible.
• Invite feedback on how well (or badly) the team thinks the virtual team works…

David, Sweden

Claire Sezer

Communication is key. Regular update calls, followed up with action task lists specifying who is doing what and by when. Don’t assume anything is being taken care of. Always double check.

Claire Sezer, FCILEx, UK

Dave Gordon

One-on-one calls are important when you have a virtual team. Dealing with a problem or individual task follow-up on a team call that you could have resolved with a phone call to one or two team members wastes everyone else’s time.

Dave Gordon, USA, who blogs at The Practicing IT Project Manager and is on Twitter as @PracticingITPM

The Common Theme: Communicate!

Virtual working is often chosen because it has a stack of  benefits, not least that it can be cheaper as there are no office overheads, less requirement to travel and you can use outsourced (i.e. cheaper) resources from wherever in the world is best placed to provide them.

As you can see, communicating is a key strand that runs through all these pieces of advice. A virtual team needs as much, if not more communication than a co-located team. Reducing the ‘virtual-ness’ of a team will help them gel much faster and give you a greater insight into how to get them working together productively so that the work can progress at pace.

Got any other tips for making virtual teams work successfully and not just turn into a cost-cutting exercise? Let us know in the comments below.

Whole books have been written about Earned Value, so I won’t be able to go into much detail here. However, it’s worth having a little refresher on the key terminology, and if you haven’t come across Earned Value before, hopefully this is a gentle introduction to some of the language you’ll hear often.

To recap, Earned Value is a way of assessing project progress and lets you compare performance across projects. It can help spot trends in performance. It combines scope, schedule and cost and looks at project progress holistically with all of those elements included.

Earned Value

Earned Value (EV) is the value of the work performed. It’s the word ‘value’ here that caught me out for a long time. However, once you understand the terminology, the rest of EV becomes much easier. Project Management for Dummies (yes, that’s on my shelf and I refer to it often!) defines EV like this:

The earned value of a piece of work is defined to be equal to the amount you planned to spend to perform it.

In other words, it’s the original budget for a task. I think the terminology avoids using the word ‘budget’ because this means something very specific in EV and ‘the amount you planned to spend’ could also include resource time that is not costed in the same way as buying a cement mixer or other resource.

Planned Value

Planned Value (PV) is the amount of budget that you’ve planned to use up at a particular point in the project.

The Dictionary of Project Management Terms (another of my go to reference books) explains it like this:

Sum of approved cost estimates (including any overhead allocation) for activities or portions of activities scheduled to be performed during a given period. Also called: budgeted cost of work scheduled.

Ah, ‘budgeted cost of work scheduled’. That makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?

Actual Cost

Actual Cost (AC) is one of the easiest to get your head around: it’s the actual cost, expressed in terms of money, for the project to the specified date.

You might also see Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP) which relates to the total cost for doing a task or set of tasks during the time period you’re referring to. It includes direct and indirect costs, so it should be a complete and comprehensive cost for the activities.

Budget at Completion

Budget at Completion (BAC) is also quite straightforward to understand. It’s the amount you are forecasting to spend for the project at the point that the project will be finished: in other words, the total planned expenditure.

Think of it as what has been approved: it’s what your project sponsor says you can spend to get you to the end of the project, hopefully based on your realistic and practical estimates.

With these bits of information, and a few others, you will be set to start crunching the numbers and running the formulas to start producing your Earned Value information.

Here are 5 common project budget problems and how to fix them. If you’ve got other suggestions for dealing with these situations, please let everyone know in the comments below!

1. Contract Expenditure is Overrunning

You’ll notice this hopefully before it causes a big overspend on your project. Your company has entered into an agreement with a supplier and now the bills are starting to rack up. This could happen if your agreement is on a time and materials basis, or a fixed price plus extra costs for changes to scope.

How to fix it: Find out why the costs are overrunning. Is it because your team is putting through too many change requests, which is hitting a contract clause that lets the supplier charge more? Or is something else at play? Whatever the cause, pin it down and work from there. Involve the supplier as well, so that they know that you can’t afford, or choose not to afford, to put up with those costs going forward. You may end up renegotiating the whole thing, but better to do that early than to put up with overspends for too long.

2. Resource Expenditure is Overrunning

When you have to pay for internal or external resources, the costs can soon mount up. It’s not difficult to find yourself with spiralling resource costs, even if they are just wooden dollars being moved between departments.

The most likely causes are poor estimating and too many change requests.

How to fix it: It’s often hard to drill down into the detail of where a resource is spending time, especially if you don’t have a timesheet application. If you don’t record time, then start doing that first! It will really help you improve your estimates over the longer term.

Short term, you need to sit down with your team and reforecast the whole project. If you then can’t afford to do all the work that you’ve planned out, you need a frank conversation with your project sponsor about what can be taken out of scope for this phase.

3. Managing Risks is Costing More

In fact, the common problem here is when you didn’t budget anything for project risk management. Then a risk pops up and you’d like to do something about it and can’t because there’s no money allocated for risk mitigation or to exploit a positive risk.

How to fix it: It’s too late to go back and ask for a risk budget now… or is it? You might find your sponsor open to that kind of conversation, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to ask.

If you don’t have additional money available then you have to adjust your activities accordingly. Perhaps your project board could accept a higher level of risk for that element, or they would be prepared to compromise on something else. Put together a proposal that explains the risks, the costs and the benefits along with some options so that they have choices.

4. You Can’t Access Management Reserves

Ah, the mythical management reserve. This hits project managers who have sponsors that are poor at following through on their promises. The sponsor says that there is some kind of ‘contingency’ or ‘management reserve’ that can be spent at their discretion if required, say, in the event of an unplanned project disaster.

Said disaster happens and suddenly they don’t have authority to access those funds, or another project has used them, or you need to write a business case to access them…

How to fix it: You will struggle to fix this one in advance but your best bet is to make sure that you have full confidence that any pot of money that is being held outside your official project budget does actually exist and is there for you. Of course, the best thing to do will be to manage the project so you don’t need to tap into additional reserves.

5. You Can’t Track Expenditure

This happens when other people are spending your project budget and not letting you know where it is going. The first you hear about resources being acquired or a deal being signed is when the invoice gets passed to you from Finance with a big question mark written on it.

When this happens you can’t accurately keep track of what is being spent, and whether it is being spent on the right things.

How to fix it: Sort out the process for spending money. Make it clear to the project team (even those people who are more senior than you) that purchase orders have to go through you for tracking, even if you don’t have the authority to actually sign them. Let the Finance team know as well so that they can be copying you in on requests and making sure that the process is adhered to. They have no interest in receiving invoices that can’t be paid or getting the company into debt with inappropriate suppliers so they will be on your side!