The Money Files

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!

The start of a new year can bring intense pressure to get projects up and running quickly – have you felt that? There is often new budget available, new expectations and just the natural sense of new beginnings that comes with a new year… all adding up to a desire from senior leaders to get projects moving quickly.

That makes December the perfect time to prepare, so here are some things you can be doing this month to get ahead for January when it comes.

Review the project pipeline

Assess the projects slated for Q1 and their current status. What’s ready to go, what needs more discovery or analysis? What projects are continuing from this year that still need to complete?

Are there any critical tasks that need attention before January? You can use December to create detailed action plans for January launches, bearing in mind the holiday period and any change freeze that might affect your technical deployments.

Resource planning and allocation

How are you going to make sure that team members are ready and equipped to start strong in January? If there is new budget for training, what projects are coming up where the team could do with some training to ensure they have the skills?

Make sure people know what they will be working on in the new year, and ideally have this documented somewhere – chances are they will come back after a short break and they might have completely forgotten!

Backlog and task prioritisation

If you are anything like me, you’ve probably got a backlog of tasks from the months just gone that haven’t quite been finished. For example, I have project budget trackers that need updating, and I know I’m going to be asked for them by year end because it’s important to have the numbers sorted.

Think about what you have outstanding and prioritise what you need to, focusing on the high-impact tasks first to ease yourself into January.

Prepping tools and processes

Talk to your team about getting things set up for the new year. For us, that’s making sure there are ‘2025’ versions of in-flight projects, setting up the 2025 portfolios and making sure steering meetings are booked for the year – best to get booked into busy executives’ diaries before they are blocked!

Communication and alignment

Because nothing says ‘new year’ more than a redoubled effort at team communication! It might not last longer than February, but let’s start with good intentions, eh?

Think about what the objectives are for the coming year. Set expectations to align on goals, especially if you are starting new work or have different priorities across the portfolio.

For most of us, project work just continues into the new year, because most projects won’t have a hard stop at year end. However, it’s always an opportunity to remind people of what the goals and objectives are, and how these fit with strategic priorities.

Planning ahead in December can help you hit the ground running in January, so you can get back to work after the festive break. I know, the “festive break” is really just a few days, but emotionally and mentally it feels different, don’t you think, because we will be ticking over into 2025?

Are you working with a new project team? Here are some tips for getting your team past Storming and Norming and into the zone of Performing.

Use a shared language

Use vocab and process names that are meaningful within the team, and make sure everyone uses the same terminology.

Chances are, if your project team members have been around a while they will know the in-house language of projects. However, you might have some specific project language that everyone needs to be onboard with. For example, is it Phase 2, Stage 2 or Tranche 2?

Build and share experience

Do you know the background of your colleagues? Can you recall the projects they have worked on? Take the time to call out and share the experience you have collectively. Celebrate successes and give everyone the chance to shine.

What you’re trying to do is build respect and understanding for what people bring so you can shortcut some of the ‘I don’t know if she’s ever done that before’ worries that the team might have about each other.

Foster an environment where trust is the norm

I know that trust isn’t always something you should assume, but in the workplace, trust people to do their jobs until they show you otherwise. Don’t make them jump through hoops just to do the roles they are hired to do.

Actively create resilience

Create resilience in the team by promoting wellbeing activities and encouraging the team to collaborate. You can also take practical steps like making sure project team members have a deputy who can step in when they are off, and that there is resilience in the resourcing plan in that you have enough people to do the job.

Build resilience into your solutions too, so you aren’t trying to run a network on a single server.

Share lessons learned

Make it normal to share lessons learned across the team. When you’re still learning how things work in this new environment, it can speed up adopting new (successful) ways of working but it also takes a bit of vulnerability.

If that’s a problem, focus on sharing the ‘this worked well so we’ll do it again’ lessons and keep the ‘what didn’t work’ conversations to your one-on-one chats.

Manage anxiety

Being in a new team is anxiety-provoking. Will they like us, what will they think of the way I do my work? Focus on psychological safety and setting expectations that are reasonable and manageable – for example, not expecting overtime, not emailing them on the weekends and giving people enough time to do tasks before you chase them.

Live the vision

Finally, make sure the team is aware of the common vision for the project. Talk about your hopes for the future and the goals you want to achieve together. OK, it takes more than a quick chat in a team meeting to create a genuine sense of wanting to work together to achieve a goal, but it sets the tone and gives people an understanding of the ‘why’ behind the project.

Tie your decisions back to the vision, reference it often and challenge activities that don’t lead you closer to it.

You can’t magically get to a performing team overnight, but these activities will help you start off on the right path so you reach a good standard of project performance together as quickly as possible.

Quarter 3 of a calendar year is July, August and September. Your business year might not follow the same quarters, but wherever you are in your business year, it’s probably the right time to be looking ahead at what needs to come next. Here are 3 focus areas for Quarter 3.

Forward planning

Begin strategising and planning for high-priority projects in the upcoming quarters. That might look like warming up stakeholders, seeing who is going to be available to work on upcoming projects, doing some light discovery work or pre-initiation investigation, especially on the areas that are likely to take the most time such as procurement and contract negotiations, or getting suppliers to submit security information and forms, or the RFP process. (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything!)

Involving the team in these discussions can help maintain their focus on future goals and the bigger picture, while hopefully getting you a head start when you come to get those projects going in earnest.

Process optimisation

There’s never a right time to optimise processes, in my experience. The process is in use and it works, so often it feels better to sort out something that is broken, or that is strategically important. But those inefficient processes contribute to low staff morale and wasting time, month after month, so it’s worth scheduling some time to put some effort in. Each quarter, tackle one point or a couple of points, and soon you’ll build up a momentum and improvements.

So how do we do this? Analyse the project management processes and methodologies. Look for inefficiencies or bottlenecks in workflows that could be streamlined for better performance in busier times. I would look through the lessons learned from recent projects and see what’s highlighted there that could be improved.

Ideally, you’d do a full analysis of all possible problems and highlight one or two from the priority list, but in reality that’s a load of work before you see any improvements. A better option might be to just trust your team. If they are telling you that the change control process is a pain in the behind, just focus in on that for now. Improve what is causing people the most headaches, and trust me, they’ll have an opinion on what that is if you ask them.

Tool use

Do a quick review of who is still using the project management software tools you have. People move on so it might be time to claw back licences from users who are no longer in the business or who have changed roles. And other people might benefit from having the licences.

On the topic of forward planning for the quarter, look at what projects are coming up and whether your current licence package is adequate. You might need to add in more licences if you’ve got more projects or more stakeholders needing access to the tools.

If you foresee a need to add in more users, it might be worth scheduling the training for them now so they can hit the ground running when they get their own account.

What else would you be doing at this time to feel prepared for the upcoming months ahead? Let me know in the comments!