Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Make Your Project Communication Really Sing
| The core purpose of communication is to share information or direct a behavior change. This is particularly true of communication with your project team members. The challenge of effective communication is keeping a consistent point and changing your presentation and rhythm to avoid becoming boring. Great communicators use a similar approach to great music. It does not matter if you listen to Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5" or Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." You find consistency and variety in both. Patches of high intensity contrasted with quieter movements create a memorable and complete masterpiece. The same effect can be achieved in your communication by balancing positive and negative elements of a message or changing the direction of the information flow. For example, if you want someone to stop an undesirable behavior, point out the problem, but also highlight the benefits of the change you want to occur. Or rather than telling the team they are behind schedule, change the direction of the information flow and ask them for ideas to regain the lost time. The point you are making is consistent, but the variety in presentation leads to engagement. Another key element is to finish on a high note. Great music does not fade away. It builds to a crescendo! Great communicators such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Winston Churchill had a consistent, heartfelt message they communicated in a way that would create a strong reaction in their listeners. Both had different speaking styles, but each had a real sense of rhythm and performance. Their speeches are carefully crafted for effect, but the presentation adds enormous weight to the message. While you may never need to 'fight on the landing fields' or 'have a dream' to change a nation, taking the time to think through how you will present the information in your communication in a way that is engaging and memorable will help you be more effective in getting your message across to your audience. Do you spend more time drafting your message or thinking about how you will communicate the message? |
5 Ways Agile Helps Mitigate Project Quality Risks
| The agile process helps reduce such risks as poor product quality or building the wrong product entirely. Though agile and Scrum were originally designed for software projects, their iterative process and techniques apply beyond their initial intended industry. Here are five ways agile and Scrum techniques can curtail project quality risks: 1. All practitioners must review project requirements with the client. In agile, the "user story" is the basic building block for agile requirement lists. A formal "acceptance test" is an integral part of that user story, as is explicitly reviewing it with the client to verify you have customer concurrence on the deliverable. 2. Agile teams collaborate while creating project components. Inspections or pairing can prevent up to 50 percent of possible defects, according to research I conducted with colleagues. In addition, collaborating helps team members share other knowledge about the product or tools used to meet project needs at a critical stage. 3. Authors create a consistent set of verification measures. Ideally, this takes the form of automated verification tests designed to catch missing functions or incorrect product behavior. These tests are run by the original author, as a sort of control against variables, and also used for regression testing by other team members. Yet even if a project passes these tests, it's also crucial that the product components are streamlined from the get-go so they can be easily maintained or extended in the future. This is called "refactoring." 4. Quality teams test small project deliverables as they are written. Since the deliverables have been inspected or pre-tested, at this point you should expect few errors. 5. Feedback from a demonstration. Agile teams hold demonstrations for their stakeholders, showing items completed since the last demonstration. The key is to elicit feedback from stakeholders and use it to improve the product. This provides one final chance to confirm that what the team produced was what the customer wanted. In this way, ideas and changes can be addressed before the completion of the project. In addition to the following checklist for agile and Scrum risk reduction, it never hurts for teams to employ risk lists to further improve project performance:
How else do you think agile helps mitigate risk? What steps do your teams take to mitigate risk? Read the Organizational Agility report for an in-depth look at how agile organizations increase their success rate on new projects, even in a volatile global economy. |
What's Missing?
| When a project manager or team member is unsure of what to do, it's often because there's something lacking. And in my experience, it's usually lacking in all or some of these key areas: knowledge, experience and the project's intended benefit. In an IT project, for example, let's say you are in charge of the rollout of new computers and rearranging the workstations. You would need to be clear on the requirements first, and you would have to assess if the budget is sufficient for all the required resources and activities you will need to execute. It's your project management knowledge and experience that will aid you in completing the required tasks correctly. You may have had experiences where you felt that you were clear on the goals and direction of the project. But depending on where you got the information, and if you don't understand how a particular organization operates, you might be going in the wrong direction. No matter how much project management knowledge or experience you have, if you don't have knowledge of or experience with the stakeholder or project owner, you will end up failing or negatively impacting the business. While this might seem like common sense, my experience shows that many people are struggling and looking for creative and advanced solutions to something that is simple. They spend countless amounts of energy and time to figure out a complex solution rather than just looking at the obvious. In reality, they are missing something in their knowledge, experience or understanding of the project goal or direction. Use examples from your life to validate this for yourself. Look at an area where you are actually having trouble or an area that is not working as well as you'd like it to. Something is likely missing in your knowledge, experience or project comprehension whether you want to admit it or not. Have you ever been unsure of what to do in a project? Was it because you were missing something in one of these key areas? |
Are You an Assertive Project Manager?
Categories:
Human Aspects of PM
Categories: Human Aspects of PM
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"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care." --John C. Maxwell Have you ever heard your project manager say something like "I'm not here to make friends; I'm here to get things done"? This is known as extrovert management. On the other hand, some project managers manage more as an introvert. They are less aggressive and more passive in their approach. There is a range of assertiveness, which can be understood as a person's tendency to actively defend, pursue and speak out for his own interests. Assertiveness is a key point for a leader's ability to achieve results, according to a 2006 study from researchers Daniel Ames and Francis Flynn. They found that our natural tendency to focus on negative information suggests that the costs of low or high levels of assertiveness may often outweigh the benefits in the eyes of observers. So what is the best approach to assertiveness in the context of project management? It depends on the project. Perhaps the bottom line is to develop our ability to cover a wider range of assertiveness and adjust our behavior to the context of the project. For instance, on short-term projects, being more assertive will give us the ability to achieve results. But on a large project, the best approach might be more moderated in assertiveness to build good relationships with our team, which allows us to collaborate productively in the long run. Which kind of project manager do you prefer? And which kind of project manager are you? |
Why 'What's In It For Me?' Works in Projects
Categories:
Stakeholder Management
Categories: Stakeholder Management
| Have you ever wondered why many executives don't turn up for your steering committee meeting and those who do are usually on their smartphones? Chances are that the only information the executives received about your meeting was the agenda and the briefing notes, which focus on the project's status and technical performance. This is abstract data that takes time to read and understand. As a consequence, it becomes paperwork that is put aside to read later, buried under other paperwork and eventually forgotten. To be successful in attracting the attention of busy executives, focus on a 30-second 'wake-up call' that will cut through the thousands of other messages circulating in your organization and get the executives attention. You cannot communicate unless you get the other person's attention first; so your 'call' must persuade each member of the committee to be both physically and mentally present for your meeting. Only then will your more complex messages be heard and possibly acted upon. The solution is 'What's In It For Me' (WIFM). WIFM appeals directly to the attention and decision-making functions of the human brain. The amygdala, a part of the brain, rules much of our actions and behavior. The amygdala determines in a fraction of a second what we pay attention to. It will pay no attention at all unless it can immediately see WIFM. To cut through each executive's communication overload, your 30-second 'wake-up call' needs to be direct and simple and appeal to the person's emotions. Pleasure and fear are equally effective emotions, so the call should worry the executive--or make him or her feel good. It should not focus on a third party, such as you or your project. The amygdala is expert at screening everything that doesn't directly interest it, including things that are abstract, complex or about someone else. Uninteresting or confusing messages are rejected in the blink of an eye, before the rational and analytical areas of the brain have a chance to begin the thinking process. Only after you have gained the executive's attention can you engage with the person and deal with the substance of the meeting. Strong messages start this process, but the real work of the meeting will require the use of more highly crafted forms of communication built around the concept of effectively 'advising upwards.' Ask yourself: 'Are we getting the attention of those most important to us?' If you are getting attention, are you keeping it and building it? And if you don't know, what can you do to find out? |