How strong are your relationships with your colleagues at work?  Though some people see themselves as fairly detached from their workplace, those who know how to develop strong professional relationships not only see more career opportunities but are also generally happier and more productive. Building those connections takes time and effort though, so one must take a considered approach when reaching out to their colleagues. For those who put in the effort though, the results are personally and professionally fulfilling.  Why Networking Matters Building strong and lasting relationships takes a great deal of time and effort, but the benefits are hard to deny. On a personal level, building positive workplace relationships can go a long way toward improving your mood and making your job more enjoyable. Having good relationships with the people you work with can also have a positive impact on your productivity: not only does it make it easier to work as a team, but people who get along with their coworkers also tend to consciously and unconsciously work harder, as they enjoy their current situation and want their company to do well in the future.  Strengthening your relationships with your workers can also have important professional benefits: working closely with other capable professionals is a good way to pick up new skills and experience, especially if you’re working with more experienced people. Also, remember the old phrase, “It's not what you know, but who you know.” Networking with your coworkers is a good way to create advocates who will vouch for you. Often, networking and a good reputation will take you further than your talent will.  Building Workplace Relationships The first step when looking to build up a workplace relationship is to figure out what exactly you’re looking for in the relationship in the first place. You should build your professional network with intention, so whether you’re looking for a mentor figure or simply want to reconnect with a colleague you’ve worked with in the past, have a clear sense of what your goals are.  When building professional relationships, it’s important to know how to read situations well, as well as how to open up enough to be able to cultivate real, meaningful relationships. Whatever your goals are, don’t be transactional about your attempts to reach out: nobody wants to feel like they’re being used. Additionally, be aware that building strong relationships takes time, so don’t push too hard. If you don’t respect people’s time or boundaries, you risk coming across as invasive and could end up doing more harm than good.  Connecting Outside of the Workplace With the rise of remote and hybrid work, maintaining connections with colleagues and building positive relationships can be much more challenging, as you don’t necessarily have the benefit of seeing someone in person. If you or your colleagues are working remotely, it is important to put more effort into communicating, conducting frequent check-ins to keep open lines of communication in order to track progress, address concerns, and offer support where needed. Teams can also establish “rituals” to encourage communication, such as “virtual coffee breaks” where team members schedule recurring time slots to have casual online chats.  Of course, even if you do see your coworkers in the office, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t reach out to them outside of work. In fact, meeting up outside of the workplace is a great way to further your relationship. This can range from joining them on a lunch break to attending an official work event to inviting them to some outside activities. Moments like these aren’t frivolous either, as these types of casual interactions can also translate into better communication when working together.  The Value of a Strong Relationship Cultivating strong professional relationships isn’t always easy, as every workplace and every person is different. But like any other healthy relationship, a strong professional relationship has a lot to offer. Just remember that at the end of the day, you should approach your relationships with your coworkers with a sense of authenticity and a place of respect.  What’s the project success rate after diligent portfolio planning? Surprisingly, Gartner studies show a staggering 75% of all US IT projects are considered failures by those who initiated them. These studies reveal that the solutions fundamentally delivered did not align with the agreed-upon objectives. These are the harsh realities of our current market, and turning a blind eye to these trends is no longer an option. What’s the project success rate after diligent portfolio planning? Surprisingly, Gartner studies show a staggering 75% of all US IT projects are considered failures by those who initiated them. These studies reveal that the solutions fundamentally delivered did not align with the agreed-upon objectives. This is supported by recent research conducted by the Standish Group indicating that only around 30% of software projects are deemed successful.  These are the harsh realities of our current market, and turning a blind eye to these trends is no longer an option. In a rapidly changing landscape where customer expectations shift at the same rate as new technology advances, traditional approaches of annual prioritization and funding just won't cut it anymore. To thrive in this environment, organizations need a solution that aligns strategy and execution seamlessly on a continuous basis. Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) holds the key to unlocking alignment and driving success in the modern business world. It goes beyond managing portfolios using a mix of lean and agile principles; With an emphasis on optimizing value delivery, embracing continuous improvement, fostering innovation, and aligning strategy with execution. Together these drive meaningful outcomes in today's rapidly changing business landscape. But what transformative changes can an organization expect from implementing LPM? Let's delve into the profound shifts that LPM introduces, including a shift in leadership mindset, enhanced visibility, a revamped cadence of reviewing delivered value, incremental funding, decentralized decision-making, and more.  Empowering Leaders: LPM empowers leaders by providing them with crucial visibility into the work being done. It enables them to assess progress based on incremental output and gather real-time customer feedback to determine if they are heading in the right direction. This cycle of pivoting or persevering based on real data gives leaders the confidence to make informed decisions and optimize their investments for maximum value. Decentralized Administration and Bidirectional Objective Setting: In LPM, decisions are not made in isolation but by those closest to the action. Decentralized administration fosters a culture of autonomy and agility, allowing teams to make informed decisions. Bidirectional objective setting ensures that strategic goals and the realities of execution are in perfect harmony, allowing for adjustments and fine-tuning as needed. The Path to Success: Implementing LPM requires effort, discipline, and a strategic mindset, but the benefits are well worth it. Emphasizing incremental planning, value-based progress measurement, and stable, long-lived teams, LPM provides the structure and discipline needed to align strategy with execution successfully. It fosters collaboration, adaptability, and continuous improvement. Flexibility and Agility: LPM embraces flexibility and agility in its rhythm. Gone are the days of rigid, monolithic plans that crumble at the slightest change. LPM enables organizations to adapt to shifting market dynamics and seize emerging opportunities, keeping them one step ahead in the game. Value-Based Progress Measurement: To maintain momentum, LPM adopts value-based progress measurement. It's not just about counting completed tasks but about measuring the value delivered. By focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, organizations can ensure they are hitting all the right notes and achieving meaningful results. Embracing a Culture of Experimentation: As Jeff Bezos once said, "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day." LPM recognizes that the only failure in experimentation is the failure to learn. By promoting a culture of continuous experimentation, LPM encourages organizations to push boundaries, discover new possibilities, and drive innovation. Structured Adoption and Continuous Improvement: Introducing LPM to an organization requires a structured approach to ensure its successful adoption across the entire enterprise portfolio. Organizations gradually develop a lightweight review and funding process that allows them to be nimble, constantly inspecting and adapting. This iterative approach ensures that budget, resources, and time are optimized while keeping the organization on the right path. Furthermore, as LPM takes root, the organization gains insights into how it can be tailored to its unique context, leading to continuous improvements that generate value and enable strategic utilization of funds and resources. Conclusion Lean Portfolio Management serves as a guiding compass in an ever-changing modern business landscape. By aligning strategy with execution, it equips organizations with the tools to navigate through uncertainty and make well-informed decisions that bring tangible value to their customers. This methodology thrives on the principles of agility, adaptability, and customer-centricity, empowering businesses to stay ahead of the curve and meet the ever-evolving needs of their target market. As the business landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, lean portfolio management will undoubtedly become a mainstream approach. It provides organizations with the means to constantly triangulate their trajectory, ensuring that they stay on course even amidst the ever-changing market dynamics. The future is beckoning, and it rewards those bold enough to question the status quo and make a change. Are you ready to embark on this transformative journey of aligning strategy with execution through the optimization of value? The choice is yours, but remember, in the face of change, survival is optional! Helpful Links Lean Portfolio Management | LeanPM Lean Portfolio Management | Atlassian Lean and Innovation Complement rather than Contradict | Forbers Lean Portfolio Management: How to Get Started | Planview Lean Portfolio Management | Scaled Agile Framework References Gartner: 3 Steps to Start Lean Portfolio Management Medium: Why Lean Portfolio Management Made our Decisions Better and Faster Forbes: Lean And Innovation: How The Two Complement Rather Than Contradict Standish Group: The Standish Group Forrester: Strategic Portfolio Management Is Agile | Forrester PMI: The Standard for Portfolio Management – Fourth Edition PMI: The Standard for Risk Management in Portfolios, Programs, and Projects| PMI Alright colleagues, hold onto your keyboards because we're talking big numbers here. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Spending Guide, we're looking at a whopping $3.4 trillion poured into Digital Transformation (DX) investments by 2026. That's right, DX is the name of the game, and it's all about using technology to revamp how businesses operate, interact with customers, and create new opportunities. Alright colleagues, hold onto your keyboards because we're talking big numbers here. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Spending Guide, we're looking at a whopping $3.4 trillion being poured into Digital Transformation (DX) investments by 2026. That's right, DX is the name of the game, and it's all about using technology to revamp how businesses operate, interact with customers, and create new opportunities. But let's be real, it's not all smooth sailing. Sure, digital transformation can reshape customer expectations and open doors to new ventures, but it also comes with a whole bunch of challenges. And I'm not talking about trying to understand why your new smart fridge won't stop ordering milk. No, no, no. We're talking about serious organizational challenges here. You need visionary leaders who can integrate tech like nobody's business while also getting the whole team on board. So, if you're ready to lead your organization to successfully harness the wild-wild digital future, read on. Opportunities for Leaders According to Zippia's study conducted in November 2022, a whopping 70% of organizations are currently developing or have a digital transformation strategy in place. It's no surprise, as these investments are crucial for companies to stay relevant and competitive in the future. As a result, this presents an opportunity for leaders with the rare combination of strategic decision-making skills and the ability to rapidly adapt to change. Enter the Portfolio/Program/Product/Project Managers (PMs), who are natural leaders with a deep understanding of business and polished organizational skills. PMs play a crucial role in digital transformations, bringing together teams, streamlining operations, and promoting innovative practices that last long after the changes have been implemented. Indeed, PMs have already led many industries toward the benefits of emerging technology and organizational change. Behemoths such as GE, Walmart, Capital One, BMW, and industries like telemedicine and precision agriculture have all benefited from these strategic leaders. GE and Walmart are prime examples of successful digital transformation strategies, with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) playing a vital role in improving efficiency and cost savings. Capital One, on the other hand, has successfully implemented data analytics, machine learning, and cloud computing to enhance the customer experience and streamline internal processes, which resulted in higher efficiency, better risk management, and significant cost savings. BMW has taken a different route with its digital strategy by implementing IoT and data analytics to optimize production processes and enhance vehicle performance, leading to increased efficiency and cost reduction. In the medical field, digital transformation has been realized through the adoption of electronic health records and telemedicine, which have significantly improved patient care and facilitated collaboration among medical professionals. Meanwhile, the agriculture industry has benefited from the use of precision agriculture techniques such as IoT, data analytics, and machine learning to optimize crop yields and reduce waste, resulting in increased productivity and cost savings. Hey, did you catch all those fancy-sounding terms like cloud computing, IoT, data analytics, and machine learning mentioned earlier? Quite the mouthful, right? But here's the thing, even if you're a PM without a background in engineering, coding, or IT, you can't just ignore these initiatives. And as an organizational leader, you may very well be tasked with leading large-scale DX efforts. Why? Because, my friend, technology is just a fraction of the equation. Like 20% of the equation!!! What most people don't realize is that digital transformation is about much more than simply implementing new tech. It's about bootstrapping an organization into fundamentally rethinking the way we work in order to serve our customers in an ever-evolving market. To make it work, great leaders need to combine innovative and disciplined execution with a focus on change management, upskilling, and training. It's a delicate balance, but if you can strike it just right, you'll be on your way to successful technology integrations and transformational change. The Evolving Role of a Leader In the world of digital transformation, success is not simply a matter of investing in new technology. It requires a fundamental shift in thinking and a willingness to embrace change. As leaders, one of your biggest challenges will be getting your employees and stakeholders to buy into the process and stay engaged over the long haul. Digital transformation is not a one-and-done event; it's a journey that requires ongoing adaptation and improvement. This process upends traditional leadership and stakeholder management practices in several ways: Balanced project management: To succeed with digital projects, you need a mix of agile and traditional approaches. Change in Leadership: Implementing new technologies and change management demands a more flexible leadership style that emphasizes vision, collaboration, and adaptability. Collaborative stakeholder approach: Enterprise-wide transformations require a more iterative, frequent approach to stakeholder engagement. New skills, job changes: Digital transformation can challenge traditional roles and require new skills, leading to job changes or retraining and resistance. Collaboration is key: Successful digital strategies rely on collaboration across departments, partners, and vendors. Resistance to disruption: Change is hard, and digital transformation can be disruptive, leading to resistance from stakeholders who may not understand the process or fear of losing their jobs. To navigate this complex landscape, leaders must be clear about the organization's digital strategy, communicate effectively, and manage the change management process. This includes involving all stakeholders, providing training at all levels of the organization, and offering support to ensure a smooth transition to the new digital way of working. With a clear vision and a collaborative approach, digital transformation can help organizations stay competitive and thrive in an ever-changing world. Evolution of Project Management, Leadership, and Stakeholders in a Digital Era In order to lead large-scale digital transformations, it's important for leaders to keep learning, evolving, and adapting their skills. Here are some tips to help enhance those skills: Facilitate the developing of a clear vision and strategy that aligns with the organization's goals. Acquire knowledge about the technology being used and collaborate with technical teams. Understand the financial and strategic implications of the transformation. Assemble cross-functional teams with expertise in technology, data, and operations. Drive strategy decisions based on data and tie back to customer-driven outcomes. Prioritize initiatives that align with the vision and strategy. Adopt agile methodologies and project management best practices. Foster collaboration, stay informed, be open to feedback, and continuously learn to improve your plan and execution. Collaborate with stakeholders and communicate the benefits of the transformation. Track performance with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and Key Performance Indicator (KPIs), and monitor progress, identify potential risks, communicate often, and take decisive action. Leading a digital transformation project requires staying up-to-date on the latest technology developments, change management procedures, and project execution methods to navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape successfully. Conclusion When a business undergoes a digital transformation, it gains significant advantages such as increased customer satisfaction, improved productivity, and the ability to compete in a constantly evolving market. Achieving success in transforming a large company requires a clear vision and strategy, a cross-functional team, a prioritized list of initiatives, a plan to leverage technology advancements, effective communication of the transformation's benefits to all stakeholders, consistent progress monitoring, and a willingness to continuously adapt and improve. In this endeavor, PMs are uniquely positioned to lead and drive the transformation forward, using their familiarity with the organization, its personnel, established relationships, and the ability to lead stakeholders and teams across the enterprise. Their skills in managing projects and implementing change can make all the difference in realizing the full potential of digital transformations for businesses. To be a successful leader responsible for executing a digital transformation, you'll need to transform yourself first. The transformation starts with you!! References IDC Spending Guide Sees Worldwide Digital Transformation Investments Reaching $3.4 Trillion in 2026 - October 26, 2022 www.idc.com Spending on digital transformation technologies and services worldwide from 2017 to 2026 - Nov 14, 2022, www.statista.com 37 incredible digital transformation statistics [2023]: need-to-know facts on the future of business - Nov 2022, www.zippia.com 12 Reasons Your Digital Transformation Will Fail - Mar 2022 www.forbes.com The IT Roadmap for Digital Business Transformation - 2021 gartner.com Why We Need To Think Differently About Digital Transformation - Aug 2022 forbes.com Digital Transformation in Manufacturing and Industrials ge.com How is Walmart amplifying shop tech for its customers? - https://one.walmart.com/ Doing The Hard Things First - Lessons From Our Cloud Journey - capitalone.com BMW Digital Transformation Link About the Author Somnath Ghosh is an Enterprise Transformation Consultant with over 25+ years of strategic consulting experience in software development, Agile/DevOps enablement, and change management. As a thought leader, he guides organizations to achieve dramatic improvement and efficiency—from their product ideation to delivery. He has been a frequent speaker and contributor to PMI local and global conferences and offers workshops on advanced topics that help organizations manage large programs in digital transformation and innovation. Find Som on LinkedIn at SomGhosh or http://www.linkedin.com/in/somghosh   Project management is a hot field right now, and it seems like everyone wants to be a project manager. As many career-changers assess their competencies and gear up to learn about methodologies, frameworks, metrics, and more, many current PMs are also looking to advance in their careers. Surely, the years to come will see many more complex projects evolve, and with them, the need for many more PMs. But what will that future require of us? Project management is a hot field right now, and it seems like everyone wants to be a project manager. As many career-changers assess their competencies and gear up to learn about methodologies, frameworks, metrics, and more, many current PMs are also looking to advance in their careers. Surely, the years to come will see many more complex projects evolve, and with them, the need for many more PMs. But what will that future require of us? I recently attended the International Institute for Learning’s (IIL) webinar with Dr. Harold Kernzer, where he discussed the future of project management. One of my takeaways from the webinar was that project managers will need new soft skills to be effective in the future. To lead projects in a more globally connected, technology-integrated VUCA environment, PMs will need people-focused competencies, such as emotional intelligence, managing self-directed teams, and change management. Wouldn’t you like to learn these competencies in an exciting and effective way?   Toastmasters Pathways learning experience provides opportunities for you to develop these skills in an encouraging and supportive environment. You might know that Toastmasters has helped professionals improve their leadership and communication skills for decades. But you might not know that Toastmasters’ current core education program, Pathways, offers learning paths that align with the soft skills needs of future PMs. Each path has an organized structure and a logical progression, which includes elective projects to increase your knowledge, build your skills, and demonstrate your expertise. Need to manage self-directed teams? Look at the Effective Coaching path. Want to develop innovation and strategic leadership? There’s the Innovative Planning path. Need to Improve your collaboration skills? Take the Team Collaboration path. Managing change is not your forte? Look at the Dynamic Leadership path. Working on improving your emotional intelligence? Take the Motivational Strategies path. Struggling to lead without authority? There’s the Persuasive Influence path. So how can you learn these new soft skills you will need for the complex projects of tomorrow and maximize the value of your time?   Join PMI Mile Hi Toastmasters, (sponsored by the PMI Mile Hi Chapter), which allows you to earn PDUs for attending meetings where you can try out presentations before giving them at work, and prepare for speaking opportunities at PMI conferences while you complete your Pathways learning path! That’s the best kind of multitasking. We meet twice a month via Zoom (no travel time, yay!), on the second Tuesday and fourth Thursday. Meetings are time-boxed to 1.25 hours and are free to attend. We take that time box very seriously—meeting agendas list start times for each section, to keep us accountable. We incorporate stakeholder feedback from our general evaluator and our guests, which helps us inspect how we’re doing and adapt as needed, to provide the best value for our members. While we have a PM and Agile focus, you don’t need to be a member of PMI to join our Toastmasters club. Of course, you’ll also improve your communication and leadership skills by taking on meeting roles and flexing those think-on-your-feet muscles by answering Table Topics questions. You can complete all the Pathways programs listed above, or just one or two. Club officer positions, which last one calendar year, provide an opportunity for further leadership development. Whether you’re new to project management, or just need to acquire these soft skills, you can attend a meeting as a guest before becoming an official club member.  Registering for our meetings through the PMI Mile Hi Chapter calendar is easy, and you’ll receive the Zoom info by email.   Our Toastmasters club provides a diverse and welcoming environment, so come visit our next meeting on October 27th, 6-7:15 pm Mountain Time!   About the Author Christine Fontenot, MPM, PMP, CSM, CSPO, is a career changer who joined the project management world during the global pandemic.  With a personal focus on continuous improvement, she is a member of the PMI Mile Hi Toastmasters club, where she currently serves as club president. Contrary points of view make transformation more effective! As a leader, do you want to have more influence? Do you want to communicate better with more people? Do you want to make more effective decisions and have more successful transformation projects? Then you need to practice the key leadership skill of seeking out contrary points of view. As a leader, do you want to have more influence? Do you want to communicate better with more people? Do you want to make more effective decisions and have more successful transformation projects? Then you need to practice the key leadership skill of seeking out contrary points of view. Contrary points of view make transformation more effective! Making good decisions requires a firm grasp on reality and the facts of a situation. Being successful in your project requires a good understanding of the implications and consequences of different solutions. Getting buy-in and acceptance from people in your organization or community requires them to trust you and to be willing to follow your leadership. All these aspects of leading transformation are supported when you seek out and are open to contrary points of view. You’ll need to take three steps to properly incorporate contrary perspectives into your decision-making and solution design process. Gather More Facts It’s so comfortable to be immersed in a community of people who think just like we do. Transformational change that is built upon a narrow view is doomed to failure. In that situation, we often don’t understand why our re-designed process isn’t working; we don’t understand why we aren’t meeting our implementation goals; and don’t understand why people aren’t embracing the beautiful solution we designed with people who mostly see the world like we do. We don’t understand why we are failing because we didn’t seek contrary perspectives. Listening to different perspectives helps us gather more facts and develop a better understanding of reality. This reminds me of the story of the six blind men and the elephant: Six blind men were brought to different parts of an elephant and asked to describe it. The one who touched the leg said an elephant is like a tree trunk. One, who touched his ears, said an elephant is like a fan. The one who touched the trunk said an elephant is like a giant snake. One, who felt the tusk, said an elephant is as sharp as a spear. The one who touched the tail said an elephant is like a rope, and the one that touched the elephant’s side said it is solid like a wall. None of these six blind men had the full picture of what an elephant was. Similarly, if we don’t get a full picture through different perspectives, we fall into the trap of bias and blind spots, which impairs our ability to design and implement an effective transformation solution.  Some ways to get more facts: Before making decisions, conduct objective research and collect data from independent sources about the situation you are facing. Specifically identify people, teams, or organizations that have different or opposing opinions about the situation and engage them in gathering data. Bring different sources of data together; find objective ways to confirm data that has been collected; and move the team toward agreement on a common set of facts.    Having a solid foundation of factual information helps you take the next step in understanding the consequences of different solutions.  Understand Impact and Consequences Completing the first task of gathering facts and developing a better understanding of reality will help ensure that you can identify all or most of the people, teams, or organizations that will be impacted by your decisions. Realize that many of these stakeholders will have contrary perspectives on the situation, and it’s important to understand those. Conduct in-depth discussions and share potential solutions with them to better understand their point of view and the downstream impact of the different solutions you are considering. With this information, transformation solutions can be designed to meet the needs of different stakeholders, can be modified to be effective, and can be refined to have fewer negative consequences. Discussions about the impact of potential decisions and solutions will highlight practical change management actions that need to be taken to communicate, train, and prepare people and teams for implementation.  Some ways to get more context on impact: Conduct stakeholder workshops to facilitate in-depth discussions. Collect anecdotal information and user-stories to provide better understanding of the current situation and how different solutions might affect stakeholders. Document your work, including the current situation, the future state you want to realize, the key changes that will be required, and the impact to each affected population. Effectively engaging stakeholders with contrary perspectives in discussions before designing a final solution will increase the probability that your transformation will be successful. You have also laid the groundwork for more trust and influence across a larger part of the organization. Practice Empathy Considering the impacts for different stakeholders gives a leader more empathy for people who have a different point of view. Completing the first two steps of the process before considering the emotional impact of your decisions is important. Having a more comprehensive understanding of likely negative consequences helps you balance considerations across different impacted populations. This understanding will highlight practical change management actions that must be taken to relieve stress, reduce conflict, and overcome challenges. It also can identify areas of high resistance, giving you time to provide incentives and support for these groups to adapt to the new environment. When different groups feel that their input has been heard and considered, it is easier to create a sense of community to address a situation and design a solution.  Some ways to create more buy-in: Conduct role-playing with different groups to help them “walk in the shoes” of those with different perspectives and design a solution that meets more people’s needs. Maintain constructive conversations and avoid winner/loser scenarios. Document the impact of different solutions and the work required to overcome resistance, and help different groups of people adapt successfully in the new environment. Practicing empathy within the context of factual data, with a clear understanding of impacted groups and the consequences of different solutions, is more effective than responding emotionally to a situation from a single perspective (yours).  Seeking contrary points of view is not always popular and in fact, seems quite unpopular today.  We may find ourselves in an environment that encourages win/lose outcomes and silences differing points of view, so it will take leadership and courage to seek and be open to contrary perspectives. However, effectively doing this will: Increase the trust and respect that people have for you Give you the ability to communicate more effectively to a larger population Allow you more opportunities to influence others and widen their perspective Strengthen relationships Make your decisions and your solutions more effective I would argue that as project leaders, we have much more to lose if we aren’t actively seeking and staying open to contrary perspectives.  “The way of the fool seems right in his own eyes, but he who listens to advice is wise” Proverbs 12:15 Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SAFe SA, is a business transformation coach focused on creating more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and mentor project teams to be successful. Her blog and newsletter share transformation tips, resources and best practices. Did you find this tip helpful? Subscribe to my Transformation Tips newsletter! Changes occur in our bodies, careers, projects, and organizations we work for. Bringing things back into alignment takes thought, effort, and time. Fortunately, leaders in project management have the tools for the job.   Things in projects can get out of whack so slowly that you don’t even notice. (Like the pain in my neck from hoisting my purse from my left shoulder for the past, um, many years.) Sometimes, changes happen fast, such as taking a spill on some ice. Changes occur in our bodies (don’t we know it!), careers, projects, and organizations we work for. Bringing things back into alignment takes thought, effort, and time. Fortunately, leaders in project management have the tools for the job. Realignment is a project regardless of whether you’re changing your organization, your career, or your personal life. Recognize the Problem The first step is recognizing the problem. Misalignments can creep up so slowly that the symptoms almost become the new normal. Maybe your organization is no longer getting the outcomes it wants from projects. Or the job you once loved has become a burden. Working around the clock became normal to me, so I didn’t know what to do with a free weekend and didn’t notice my friends had stopped inviting me to do things.   Recognizing the problem maps to defining a project’s problem statement. People are good at pointing out symptoms. Projects aren’t delivering the outcomes we want. I hate my job. I work all the time. Like a doctor determining a disease based on the symptoms, you need to evaluate the symptoms to identify the problem that you need to address. Ask “What is causing these symptoms?” If you don’t know the answer, ask others for help. Let’s use the example of projects not delivering the desired outcomes. To uncover the problem, you might interview stakeholders: management, end users, project team members, vendors. Ask questions such as “Are you not receiving outcomes or are the outcomes not what you expected?” or “What prevented you from delivering the desired outcomes?” and so on. Keep asking “Why?” until you get to the source of the problem. The source could be issues such as outcomes not defined clearly, ineffective communication among key stakeholders and project teams, or inadequate staffing for projects. Take the Next Steps Once you’ve found the problem, the next step is to make a plan to solve the problem. Realigning takes time, so the plan has to account for the challenges of organizational change or making personal changes in your life. Making adjustments feels weird at first. For example, fold your arms. Now, fold your arms again with the other arm on top. Now, imagine trying to get an entire organization to change the way it does things. Empathy, compassion, and connection are crucial to success. Take the time to understand what the challenges are. How do you feel about the change you’re trying to make? What prevented success in the past? In an organization, dig deep to uncover the many perspectives people might have. And find out what will motivate them to embrace the changes. Build this into your plan. For example, suppose your research identified inadequate project staffing as the problem. The solution selected is to create a process for prioritizing projects based on the capacity of the resources. The project team members’ perspective is that they are assigned to too many concurrent projects. Line managers say that they don’t have enough resources with needed skills to properly fulfill all the project requests. Management’s view is that there are many critical projects, and project failure is putting the company in jeopardy. The financial department presents numbers that back up management’s view. In this example, you might focus on making sure that line managers and team members contribute to the realignment effort, maybe helping to develop a mechanism for documenting resource skills and capacity. On the other hand, management might help by identifying the criteria and values they use to select projects. Evaluate Along the Way Fortunately, realignment gets easier as you work on it. But the beginning can be rough. Have you ever beaten yourself up when you backslide into an old habit? That isn’t helpful with yourself or with others. That negative judgment can make you or an entire team give up and fall back into the old ways. These types of changes take consistent, mindful practice. In addition, you need to evaluate results often and focus on lessons learned. If you’re working on something personal (let’s say working too hard), think about your goal and why it’s important. Then, evaluate your results. If you fell short, are you judging yourself? Take a step back and ask yourself what you’ve learned and what you can do differently in the future. If you’re doing well, celebrate in some positive way. For an organizational realignment, you need time for lots of things: adjusting to the changes, working with people, evaluating results, tweaking the approach, and celebrating when things start to turn around. Regardless of the context of a realignment, planning, listening, and management support are keys to success. Additional Resources PMI Mile Hi chapter picked the theme of "Realign" as part of the focus of our 2022 Women in Project Management Leadership summit. If you did not get a chance to register for the event, you can still purchase a post-event video pass to view the on-demand recordings of the three WPML speaker presentations. Sign-up through the Oct. 6, 2022, calendar event. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author In addition to training courses and books, Bonnie Biafore offers project management tips and education through several online sources: her blog (http://www.bonniebiafore.com/blog/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonniebiafore/), weekly newsletter (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/bonnie-s-project-pointers-6767151075767197696/), and LinkedIn Learning (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/bonnie-biafore).   When governance doesn’t meet business requirements or isn’t embraced by the organization, it becomes a bureaucracy with little value.  So how do you make sure your project management office (PMO) promotes good governance?Successful leadership is impossible without good governance.  In business transformation and project leadership, the question is “What is good governance?” As usual, the answer is “it depends.” Governance is established to boost success, reduce cost, and mitigate risk, essentially to increase the good an organization can produce. When governance doesn’t meet business requirements or isn’t embraced by the organization, it becomes a bureaucracy with little value.  So how do you make sure your project management office (PMO) promotes good governance? Start with What You Need A PMO means different things to different organizations. There are several possible definitions based on the scope of the PMO’s governance (e.g., project specific, department, or enterprise) and the function of the PMO, in terms of services provided. The first request from leaders for a PMO often starts with a critical business initiative that needs to be executed. Your company just won a major contract; you’re implementing a new ERP system; or new regulations need to be applied to policies, processes, and procedures across the company. You launch your business initiative with an operating PMO focused on this single program or project. This initial PMO offers services such as: Managing the end-to-end project lifecycle: Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor, Close Providing skilled PM resources and tools See this Small/Medium (SMB) Transformation Case Study to learn some critical success factors for launching an operating PMO.  Expand Use While successfully managing the project requirements for a major business initiative, you develop templates for project planning, status reporting, checklists and more. You’ve likely started using various project management tools to increase PM efficiency and have developed relationships across the organization to manage resource requirements and dependencies. Leadership has become accustomed to the governance and status reporting that has been done for this initiative.  At this point, you have an opportunity to expand the use of both the project management toolset and the relationships built across the enterprise. By taking what has worked for a major project, standardizing and leveraging those to other business projects, you provide greater value to your organization.  Leaders recognize this as a great business case for leveraging investments already made, and the result is a tactical PMO. This type of PMO can be used by a department or an entire enterprise to increase the efficiency of business projects with services such as: Setting documentation requirements Standardizing templates, tools, and systems Reporting project status in a consistent way to upper management Providing PM training and mentoring Defining PM methodologies to be used Lead Strategically As you lead major business initiatives, senior leaders become aware of interdependencies and the resources that need to be allocated and aligned across organizational silos to achieve business goals. They want greater transparency on the prioritization of investments and projects, and as a result, a more strategic PMO is needed. A strategic PMO is usually led at an enterprise level but may be used for a department in a large company. This type of PMO provides services such as: Participating in strategic planning to define and prioritize the project portfolio Providing information to upper management for decision-making Managing the implementation of strategy Monitoring portfolio performance Another aspect of PMOs can be the degree of control that the PMO leader has in setting standards and direction. For example, the PMO team might simply advise and support the organization or alternatively might have significant control and authority in how the organization manages projects.  Ultimately, the PMO needs to be defined based on the organization’s current need. Stay Relevant In my reading, I’ve found two good resources on how to evaluate and evolve your PMO to keep it relevant.  The Project Management Institute (PMI) has some good material developed with Capgemini about the Next Generation PMO and the accelerated evolution from tactical PMOs to strategic PMOs. Capgemini (2018). The Next Generation PMO. Also on the PMI website is a conference paper on How to make your PMO survive. This paper introduces the PMO Value Ring framework with eight steps to ensure your PMO generates value for your organization. Pinto, A. (2015). “How to Make Your PMO Survive.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. Also used for this blog were ideas from Pinto, A. (2012). “How to Assess the Maturity of a PMO.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer is a business transformation coach focused on creating more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and mentor project teams to be successful. Her blog and newsletter share transformation tips, resources and best practices. Did you find this tip helpful? Subscribe to my Transformation Tips newsletter!All the project planning steps have been followed, everyone is aware of the milestones, and the team is working hard. So, why are things not on track? In this article, I explain why doing everything right might not be enough and provide you tips for (politely) driving schedule and scope control.All the project planning steps have been followed, everyone is aware of the milestones, and the team is working hard. So, why are things not on track? In this article, I explain why doing everything right might not be enough and provide you tips for (politely) driving schedule and scope control. My Background First, a little bit about me. I started managing projects for Hughes Aircraft in 1998, and I have since managed dozens of projects, ranging from $250k to > $800M in size, from 16 people to > 450 people. These projects have used a mixture of methodologies - Agile, Waterfall, Agilefall – and also had a variety of cost types - Cost Plus, Fixed Price, Time and Materials. My specialty is in space and defense. I have worked with satellite buses, optical payload, satellite ground systems, torpedo manufacturing, satellite component manufacturing, research and development, IT network upgrades, Enterprise Systems development (SAP and others), and now I do consulting through  my own company. My real specialty is helping to recover projects that have gone into the red from a cost and/or schedule perspective. So, if I show up on your project, it’s bad news – but the bad news part is probably not a surprise to you.  Where’s the Project Plan? My first focus is always on project plans. All of the ailing projects that I have joined have had insufficient project plans. I have heard lot of explanations for missing project plans, including: This is an internal development project This is a small team All of our team members are full-time on the project We’re using Agile But the reality is that everyone knows planning is important. When I started in my career, training in project management was rare. These days, people start learning about project management in high school and college. The skillsets and tools needed are a regular topics at workplaces, and many positions even require the PMP certification. The teams I have worked with know that project plans are key to scope and schedule control; plans define the who, what, how much, and timing of everything that needs to be done. A solid project plan is needed to drive prioritization. A solid project plan enables PM negotiations on scope and budget because the credible details allow a team to point to precisely what is needed – thus forestalling philosophical discussions with decision-makers. The problem is that sometimes project plans feel like a hopeless endeavor, and teams give up on them. That frustration needs to inform your tactics as a Project Manager.  “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” - Peter Drucker Common issues for scope and schedule control are typically rooted in how the team approaches the project plan, and thus they often have a basis in organizational culture. That culture can influence important aspects of a project, such as: Managing resource constraints Prioritizing tasks / ability to prioritize Giving negative feedback Handling stakeholders In the area of resource constraints, the most common challenge I see is an attitude that asserts, “There’s no help coming.” As the schedule slips, the team knows they have to make their due date, but the leaders aren’t reducing scope; instead, they are continually cutting durations of tasks and overestimating how much one person can do in a day - just so that they can show how the plan still closes. In the area of task prioritization, what I’ve seen is really an inability to do so. I have heard multiple managers respond to the request by saying, “It’s all a priority.” This is not helpful to a team struggling to make a project plan work; in fact, it can lead to insufficient upkeep on of that plan and team member frustration. The ability to give negative feedback in an organization is critical to analyzing project plans and ensuring they are reasonable and executable. When personnel who work within multiple teams or at multiple levels within an organization cannot provide honest feedback, it stifles the planning process and can render the existence of a project plan moot. The team can’t tackle the difficult issues that need to be resolved to rework the plan into something reasonable and executable. In a similar fashion, how the organization handles stakeholders can affect whether members of a team find value in their project plan. Poor stakeholder management can hinder a team’s ability to engage with stakeholders on and resolve difficult issues. Here’s How You Can Help As the PM who is working to help the team to get back on track, your primary mission is to notice the details, care about the details, and ask about the details. Here are some tips: Put resources and tasks in a spreadsheet to add up hours per month Examine the plan as a team or during small-group activity Are the resource allocations too optimistic? Is the critical path accurate? What tasks can be done in parallel? Have tasks been assessed for priority? What are the dependencies between tasks? Are they sufficiently captured? Are dependencies on external personnel and organizations captured? What concerns does the team have? Does the schedule include requests that are outside the original scope? Did those requests come with appropriate schedule and budget consideration? As you are doing your assessments and forging the path forward, be sure to explain why and then follow through. The team will emulate your behaviors – if you record your action items and follow through, they will, too. I have known managers who literally said that by the time they finished walking around to meet with team members, they couldn’t “remember half of what (they) promised” when they got back to their office. To avoid this pitfall, I carry a pad of paper with me when I talk with the team members, and I have a notebook on my desk next to me during virtual calls. Some people assume it will be awkward to pause a conversation to write something down. But I find it is appreciated – your team sees that you are taking their requests and feedback seriously.  This creates an environment where they feel encouraged to bring forward issues. Give Positive Feedback Positive feedback matters. In the midst of trying to drive schedule, you can find a myriad negative things to focus on and fix. But the morale of the team relies upon its collective ability to keep perspective during the process; specifically, team members need to know that they are doing good work to move the project in a positive direction. They look to their leader for that perspective and feedback. The examples below are real. Many managers are uncomfortable giving positive feedback – even more uncomfortable than they are giving negative feedback! One of the results of this discomfort is that their attempts at positive feedback can come across as a self-compliment rather than a sincere and timely thank-you to an employee. Be sure to pause long enough to ensure you are using a format of “You did well,” instead of accidentally complimenting yourself, as shown in the table below.  I Did Well vs You Did Well Good thing I asked for that analysis! It found some key issues that I think we should explore further. This should help a lot! vs Great job, {name}. You found some key issues that I think we should explore further. This should help a lot! Ah, good! I knew there were some prioritization issues vs Excellent points – are there some of these you would reprioritize? I scrubbed this resource plan to make it realistic vs Thanks for a great planning workshop. Our team has really scrubbed the plan to make it more realistic.   Keep Going… Wash, rinse, repeat….  On average, it takes four to seven months of steady work on the team culture and project planning to turn around team performance. And it’s exhausting! Your team needs your energy, enthusiasm, and positivity. I have not found one, single technique that helps provide leadership resiliency in all situations. So, to be successful, you will need to develop your own resiliency cookbook from a variety of techniques. I could spend pages talking about mindset training, meditation, crucial conversations, reframing, and dozens of other techniques. As a PM, you will find it well worth the effort to learn about and try out the depth and breadth of concepts available to help. Summary Checklist Driving Schedule: Evaluate team cultural problems, and approach solutions as cultural change instead of status issues Get the team involved with planning Ask critical questions to empower them to find issues and solutions Prioritization means not doing some things – use the parking lot method and mean it Keep your promises Give positive feedback as “You did well” Develop and use your resiliency cookbook – this is a marathon, not a sprint   Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Kari Sanders, PMP, MBA, is a speaker, author, consultant, and long-time volunteer with PMI Mile Hi. She presented on this topic during our March 2022 chapter meeting. You can see Kari's profile on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karisanders. Even the best executed business transformation may be unsuccessful if organizational change isn’t adequately managed to ensure employees or customers can and will make the transition. In the middle of a transition, people need to know: “Why should I follow you?”In the middle of a transition, people need to know: “Why should I follow you?” I was engaged by one company for several projects and experienced a very challenging change environment.  The leaders wanted to shift their business operations and culture toward a greater sense of urgency in serving customers.  Most employees anticipated a positive change that could propel the company forward.  As the program progressed, senior leaders drove several top-down initiatives that were unpopular.  Employee suggestions were ignored and key personnel started leaving the company.  Six months in, senior leaders communicated new company-wide leader behaviors based on employee feedback, including: an openness to ideas, humility and transparency.  However, these same leaders didn’t embrace the employee feedback and change their own behaviors. Even the best executed business transformation may be unsuccessful if organizational change isn’t adequately managed to ensure employees or customers can and will make the transition.  In my experience, some leaders don’t fully grasp what is required to implement a business transformation:   Aligning all the key elements, a business change becomes “unavoidable.” This requires understanding the downstream impacts and making the necessary modifications to systems, processes, end user instructions, and company policy, if necessary. Preparing employees or customers, a change is more likely to be accepted. This requires adequate communication, education, resources and motivation to help people be successful. Finally, a change effort can’t be sustained unless leaders exhibit influencing behaviors and engage other change leaders in the business to do the same. Document the Impact of Change Most of us have experienced an implementation wherein leadership didn’t consider how a project would impact various teams in the organization. No one knew what to expect or what to do and the implementation created chaos. This part of managing change requires conducting research and engaging stakeholders and leaders to make sure you have a clear picture of the business requirements for: Integrating technology Modifying processes and procedures Aligning policies or governance Preparing people Educate and Convince Users In several of my transformation projects, a critical element has been the adoption of online tools for employees to request technical, financial, or HR support. You may have experienced this type of change in your company and been frustrated because you weren’t adequately educated and motivated. Some key elements to help people adopt a change: Break the change into manageable chunks. Help people master new skills over time. For example, use an online support tool for simple tasks before graduating to more complex tasks and issues.  Fit education to the task. Make the change enjoyable or at least not painful.  For example, simple questions may be addressed with an FAQ; more complex tasks or problems may require an online wizard or educational video; and complicated issues should be directed to a knowledgeable person for assistance. Allow for choice. If possible, provide an “offramp.” For example, some people may be comfortable with online tools, while others may need more assistance to gain confidence. People adapt to change at different rates. Be thoughtful about how to meet your employees or your customers where they are and educate and motivate them to make the change you need them to make. Create and Sustain Change Substantial business transformations require a well-defined and well-executed implementation plus visible leadership commitment. When considering if leaders are serious about a change, ask if they have: Shown their commitment to the change and embraced the change themselves. Risked their personal reputation, sacrificed their time, and/or prioritized resources to make this change happen. Convinced opinion leaders in the organization to embrace the change. Held people accountable to the new way of working. These are some visible behaviors and actions of trusted and respected leaders that help convince people to follow them through a business change. Returning to the company transition I mentioned in the introduction, we can see that the senior leaders in that example didn’t exhibit important behaviors to create and sustain change. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, this business transformation failed and the company was in a worse state than before the initiative was started. Leading change requires a clear picture and execution of the business requirements, effective education and motivation, and visible leadership commitment.  What stories do you have for leading change effectively? Did you find this tip helpful? Subscribe to my Transformation Tips newsletter! Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette is a business transformation coach focused on creating more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and mentor project teams to be successful. Her blog and newsletter share transformation tips, resources and best practices.Competing in a digital economy means organizations must reimagine how they deliver value to their customers. That includes understanding Lean-Agile practices.I was recently asked to deliver a presentation for the Regis PMI South March 23 Roundtable and share how project managers can establish business agility in their organizations by applying industry-proven Lean-Agile scaling strategies. So, although I did not create a title for the presentation, I believe one of my subsections accurately reflects the primary topic – how to compete in our modern digital economy. The Waterfall Tradition To give you some background, the software development industry has rapidly evolved over the 35 years I have been in this industry. When I started out, the accepted philosophy was that the traditional project management model, called Waterfall in the software industry, would work equally well when managing software development projects. The waterfall model is characterized as a plan-driven approach that implements a relatively strict linear-sequential development process through traditional phases: Concept, Requirements, Design, Build, Test, and Deploy. The traditional project management model works well in industries where requirements are well understood and not likely to change, especially when change is cost- or schedule-prohibitive. For example, after starting construction, it’s likely cost-prohibitive to add additional floors to a skyscraper, change the length or beam of a ship, or reroute a freeway. Software Tools and Methods But the software industry is very different and is affected by very different business considerations. Businesses run their business with software. But the dynamics of the business can change overnight due to competitive pressures. Additionally, our customers can be fickle and change their minds regarding their requirements. They might not know what they want until they see a working prototype of a software application. As a result, the software industry created new methods and tools to support its customers better. Starting in the 1980s, software tools companies began to create computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools to graphically model business and user requirements. In the 1990s, the software tool vendors started creating integrated development environments (IDEs) and rapid application development (RAD) tools to accelerate software development. However, most significantly, in 2001, a group of software engineers and consultants got together and authored the Manifesto for Agile Software Development to document the values and principles necessary to support their customers properly. These engineers presented a new approach to software development that some called “lightweight” software development methodologies. The Agile and Lean Models The Agile methodologies applied an iterative and incremental development (IID) model that significantly accelerated the pace of delivery, allowing more frequent deployments of new functionality. In addition, Agile-based developers actively sought customer reviews throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) to solicit customer feedback and make changes frequently and rapidly. Finally, the agile practices help eliminate many bug-fix issues that can delay production deliveries when testing is a late-stage activity, scheduled at the end of the SDLC and spanning thousands of lines of code. But before Agile came along, Lean production concepts evolved, first in manufacturing but also adopted across other industries to accelerate the flow of value-based deliveries by eliminating constraints that cause bottlenecks, delays, excess work in progress (WIP), and other wastes that do not add value from the perspectives of our customers. Though Lean and Agile practitioners promote similar concepts – such as adding customer-centric value and continuous improvements, their original goals differed. However, today, we see a merging of both concepts in Lean-Agile Frameworks, such as Disciplined Agile, SAFe, and Amplio. How to Compete in the Digital Economy? Competing in a digital economy means organizations must reimagine how they deliver value to their customers. The digital disruptors won. For example, think how Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, Tesla, and the many social media firms such as Facebook and Etsy have transformed how we communicate, share news, promote, and sell our products and services. They have proven they can compete and take away business in any industry head-on against the entrenched leaders, no matter the size or length of times those leaders have been around. But change is hard. And humans will resist change if they fear it will alter the way they work or put their jobs and careers at risk. On the other hand, people generally want to be involved in something that is viewed as successful. So the best strategy is to find the innovators in your organization who want to effect change for the good. Start with low-risk but high-reward projects, and use Lean-Agile processes to make them successful. Promote every success, and repeat the pattern on new programs. Over time, the early adopters, early majority, late majority, and even the laggards will join in when the see the success others are having, and recognize there is more risk by not joining in the new ways of working. Still, some of the current Lean-Agile methodologies appear complex, difficult to implement, and expensive to employ on an enterprise scale. This is the reason my partners and I have evolved Amplio. But that is a discussion for another blog. For those PMI Mile Hi Chapter members who would like to learn more about Lean-Agile practices, you can watch the Roundtable discussion here or visit my website at https://www.commandresults.com/, or contact me directly at gary@commandresults.com. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Cecil ‘Gary’ Rupp is a 35-year veteran in the software industry - including executive management, program management, and management consulting roles. He is also the author of four books on software development and modern Scaled-Scrum, DevOps, and Value Stream Management (VSM) practices. Through his company, Command Results, Gary helps his clients apply Lean-Agile operating models and related practices to deliver customer-centric value through software and to compete profitably in our modern digital economy.Project communications are the lifeblood of any project. But how can you know that you are communicating well? To help you on your way, Debra Kahn recommends that you maintain your communication CARS: clarity, accuracy, relevance, and scannability.During the life of a project, we project managers communicate all sorts of information to the project’s stakeholders: statuses, user requirements and profiles, tasks lists, test and survey results, meeting notes, dashboards, and so on. We also use a variety of channels and tools, from Slack to PowerPoint. Project communications are the lifeblood of any project. But how can you know that you are communicating well? To help you on your way, I recommend that you maintain your communication CARS: clarity, accuracy, relevance, and scannability. CARS Propel Your Project If you communicate effectively, your project can move forward more smoothly as you avoid the “potholes” of misunderstanding and missed details and avoid taking wrong turns. While I might be stretching the metaphor a bit far here, effective communication is no joke. Its importance in the workplace is supported by recent studies: A widely accepted CMSWire report reveals that 97% of workers believe that internal communications impact their tasks daily. According to McKinsey, improved communication and collaboration – especially through social technologies – can raise productivity by 20-25% by increasing the amount of time workers spend on value-added tasks. Lexicon has reported that organizations with effective communications are 3.5 times more likely to outperform their peers. In other words, effective communication can increase the ability of project teams to get things done. So let’s take a closer look at those four elements of good communication: clarity, accuracy, relevance, and scannability. To start, I’ll define what I mean by each of these terms: Clarity: Clarity drives us to keep our information within our stakeholders’ knowable and relatable realm. By using word choices and formats they expect, we help them to understand without forcing them to work too hard to do so.  Accuracy:  Accuracy drives us to share information that is as true in the moment as possible. By being as accurate and as transparent as possible, we help our stakeholders stay confident and focused without distracting or confusing them.  Relevance: Our information is relevant if it meets our stakeholders’ needs (and only those needs) at the time that the needs arise. Relevancy drives us to meet our stakeholders where they are – without assuming.  Scannability: Scannable information can be easily and quickly understood and used. The pertinent points are obvious. Like relevance and accuracy, scannability drives us toward conciseness (lean language) and accessibility. Now for some tips on how to incorporate these elements of effective communication into your own project efforts. Clarity Is the Engine Oil Clarity in project communication keeps the project’s engine running smoothly. For clarity’s sake, in this section, I focus on written communications, including emails, calendar appointments, collaboration-based announcements, work tickets, plans, contracts, and other work products. We all remember the old adage “say what you mean and mean what you say.” But clear communication isn’t only about you – the sender; it’s also about the person on the receiving end. So choose your words wisely and put them together thoughtfully. Here are some tips: Use a controlled vocabulary: Each important word you use should have only one meaning and one spelling. For example, what are you referring to when you say “the disk”? (Which, of course, you never spell as “the disc.”)  Maintain or ask your project’s lead writer to maintain a project glossary.  Stick to one thought per sentence: Each sentence or bulleted phrase should have only one main point. Shorter is better: Sentences should be no longer than 25 words. Take ideas out of those sentence add-ins that start with “and” or “which,” and give them their own sentence.  Be direct: Avoid burying your point in the middle of a complicated sentence. Use active and commonly known verbs, such as “shows,” “delays,” and “connects.” Avoid verbal hesitations such as “there are” and “in order to.”  Be specific: Use concrete language such as numbers and names. Avoid vague modifiers like “effortlessly.” Avoid tacking on phrases that add ambiguity, such as “with that in mind.” (What does “that” refer to?)  Be positive: Research in mnemonics has shown that information stated in a positive way is easier for the receiver/reader to remember than information stated in a negative way. In online content, negative words and phrases are easy to miss and misunderstand. If you let clarity drive your communications effort, the other CARS elements become easier to manage. Accuracy Gives You Traction The next element of effective communication, accuracy, is your project’s trust-builder. And it gives you the traction to lead. When your project team members trust what you say, they feel confident in their collective goals. My colleagues at Content Science recently reported this connection between accuracy and goal-completion: “People who perceive content as accurate are five times as likely to report completing their goals as people who do not and are twice as likely to report completing their goals as people who are not sure of the accuracy.” To help you judge the accuracy of your communications, I have developed the following checklist: Is it factually correct?Re-read your communication with the possibility of someone mis-reading it in mind. Is anything distorted, poorly stated, or incomplete?  Is it current?Outdated facts, concepts, and illustrations can confuse a team member or possibly steer them in the wrong direction. Keep important communications up-to-date, especially those that serve as inputs to other team members’ work.  Is it fair?Sincerely recognize the contributions of others in your communications. Give credit where credit is due, but avoid the appearance of partiality or insincerity. Show your team spirit and pride while also being respectful of others’ time and effort.  Does it meet expectations?Above all, your communications should be believable. Don’t glow when it ain’t so, I like to say. Additionally, ensure that the format, location, and cadence of your communications are consistent so that your recipients know what to expect.  Have you tested it?If you are using a new tool or technology for your communications – or using a familiar tool/technology with a new audience – ensure that it works well for everyone. Don’t assume they can figure it out on their own. Trust can make or break a project. So make sure your communications build that trust through accuracy and consistency. Relevancy Steers the Way Relevant communications are useful, focused communications. They contain all of the necessary details for the audience for which they are intended – with no distractions. A study conducted by my friends at Content Science indicated that folks who complained about a lack of relevancy and usefulness in content most often found that the content was too basic, general or vague. Here are some tips to avoid those traps: Above all, know your audience: Select the mode of communication and level of detail that matches your intended audience’s need – including their time constraints. Choose words they know and understand. Don’t “hide” or soft-pedal details. Don’t insult anyone’s intelligence.   Stick to one purpose: Focus each communication on a single goal. Then build out only the content needed to achieve that goal with its intended audience. Use your delete button liberally.  Provide limited context: Include one or two sentences about the context of what you are communicating. For example, if the data is preliminary, say so. Include dates and names, including the name of the project. No need to write an entire background story, but ensure your communication is distinct from the dozens of others that your audience is receiving.  Put the ask first: Above all else, indicate what action you expect the audience to take regarding the communication – and in what timeframe. Put that ask in the subject line of an email and in a distinctive location in all relevant communications. Don’t assume that team members know what to do or what you expect based simply on a data point that you passed along.  Point to additional resources: If your intended audiences might include new team members or others who like to research the details, add links or pointers to places where those details reside. Again, no need to clutter the communication with details that not everyone needs. If nothing else works, spell out directly why a communication is relevant to the intended audience. Write, for example, “the following budget changes mean X, Y, and Z.” Scannability Gets You Home According content guru Sarah Richards, your communication has just 3 seconds to capture and hold someone’s attention. We live in a world of distractions and content-overload. Make sure your communications stand out. For your communications to stand out – and accomplish their intended purpose – they must be easy to skim. At least 75% of our audiences these days are “skim readers.” Here are some tips on how to write for them: Use headings and subheadings: Unrelenting blocks of text are not only intimidating but hard on our eyes. Break them up with simple headings and subheadings. Make each heading distinct.  Use short paragraphs: Most project communications are not scientific papers. Keep your paragraphs to two or three sentences. One-sentence paragraphs are fine.  Include lists: Bulleted and numbered lists are easy to read. Include them whenever possible. Ensure that each list item is short and fits logically with its companions.  Include tables and graphics: Some data and instructions are easier for your audience to grasp if you provide a visual. To capture complex relationships, pull the content into a table. Ensure that table columns and rows are clearly labeled and the table has a title. Answer a “where?” or “how?” question by including a graphic or set of graphics. For example, show your audience where a website tab is with a screen shot and a big red arrow. Be sure to include some text for context. CARS Apply to Gantts and Other Tools Most of these points still apply when we use our favorite project-related tools. If you track progress through a Gantt chart, zero in on only the relevant section of the chart that applies to your current audience. Be clear and accurate about what that section represents and what actions you expect next. If you show status with a high-level stoplight chart, which in itself is very scannable, be prepared to provide context and clarity about what those statuses mean. Ensure the relevant details are accessible for those who seek them. If you manage collaboration and status requests through Slack channels, my first instinct is to wish you good luck. But even as you Slack away, ensure that each post is relevant to the selected channel, has a clear purpose that adds to the discussion, and considers the participants needs. As tempting as it might be, don’t add a status chart to a channel where folks are posting funny GIFs to let off steam. Finally, remember, above all else, to be consistent with your communications. Be consistent with the cadence of your communications as well as with their quality. Remember, maintenance of anything, including CARS, must be done consistently to be effective. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Debra Kahn, PMP, is a content solutions consultant with over 20 years of experience. Currently the CEO of DK Consulting of Colorado, Debra has enjoyed successes in a variety of roles within the high tech industry, including as a content strategist, technical writer and editor, and program manager. You can read more of her blog posts at https://dkconsultingcolorado.com/.The DNA of a business transformation project is contained in the work breakdown structure or WBS. As a project leader, you need a clear understanding of the project goals, business requirements, and the work required to achieve those. The WBS is key for documenting these work requirements. The information stored in a single seed is massive, containing data on how the plant grows, when it flowers, what fruit to produce and how to survive in differing climates. This data determines the size, color and flavor of the fruit and the form of the plant’s roots, stems, and leaves. The volume of information in a single seed is truly a miracle in nature that directs the entire lifecycle of the plant. Similarly, the DNA of a business transformation project is contained in the work breakdown structure or WBS. As a project leader, you need a clear understanding of the project goals, business requirements, and the work required to achieve those. The WBS is key for documenting these work requirements. The PMBOK defines the WBS as “a deliverable-oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables.” An amazing part of being a project leader is our opportunity to participate in the creation of business transformation. We take on the role of documenting the DNA information that is needed to design, develop, implement and sustain the entire lifecycle of the business change. Engage Sponsors, Stakeholders, Team Members The genesis of the WBS is the project charter, which describes the goals, deliverables and performance measures required for a successful transformation from the perspective of your sponsor and your stakeholders. In fact, the WBS should be the first project deliverable and should contain, at its top level, 100% of the project scope that is stated in the project charter.  Sometimes called the 100% rule, all project work should be part of the WBS, and anything outside of the WBS should not be worked on within the project.  A great approach for fully capturing work required in a WBS is to engage your project team and stakeholders in workshops and to iteratively work through the structure until you are confident that nearly 100% of the work has been identified. I’ll be honest that I’m not the best project manager at diligently capturing all the required work for my project in an independent hierarchical structure. Often, I launch right into the Microsoft Project tool and start documenting tasks and sub-tasks. However, there is tremendous value in creating a WBS, not just in using a hierarchical form but most importantly in the execution of that iterative discovery process. Develop Appropriate Detail So, how much detail is enough for a work breakdown structure?  Let’s use another key definition from the PMBOK: “A work package is a deliverable at the lowest level of the WBS.” The objective of the iterative discovery process, is to break down work to a level that you can: Describe the specific task required and what ‘done’ looks like Identify a specific owner for the task Estimate the effort required to finish the task Understand when the task needs to start and finish Identify upstream and downstream dependencies for the task Estimate the total cost for the task It’s important to have adequate detail in the WBS so that the task information can provide a foundation that can be leveraged throughout the project lifecycle. Use Information from the WBS The WBS supports three foundational components of the business project plan, specifically a description of 100% of the project scope, a description of the specific project deliverables, and finally, the data required to create a project schedule. Once created, these project plan components are used to successfully manage the project, including: Managing the project scope and knowing if changes to scope need to be requested Understanding the critical path of work and opportunities to accelerate completion Tracking the status and quality of project deliverables Monitoring the timeliness of the project and its progress to completion If you do a good job at documenting and leveraging information in the WBS, you can expect to lead a successful business transformation without needing a miracle at the end! Just as the information contained in the DNA of a seed ensures that a plant will grow correctly and survive over time; having a cohesive and comprehensive WBS will ensure that your business transformation is effective and sustainable.  Additional Resources If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also enjoy reading Annette's guidance on Accelerating Value in your project. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a business transformation coach focused on creating more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and mentor project teams to be successful. Her blog and newsletter share transformation tips, resources, and best practices.  If you want to become an authority in your industry and become the go-to resource for your area of expertise, you can’t just do good work. You have to make sure you have a record of your knowledge somewhere online, especially if you want more than your immediate coworkers to know you are a great resource.Many people still don’t put much weight on being active on social media, especially if they are not trying to market themselves or a business. Social proof is more important than ever today, especially when someone has questions or wants to know who is the expert in a topic or area of interest. We all turn to the internet for answers. Are you the one people turn to? IS your knowledge and expertise findable when people are searching? Build a Record Online Recently, I met with an investor who wanted to help us scale our business, and the first thing I did was “Google him.” Nothing came up. No LinkedIn profile, no articles on past projects he had worked on. Nothing. This shot up all kinds of red flags for me.  If you want to become an authority in your industry and become the go-to resource for your area of expertise, you can’t just do good work. You have to make sure you have a record of your knowledge somewhere online, especially if you want more than your immediate coworkers to know you are a great resource.  Here are 5 steps to build authority: Be a lifelong learner in your area of expertise. Are you reading all you can find on your topic? Do you subscribe to podcasts in this area? Commit to learning more than the average person in your space, and others will want to learn from you. Talk about what you are learning. Many fear sharing on social media because they are not yet an expert or perhaps they just fear others saying they are not an expert. Don’t let “imposter syndrome” stop you from talking about a topic you are passionate about or a topic you are diving into. You don’t have to be an expert to share what you are learning. You can share on panels you volunteer to participate in or on platforms like Clubhouse or Spaces (Twitter’s version of Clubhouse). You can talk about what you are learning on a podcast you start or simply as a guest on someone else’s podcast.   Connect with others interested in this area. Get on social media and search for people using hashtags in your area of interest. Find the authors of books on your topics and connect with them, telling them you are interested in learning more about this topic; perhaps you can even interview him or her.    Write about this topic. Can you write a whitepaper or start a blog to highlight your knowledge and expertise? If you feel a blog is just too formal, keep in mind the word BLOG is short for WEB LOG, and if you use it as a space to log your progress and findings, you may not feel so intimidated to begin.Through your LinkedIn profile, share about projects you are involved in. There are sections for you to feature projects, articles, and more. Be sure to update your profile often. While you are there on your LinkedIn profile, why not post an article? (From the Home tab, go to the Post area and select Article.) The Article feature will allow you to post blog-style pieces of content. Many use this feature instead of starting a blog somewhere else.    Be consistent. One post or article does not make you an authority in an area. Show up regularly on your favorite social channels to share something about your expertise. You can also share something from others creating content in this area and add a comment or an opinion to it. Don’t be afraid to voice an opinion that is different from other experts in the field. People have all kinds of opinions, so you are sure to find someone who feels the same way, and as long as you are being respectful, you can always disagree.  Where to Start So where do you begin? Do a Google search today on your topic. Subscribe to a few blogs, and connect with a few people creating lots of content in your area of interest. Make a list of hashtags you see on the posts you read, if any. After a few days of doing this, you will feel the urge to start chiming in and joining the conversations. Before you know it, others will be finding and following you! Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Gina Schreck has been in the content marketing space for over 15 years and has been ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 24 people to follow in the B2B Marketing Space. Gina owns a digital marketing agency, SocialKNX, as well as several coworking spaces for entrepreneurs in the Denver area. She is also the author of Social Media Doesn’t Work… unless you do! Gina is a long-time support of PMI Mile Hi Chapter and has spoken at PMI events.When working with others, it’s important to find ways to relate on a human level, to provide some comfort and add some cheer.  It may seem like the wrong focus to some, but in my experience, it actually facilitates collaboration and productivity.In the spirit of sharing project management techniques, I’d like to share a lesson learned from a job I had many years ago during a summer break from college… Experimenting with Cheer I had the fortunate opportunity to be a glorious collections agent, responsible for calling up past due accounts and obtaining details on payments for outstanding accounts. After days of struggling with the drudgery of my daily tasks, I did an experiment. I called 10 accounts and was very direct, getting right to the point in requesting that they provide remittance details. On the next 10 accounts, I started the call with some chit-chat asking about the weather, how his/her day was, and then asked for remittance details. I knew that the people on the other end didn’t like their jobs any more than I did, so why not add some cheer to the calls and see how that worked? Do you know which calls were not only more enjoyable but more productive, too? The ones where we had some fun chatting with each other, talking about the weather, commiserating about our mundane jobs, or discussing what we were going to eat for lunch that day before we discussed payment information. Not only did I enjoy those calls more, as did my counterparts, but they were more productive. The first set of calls resulted in most of them saying that they didn’t have any information for me and would call be back, but never did. Applying the Lesson Learned I’ve carried that lesson with me to this day. When working with others, it’s important to find ways to relate on a human level, to provide some comfort and add some cheer. It may seem like the wrong focus to some, but in my experience, it actually facilitates collaboration and productivity. Here are some Interpersonal and team skills, along with some communications techniques, I’ve learned along the way that have helped me to engage stakeholders so that we accomplish great things together: Be Amicable: Allow time to get to know people and start meetings with some general conversations. Give them a break from the meeting they just came from. Let them settle in and take a breath before moving right into the tasks at hand.  Meet Sooner: Communicate early on even if you only have partial information. Sometimes, it helps to provide a little bit up front, instead of waiting until you have everything at a later time. The earlier in the process you can communicate with key stakeholders, the easier it will be for them to feel comfortable with the approach of the project and align with the goals outlined. Review Roles: Provide clear details on what role each plays. Discuss what each will provide and contribute so that everyone understands what he/she is accountable for or needs to deliver, test, or review. When discussing an agile approach, help stakeholders understand that the process will be iterative with more frequent touch-points, which allows opportunities to try things out and then make changes later on if needed. Provide Visuals: Provide something simple to look at as you discuss the approach or scope of what you will work on first. A picture truly is worth a thousand words and can help provide a starting point to inspire questions. I like to use roadmaps or basic diagrams in a PowerPoint slide to show the high-level milestones or the short processes that might be repeated inside the high-level milestones. Think Ahead: Ask stakeholders for any upcoming events/projects that might take up their time or conflict with the timing of other deliverables. Allow them to plan out for backup resources if needed. For example, for a larger project I was a part of, we knew that we were going to need several weeks of the summer months for user acceptance testing. So we communicated that fact months ahead and made sure that the business partners knew the level of commitment and number of resources needed. The stakeholders appreciated that communication, and there were no issues or delays when the testing window came and went. Be Humble: You might not know everything (hard to believe, right?). You also won’t have all the ideas, and you don’t have to. You are working with a team and everyone provides his/her own unique value to the team and project. Be humble. Admit your mistakes. Ask for their input. “What have I missed?” Reach Out: Sometimes checking in with a stakeholder face-to-face is just the thing that helps to bridge some gaps. Don’t assume no news is good news. Being proactive and keeping in touch can help prevent issues that might become roadblocks to progress and delay future iterations. Be Understanding: Put yourself in their shoes. Not everyone works at the same pace, grasps concepts at the same rate, or has the same comfort levels. Try to put yourself in their shoes to understand where they are coming from. For example, I was once involved in a small project that we couldn’t get over the finish line. There seemed to be a recurring hesitation when it was time to go live. The deliverable had either too many words or not enough. It was reviewed and reviewed and edited and discussed several times. In the end, speaking with the stakeholder and providing some reassurance that it was okay to go live and then update later seemed to be just the boost they needed to go live. And we did. Add Cheer: Bring some treats to a meeting; highlight the great accomplishments from the last week; set up a coffee talk meeting; ask for restaurant recommendations; or share a quick tip you might have just learned. And for the record, I know there are cases that no matter how many techniques you try, some stakeholders require a little less comfort and cheer. That’s for another blog post. :) Now, what did I miss? Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Jennifer Walsh, PMP, CSM, is an IT and Enterprise Applications leader in the Denver area. She volunteers with the Military Outreach program for PMI Mile Hi Chapter.These days, having a job or having fun in retirement isn’t enough. People are searching for more purpose in their lives. Volunteering provides purpose. It has many other benefits, too. We’re all busy. With work, families, and life in general, you might feel like every minute is accounted for. But volunteering offers so many benefits that you want to make some time to do it. Good news. As a project manager, you know a thing or two about fitting more into a schedule! Help Others When people hear “volunteering,” they usually think about helping others or giving back. That is volunteering’s primary purpose, whether you deliver aid during disasters; lend a hand at a botanic garden, zoo, food bank, hospital, or church; mentor colleagues; teach underprivileged youth; or ply your trade for a non-profit’s endeavours. Lots of people need help, and the organizations that help them need help, too. These days, having a job or having fun in retirement isn’t enough. People are searching for more purpose in their lives. Volunteering provides purpose. Build Your Network/Social Circle Networking is a big part of growing your career. People in your network can help you identify solutions, land your dream job in your current company, or hear about your next job somewhere else. To my fellow introverts, don’t panic. Networking doesn’t have to be schmoozing with people you don’t know or pitching higher-ups for your next promotion. When you volunteer, you meet like-minded people, which makes conversations and relationships easier to start. At the same time, the people you meet are often a diverse bunch. You never know what these relationships can lead to. (Volunteering is also a great way to grow your social circle when your lifestyle doesn’t provide much chance of meeting people – for example, if you live up on a mountain like I do.) Learn about Opportunities There’s something about helping others that seems to bring opportunities to you. Those opportunities may come from unexpected sources and fortuitous coincidences because of your diverse, far-ranging network. That means, you don’t have to promote yourself (or can promote yourself less). For example, one day, you could be chatting with a fellow volunteer at a food bank about the work you do. A couple months later, that person could tell you that her company is looking for a project manager. Gain Project Management Experience I have authored project management courses in the LinkedIn Learning library, so a lot of people ask me how to get project management experience when companies want PMP-certified project managers. One of my tips: volunteer to manage projects. You don’t just walk in and say “Hey, I’m here to manage projects.” When you volunteer at an organization, you learn their objectives and spot their pain points. If you have a good idea for increasing their success or making things run more smoothly, talk to them about it. If they like the idea, offer to be the project manager who makes it happen. Chances are, you’ll get the assignment and the experience – which you can use when applying for a PMP certification or for your next job. Expand Your Project Management Circle If you’re a project manager or program manager -- or want to become one -- volunteering with an organization like PMI offers all of these benefits in one place. You will be helping others in their project management journey. You will meet fellow project managers, who could become knowledgeable resources or mentors. You also will meet other volunteers within the organization. These connections can be a treasure trove for project management opportunities. And you will learn so much more about project management: not only from attending meetings and conferences, but also by solidifying your knowledge by teaching others. Here are links to volunteer opportunities with PMI and the PMI Mile-Hi chapter: https://www.pmi.org/membership/volunteer https://pmimilehi.org/volunteer My Volunteering Story Everything I do today – work and play – stems from volunteer work I did decades ago. I volunteered for an organization that taught people how to invest. In 1998, I was self-employed and didn’t have much work due to the tech crash. I was teaching investment classes with training materials that weren’t very good. So I spent five weeks rewriting the materials, explaining topics simply, and aligning the PowerPoint presentation to the handouts. In 1999, a friend and former co-worker told me about an opportunity to write a Complete Idiot’s Guide about online personal finance and investing. When I spoke to the publisher, they wanted to see an example of my writing on that subject. I handed over my training materials and got the contract to write the book. That book contract led to more than 34 published books, hundreds of articles, 60-plus courses in the LinkedIn Learning library, dozens of consulting gigs, and the ability to take time off to have fun and travel. About the Author: Bonnie Biafore In addition to training courses and books, I offer project management tips and education through several online sources: my blog (http://www.bonniebiafore.com/blog/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonniebiafore/), weekly newsletter (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/bonnie-s-project-pointers-6767151075767197696/), and LinkedIn Learning (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/bonnie-biafore). Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter!  In this post, J. Deckert organizes information about and links to quality sources so that project managers and project-oriented people can quickly get up to speed on OKRs and either lead or skillfully participate in their organizations’ OKR practices.The OKR framework has been around for a long time, but it continues to gain popularity and is particularly relevant in today's evolving enterprise environment. The simplicity and scalability of the method makes it useful to organizations of all sizes. The built-in flexibility gives it staying power as companies grow and focuses shift. This research primer will not fully describe the details of the framework. That work has been done in many formats already. Instead, I organize the information and link to quality sources so that project managers and project-oriented people can quickly get up to speed on OKRs and either lead or skillfully participate in their organizations’ OKR practices. The Basics The OKR Framework is a combination of goal-setting exercises and execution discipline. You can't have one without the other, and the closer they work together, the less friction and redundant work you will have to suffer through. For learning the basics, you can't beat the whatmatters.com OKR 101 course. It includes definitions for Objectives, Key Results, and plenty of great explanations and examples. The Books There are plenty of books, manuals, and worksheets available to help understand OKRs. The two I list here are both comprehensive and useful but focus on two different scales: enterprise and small business. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs  This is the big one. A history of how OKRs were brought to Google by the man who did it. John Doerr describes his history with OKRs, the Google story, and how other large enterprises use the framework. Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results  This one is more easily digestible. In the 'business parable' tradition of Goldratt's The Goal or Gene Kim's The Phoenix Project, Christina Wodtke frames a fictional story about a small but growing company learning how to execute using an OKR Framework. How Do OKRs and Projects Intersect? OKR is a fantastic framework for setting goals, and Project Management systems are fantastic tools for getting work done. When they’re combined you have a complete system for managing and measuring all the work you do, from strategy to execution to success. ~ How OKR and project management work together (blog post by Rob Davies, Head of Marketing, Perdoo)   A successful interface between an OKR framework and a project management framework hinges on two major activities: project selection and effective progress reporting. Project Selection The biggest impact structured OKRs can have on your project environment is helping you select which projects to execute and which to decline or cancel. The average organization has more proposed projects than it has staff or budget to execute. Without a clear organizational principle, project selection can turn into a muddy political process with poorly formed outputs. Clear OKRs can help teams buy in to the project selection process and results. Everyone can see why selections were made and which outcomes are most important. Effective Progress Reporting When a project is aligned with an OKR, live and honest communication around progress is critical. Some organizations have a culture of 'Green = Good,' which encourages project teams to report green status on their projects even if they see risks, optimistically hoping that they will be able to recover later. The OKR framework supports communicating current reality against a measurable objective. Following this principle will help teams pull together to help meet a goal. If you mask delays and risks behind green status early, trying to recover when it's too late will be unnecessarily difficult. The OKR Cycle Goals themselves, no matter how well constructed, are only one piece of the system. The other major component is the schedule. How a given organization sets up its schedule is up to its leadership, but common components show up in the regular business cadence for most organizations. Annual - The annual cycle for OKR planning should line up with other annual planning cycles. Strategic planning, financial planning, and formal goal-setting all need to follow each other in a logical sequence that strikes a balance between not-too-rushed and not-too-slow. Quarterly - Let's go right to the source for a clean quarterly schedule example. Whatmatters.com includes a great diagram and simple components of the annual and quarterly Typical OKR Cycle. Monthly - Activities called out on the quarterly cycle take priority during monthly and weekly OKR meetings. Otherwise, months one and two of a quarterly cycle should include objective check-ins during which the chance to complete is assessed and decisions are made to continue, adjust, or otherwise recalibrate each item. Weekly - A typical Monday includes a team meeting during which progress is assessed, specific goals are set, and cross-team collaboration is worked out. Many organizations do a ‘Celebrate the Wins’ wrap-up on Friday that is focused only on accomplishments and success. Pro Tip for Project Mangers – If at any time you find yourself and your team inundated with meetings for different efforts or under different frameworks (for example, Scrum, standups, and check-ins), start to combine the functions of different meetings and collapse the number of recurring calls. Everyone will thank you. In Summary This Research Primer should help enable anyone interested in OKRs and project management to participate in an OKR effort. Contact me on LinkedIn if you have any questions or would like to share how OKRs interact with your project environment. Also, please join me at the free PMI Mile Hi Oct. 27, 2021, Regis South Roundtable to dig deep into how the OKR framework intersects project management. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author J. Deckert manages a consulting team specializing in complex, multi-party projects and platform implementations. He partners with businesses to develop collaborative working practices, plan strategically, and simplify then systematize processes. A PMP since 2011, J. focuses on bridging the gap between enterprise level strategic planning and ‘boots on the ground’ project management. How can you innovate, create urgency, and encourage rapid learning to Accelerate Value in your project today? Review these tips from Annette Leazer.  The Covid-19 Pandemic accelerated transformation for many organizations and provided an example of how companies can respond quickly to identify and change what is needed for their business to survive. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it, "We’ve seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months."  Observing company actions, we see how the best transformations have been driven by a focus on Accelerating Value. Companies that made targeted improvements and communicated well the “what, why, and how” of transformation to their employees were the most successful in implementing effective change during this pandemic. These tips for Accelerating Value can be applied to your project. Focus Innovation on “What Matters” The first and most important concept of Accelerating Value is understanding what is important and focusing on what makes a difference. Whether your project is delivering a product to customers or making a substantial improvement to an internal process or system, the concept is the same. Don’t try to Accelerate Value in every aspect of your project; focus on what makes a difference!  I’ve posted to my website an interview with Denny Georg on Accelerating Value. Denny’s experience as a Vice President and General Manager at Hewlett Packard, delivering technology solutions to customers, provides great insight. In that interview, Denny notes “In general, Accelerating Value requires a strong focus on delivering a product or project that will make a difference for the customer who is buying the product. Delivering more, whether in a single project or the complex integration of multiple projects, starts with an understanding of the marketspace, technology evolution, development, and delivery capacity, and most importantly where choices make a difference in the final product.”  These concepts can be applied to any project.   It's important to understand the choices in your project that will really make a difference to your customers, employees and the bottom line for your business.  If you are looking for some ideas on how to do this, review my blog Focus Innovation on What Matters and Bold Transformation with tips on anticipating important innovation trends, setting specific goals, evaluating solutions and defining a customer focused roadmap.  Create Urgency Around “Why” It would be an understatement to say that the pandemic created a sense of urgency around company transformation. To be successful in Accelerating Value, the organization needs to align around critical deliverables, understand why those deliverables are important, and have a sense of urgency in executing those. With substantial company initiatives, the communication and sense of urgency around “why” a strategic initiative is important must be driven from the top.  As a project leader, however, you have an important role in creating the project structure and team mindset for successful acceleration. Make sure your team understands the “why,” knows the most critical project deliverables that align to the strategic initiative, have clarity on their responsibilities, and have a personal sense of urgency. Some good ideas for driving this with your team: Post your project priorities in a visible place and have those priorities posted in rank order. Establish a decision-making forum and process that uses the rank-order list when making tradeoffs between important deliverables. Create a networked cross functional team with the expertise, skills, and mandate to drive key project deliverables and value.  This whitepaper on Business Agility from Scaled Agile might also be interesting for you.   Connect people’s personal success to the strategy by aligning each team member’s responsibilities back to the list of priorities.  Speak to your team member’s hearts as well as their heads. Help them see their role as change leaders that can make a meaningful contribution. Encourage and reward the team for their energy, enthusiasm, and passion.  If you are facing organization apathy or resistance, continue to engage leadership for better alignment and communication. However, don’t get so caught up in getting everyone on board that you get nothing accomplished.  Start with areas that your team can make a difference. Delivering visible, meaningful value will ultimately be rewarded in an organization that has good leadership.  Encourage Rapid Learning The importance of responding to new information has been another key transformational concept during the pandemic. When a situation is evolving and new information is constantly coming in, the team needs to be flexible to better Accelerate Value. In my discussion with Denny Georg, we talked about the importance of rapid learning. “This requires a commitment to being, as a leader and a team, hard on the challenges and open to discussion. Change in the execution of complex programs is a reality.  Making changes quickly in the light of new information leads to better outcomes.  Being the most aggressive at learning has the benefit of leading to better execution, better projects outcomes, and in most cases, more competitive products.” As a project leader, you can use several techniques to apply this concept of rapid learning to your projects. Encourage your team to be aggressive in gathering new information and learning. Bring new information to the team in ways that make it easy to understand and absorb.   Make your thought process visible to your team and others in the organization. Use project forums to openly discuss new information and ideas.  Engage the team in decision-making. Share information with the team on resource and schedule assumptions, so they can be more open to change and effective in participating on decision-making about alternatives, tradeoffs, and the impact of those to your priorities.  Stay focused on delivering the greatest value possible in those selected areas of your project.  The pandemic has been a time of transformational change for many people and organizations. We should leverage what we’ve learned during this challenging time to Accelerate Value in our projects.  Some ways for doing this are to focus on what makes a difference, create a team mindset and passion for accelerating value, and encourage rapid learning within the team. Additional Resources If you enjoyed this blog post, you might also enjoy the Project Implementation Tips that Annette provided in an earlier blog post. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a business transformation coach working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and she mentors project teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources, and leading practices as a PM mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog. Laurie Haberthier, past President of the PMI Mile Hi chapter, passed away April 20, 2021. Several chapter members have posted their memories of Laurie on this Tribute Page, and you are welcome to send your thoughts to outreach@pmimilehi.org for posting.  We also encourage you to send a message to Laurie’s family through In Memoriam’s tribute wall and Legacy.com Memories & Condolences. Laurie Haberthier, past President of the PMI Mile Hi chapter, passed away April 20, 2021. She served on the chapter Board from 2011 to 2017, providing leadership as Vice President of Professional Development for 3 years and as President for 4 years. She had been an active chapter volunteer and leader since her PMP certification in 2004.     Laurie was a strong leader, authentic, clear-minded, passionate, funny, nurturing, and devoted to her family. Along with other long-time volunteers and Board members, Laurie exemplified the “soul” of the Mile Hi Chapter for the past 15+ years. She touched many lives as a volunteer, colleague, and friend. Several chapter members have posted their memories of Laurie on this Tribute Page, and you are welcome to send your thoughts to outreach@pmimilehi.org for posting.  We also encourage you to send a message to Laurie’s family through In Memoriam’s tribute wall and Legacy.com Memories & Condolences. NOTE:  PMI Mile Hi Chapter has donated a grove of trees in Laurie's honor. The family received information about this donation in a condolences note. Laurie’s Chapter Accomplishments Laurie’s contributions to the PMI community and our chapter were immeasurable. Below is a list of some of her accomplishments. PMP Course instructor, from 2008 – 2018 Team Member for Mile Hi Chapter of the Year Award. The chapter received global visibility as a premier organization for PMI. Laurie was part of the team that applied for, and won, global chapter of the year and several other international awards. Chapter Lead for the Global 2008 Host City Project. Laurie initiated and managed the partnership between PMI Global Operations Center (GOC) and PMI Mile Hi chapter. Our chapter hosted nearly 5000 convention attendees at the North American Global Congress, Academic Forum, and the Leadership Institute Meeting (LIM) in Denver. Laurie’s leadership not only created a spotlight on the Denver PM community but also served as a golden example for other chapters partnering with GOC on future conventions. Chapter Board member from 2011-2017 as Vice President of Professional Development and Chapter President. Her achievements include the following: Drove initiative to hire external resources for Administrative, Operational, and Finance Transaction support to free up board resources and to focus on program development and outreach. Drove initiative to build and license a chapter website service supporting overseas chapters and smaller US chapters. Championed the chapter’s Annual Rocky Mountain Project Management Symposium, one of the premier PMI events, consistently drawing up to 1500 attendees every year. As Chapter President, hosted the Region 6 Annual Meeting in 2014. This unique event established a new event benchmark for regional PMI meetings, thanks to Laurie’s leadership. Based at the Brown Palace Hotel, the meeting featured high-energy professional keynote speakers and a professional MC. Attendees enjoyed free books and socializing at several venues across Denver, experiencing all the city has to offer. Laurie was a consummate PM professional, dedicating herself to expanding the profession through chapter engagement. She mentored and supported chapter members, making friends with them at their first chapter meeting, encouraging them to pass the PMP exam, and growing them from a volunteer to a board member. She was active with the Global PMI community, presenting at several PMI conferences, LIM, Region 6, and chapter meetings--giving back to others by sharing her wisdom and insight. Chapter Member Memories The following are personal tributes from PMI Mile Hi chapter members. Eric Johnson: I met Laurie sometime in 2005 or 2006, but I didn't really 'know' her until after the inaugural PMI Mile Hi Leadership class in 2007. I believe that Laurie and Chuck had the vision to pull the instructor for the PMI Global Leadership class (Jerry Brightman) and pair him with another chapter member (and former PMI Global Leadership class alumnus), Nathaniel 'Q' Quintana, to deliver the same material to a chapter audience. It was a one-year journey that deeply affected every participant. I think all of us were changed by our time together, and a group of us continued to meet on a monthly basis for coffee at The Market until the COVID-19 pandemic stopped that type of get-together. The Saturday Leadership Fellowship Coffee was a place where many ideas were shared, advice given and received, and plans made. The Saturday coffee sessions will hopefully return as the world returns to this sort of thing, but it won't be the same without Laurie sitting around the wobbly cafe tables and laughing.  Laurie was a funny, nurturing, and vital presence in the chapter whose love and contributions will be felt through the chapter and its members for many years to come. She cared about people and doing what was right, no matter what was required. Hard work or the threat of a possible dust-up were not discouraging but part of any project that was worth delivering on-time, on-budget, and with heart. Laurie liked to play volleyball, and her family could often be found in the park on weekends spiking the day away. She loved her two sons and her husband, Dave. She enjoyed gardening and flowers. She did not like buttermilk--but she could be convinced to take a sip for a friend. She was a great friend, and I will miss Laurie's distinctive laugh and big smile at chapter events. I trust that she will keep a kind and helpful eye on us all as we do our best to live up to the example she set.  Chuck Tate: I had the opportunity to work with Laurie while I was on the Board and directly on a daily basis for the past 4+ years. Laurie was passionate about project management and was a Director of the Project Management Office for Fiserv, specializing in the Government services product line. She loved participating in trivia nights and performed quite well with her family and friends.  She loved going 4-wheeling and had just recently sold her customized Jeep. She loved gardening and southwestern art.  Annette Leazer: I served with Laurie on the Mile Hi Board from 2012-2016 and appreciated her leadership and candor.  You never needed to wonder what Laurie thought because she would let you know, and you could usually see what she thought on her face. I loved that and her quick smile and laugh! I admired Laurie’s passion for project management and especially for the chapter. She expected the best from her team and was willing to work for excellence, whether on new chapter bylaws, policies, educational events, or the Symposium. She wanted PMI Mile Hi Chapter to have a positive impact on the local PM community and to be admired by other chapters. I appreciate her contributions to the chapter and will miss her energy, passion, and friendship. Mary Ann Ott: I met Laurie at StorageTek, and she introduced me to her profession and passion of project management. Laurie helped and encouraged me to study for the PMP exam, and that was just the start of her demonstration of her proficiency at her abilities in project management. Laurie introduced me to the Mile Hi chapter and encouraged involvement in all aspects of the chapter’s activities, from strategic planning to the tactical execution of printing materials for classes. Laurie demonstrated her warmth and welcoming attitude in the simplest of manners:  greeting each person by name, preparing the classroom or meeting room ahead of time, and following up with each attendee by soliciting their feedback and ideas for improvement. Laurie exemplified the professional Project Manager. Laurie cared deeply about the PMI Mile Hi chapter and was a strong and devoted leader and friend.    Our deepest sympathy to her family, friends, and colleagues and for the collective loss of our chapter and the project management community.  Laurie will be missed by all. Jorge Glez: Laurie was a strong pillar of the PMI Mile chapter in many different ways. I do not recall where I first met Laurie but it must have been around 2008. I was one of those attending/working the Chapter Meetings Laurie found time to have significant conversations with. I had the pleasure working with her when she was our Vice President of Education supporting the Saturday Workshops. Laurie’s work with our teams was inspirational, informative, friendly and tremendously effective. I also worked with Laurie alternating PMP Cert Prep classes for the Chapter. She was a strong support when either one of the teachers was not available, she jumped in on very short notice to teach any part of our PMP cert courses because she knew every part of those classes. She was in general a great speaker and teacher. On the personal side Laurie supported me uncounted times with suggestions, technical answers, professional tips and tricks, and even with a handover when I took over a project she had worked on. Our PMI Mile Hi careers touched many times in different ways during the last decade and I can easily say that Laurie was a kind, extremely knowledgeable, and very hard worker for the Chapter and the project management profession. Thank you Laurie for all your support. Elizabeth Kraemer: I worked with Laurie at StorageTek on the network connectivity solution and product development team. Laurie was a leader and no-nonsense communicator. We worked hard with internal and external engineering, marketing, finance, manufacture and product development teams together, never lost our fun for doing the hard work. We celebrated every success we fought hard to get at the Buca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant in Broomfield Flatiron Crossing. I remember at one of the PMI Mile High hosted PMI Symposiums where Laurie worked at the registration booth. She saw me with a name tag of Liz Kraemer and yelled at me: “When did you become Liz, you are Elizabeth and always Elizabeth to me.” That’s Laurie’s style. She was assertive and confident on everything she believed. I loved her style because it was her take-charge personality and leadership style, we didn’t miss any important target timeline. Everyone on the team called her “Big Mom”. I will miss Laurie so much. It was a shock to me when I opened my email today and learned the news. Laurie, Big Mom, wish you always smile in Heaven. Are you a woman working in a male-dominated field? If you're in project management, then newsflash, you are! Only 35% of PMs are women. Learn how Emily Cellar's journey to from PM to leadership in IT infrastructure led her to the Golden Rule of Leadership. Are you a woman working in a male-dominated field? If you're in project management, then newsflash, you are! Only 35% of PMs are women. If you're a woman working in technology, then the stats get even worse. Only 20% of tech professionals are women. Looking deeper into tech, you can find that an even more male-dominated field exists: IT infrastructure, for which there are no gender statistics whatsoever. My Start in Project Management I was a project manager for over a decade, managing everything from software development, SOX & PCI, and machine learning to infrastructure. When I worked for a non-profit, I wore many hats, and as the newest PM on the team, I often took on the projects nobody else wanted in infrastructure. It's not a glamorous job by any means! I was not building new tech or generating revenue, and certainly, I was never in the spotlight. People typically define infrastructure roles as the people who "keep the lights on." After years of spinning up new offices, building out server rooms, migrating telephony platforms, and securing data, I realized I found my niche in the realm of technical infrastructure. The catch? I was typically the only female, not just "in the room," but in a server room. By taking the projects nobody else wanted, I discovered the most interesting line of work that truly resonated with me. Previously, as a PM of software development, I maintained a portfolio of roughly 100 projects valued at over $1M, but they were nearly all the same. Day in and day out, I progressed work through stage gates with very little excitement. Redefine IT Infrastructure Work In IT infrastructure, I learned that if you do it right, you never do the same thing twice! Tech and cyber threats are constantly changing, and thus infrastructure is a world of new opportunities to learn, to be challenged, and to grow. Infrastructure is the backbone of every organization, and it keeps the environment secure, robust, consistently available, making it possible for everyone else to do their jobs. As my role evolved, I began to redefine this under-appreciated work. Infrastructure doesn't just keep the lights on; it turns on new ones and illuminates areas of opportunity. Those of us in infrastructure light the organization ablaze with power and security. We make it possible for end-users to access our product. But you don't often see women in this field. As women, we bring a unique skill set to our roles, whatever they may be. Even in infrastructure, I knew I brought this ability to connect people and foster a strong camaraderie. As I led projects, my teams were highly engaged and committed, and not because I had any level of authority as a PM. My project resources completed things on time for the sake of the relationships and the community that I was able to build. We all know that PMI defines a project as a temporary endeavor with a defined scope, deliverables, timeframe, and resources. I believe women can uniquely create a temporary project family that follows through with their commitments and doesn't let any family member down. The Golden Rule of Leadership The Golden Rule tells us to treat others the way you want to be treated. As a people leader committed to building great teams, I practice the Golden Rule of Leadership: treating others the way they want to be treated. The Golden Rule is about me, but the Golden Rule of Leadership is about you. It is others-focused. When you put others' needs above your own, that's true servant leadership. The Golden Rule of Leadership requires leaders to invest time in each individual.  A leader must find out what makes people tick, define their motivational drivers and reinforcers, and learn what makes someone else feel truly appreciated: Some people love public praise, while others want quiet recognition. Some people love a big celebration for a project well done; others might prefer a 1:1 lunch with you. Some people might like a gift card to go out with their own family to celebrate. Some people feel rewarded when you give them work they know by heart, an assignment in which they'll succeed with their eyes closed; others want something new every time. It's the responsibility of the leader to identify what each team member needs, and it's this kind of leadership that drives engagement and happiness in the workplace. Connect with Other Women How many women do you know in infrastructure? When I first got into this field, I knew two, and one of them was me! I had to create my own organization, Women in Technical Infrastructure (WITI), just to find others like me. We're now 400+ strong, blazing a trail in these under-represented roles, helping others find jobs, connecting women to mentors, and well on our way to changing the face of tech. If you're a rare woman in project management at your organization, the best advice I can give you is to connect with other women who do what you do. PMI Mile Hi is a great place to do this! Volunteering with PMI Mile Hi gave me the experience I needed to be seen as a leader in the tech space, even beyond project management. It helped me grow my resume, build my confidence, and show others that I actually knew what I was talking about when it came to technology. If we want more women to stick it out in project management, we have to support each other and cultivate a space where all are welcome, can seek advice, and have the connections they need for personal and professional growth. I was happy to meet so many women leaders on Friday, June 25th, 2021, at Regis University for PMI Mile Hi's annual Women in Project Management Leadership event. It's one of the best ways to meet other women in our field and to find the support system you need for longevity in project management. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Emily Cellar, PMP, CSM, CSPO, MSM, currently volunteers as VP of Technology for PMI Mile Hi. She also volunteers with an organization she founded: Women in IT Infrastructure (WITI). Her career path has been extensive, as she documents in this blog post. She currently works as VP of IT Operations at Angi. Annette Leazer shares some of the best practices that she learned about project implementation through a global payroll project that she led.  These implementation best practices will position you for success!  The most important step in project management is getting your stakeholders aligned on what work is “in scope” and “out of scope” to provide the greatest value to the company.  This effort is foundational for every project, and sets you on the path for a successful implementation. Here are some of the best practices I learned about project implementation through a global payroll project that I led.  Briefly, this business had acquired several small to medium sized companies around the world over a period of several years. The CFO was particularly concerned about the Payroll department because each acquired company had unique payroll processes, systems and personnel in each country. There was considerable risk if key payroll personnel left the company, including inaccurate payroll, poor benefit provisioning, or a failure to meet legal requirements. Any of these could jeopardize the company’s ability to retain essential employees and deliver on customer commitments.  To reduce risk, company leadership decided to select a partner to provide a global payroll solution through technology, a provider network or both. Several global payroll providers and technology solutions were evaluated, and ultimately a SAAS partner with a global network was selected. If you are interested in more detail, read this Global Payroll Transformation Case Study.  Doesn’t the Solution Partner Lead Implementation? I’ve experienced many new solution implementations for Finance, Payroll, and Human Resources departments. Finding a good partner that follows through on their commitments is like finding gold!  The best partners do a great job of getting their solutions up and running; others may not execute so well.  However, even with the best of partners, you need an internal project leader who is going to ensure the solution is successfully integrated into the company’s business environment. This global Payroll SAAS/Provider Network project was no different. While the implementation planning, solution configuration, testing, and release was all led by the partner, the internal project leader drove business process and system integration of the solution across the company.  Understand the Impact of Change The project leader needs to develop a clear understanding of the current state, the future state, impacted organizations, and key changes that can be expected for major business processes and systems. This exercise is critical for understanding what work is required and the key integration points for internal and external partners. For this payroll project, we used a simple Excel worksheet to capture information about the changes and confirm that all the work was incorporated into the plan. This tool helped us identify and address all of the upstream and downstream dependencies with other organizations. By managing these integration points, we optimized the solution configuration and avoided implementation surprises and business interruptions.  See a Change Assessment sample (below Case Study), and contact me if you want the Excel template. Build a Team Capable of Executing One of the greatest challenges with a major system transition is that the teams you have in place today have been hired, trained, and become successful at maintaining the current solution. Often, the processes and systems have been in place for years, or perhaps decades, and team members don’t understand: The underlying data structure The system's data flows The system's processing logic Some individuals on the team will be capable of investigating how the existing system is structured to make configuration decisions in the new solution, while others on the team will not have the skills to do this. Select people for SME lead roles that are capable of this work and are excited about moving to a new solution. Your internal technology teams are also great resources during a transformation. However, in my experience and certainly in this payroll transformation, external experts needed to be hired. We looked for experts who had multiple implementation experiences with this specific payroll solution. These experts brought invaluable knowledge, templates, and tools to guide the team in making the best process, data and configuration decisions. External experts accelerated our implementation. Lead the Change Process One of the most important outcomes of conducting the change assessment is a clear understanding of how this transformation will impact different employee populations. Employees resist and struggle with change when they: Don’t know that change is coming (lack of communication) Are directed incorrectly (outdated online content) Don’t know how to do things differently (insufficient training) Perceive that it's just too confusing (poor user experience, support, FAQs) The internal project leader must drive work in these areas to ensure employees are able to adopt the solution. After building out the change assessment in this payroll project, we assigned a dedicated resource to capture materials from the payroll solution partner and from internal organizations to update the company portal, develop FAQs for employees, create training vignettes, and build out presentation decks. All communication and training efforts leveraged these materials to ensure employees were informed about what they needed to do differently when the solution was released. Hold the Solution Partner Accountable Finally, the internal project leader must understand the solution provider contract and hold them accountable to their commitments to ensure the company gets the quality solution it paid for. If you have a good partner, this part of the job isn’t too difficult.  If you don’t have a good partner, you will spend a lot of time negotiating work, managing rework, and conducting escalations.  Find a good partner! Engaging an internal project leader with a strong project management approach, effective leadership skills, and an understanding of implementation best practices provides your company with the best opportunity for success. No significant transformation effort is executed flawlessly, but we learn from our experience, improve our approach and hopefully share those insights with others along the way.  Did you find this tip helpful?  Subscribe to my Transformation Tips newsletter! Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a business transformation coach working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, structure implementation projects and roadmaps, and she mentors project teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources, and leading practices as a PM mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog. Learn how objectives and key results (OKRs) can position teams for remarkable results. Part 2 of this blog series provides the remaining 4 steps to orchestrating a successful OKR quarterly event. When teams receive prioritized assignments from leadership, their effectiveness improves. To the high-performing team, few scenarios excite them more than having a clear direction and autonomy to act. Part 1 of this blog series describes the benefits of the OKR framework and provides 2 of the 6 steps to successful OKR event orchestration. This blog post starts with Step 3. Step 3: Pre-planning Is the Fulcrum of the Quarterly Event After leadership establishes organizational priorities, project managers can engage teams. Many organizations adopt quarterly OKRs and introduce a planning cadence. This frequency provides time for both planning and executing. Success begins with a pre-ceremony period I have termed "pre-planning." Any work required to help teams prepare for the quarterly planning ceremony falls into this grouping. Having clear goals articulated and understood by senior leadership and teams before the event is crucial. Image created by the author If you believe in the Pareto principle, pre-planning becomes your 20%. Spending a small amount of time on the most important activity will dramatically influence your results. Without preparing the way for your team(s) and key influencers, expect failure. You will need help across the organization before performing the planning event. Areas to concentrate on most include influencers, organizational goals, calendar, and communication. Meet with influencers:Influencers at every level can make or break any change you seek to make. Learn who they are, meet with them, and listen to their concerns. If a positional leader can help, ask for it. For some, helping might be listening to your plan. For others, it might be to get hands-on and co-coordinate the event. Knowing you have their support early on will not only give you confidence but also give you the positional leverage needed to move some less inclined to help. For influencers who are less supportive, you should listen to them too, because they may provide the helpful insight you need to improve preparations. Potentially, you might win them over if you can find common ground. If not, you know the topics to follow-up on with other supportive members or leadership. The goal is to move the team forward and align strategically with the organization. While meeting with influencers, identify who on each team can help you in the orchestration to drive alignment across all participants. Suggestion:  Continue to meet informally with your key influencers because they may have new ideas to help increase buy-in across the organization. Focus on organizational goals:Work diligently to receive goals from both the leadership and teams separately. Team goals and roadmaps may already be published and easier to retrieve. Teams will expect senior leaders to share their goals, too, because most team members have experienced a last-minute change in direction that blows up a great plan. When you are reviewing various perspectives, expect differences. Minor changes can typically be tied up with a discussion and some wordsmithing to align teams. Reconciling material variances might take longer. Allow enough time for decision-makers and team leads to agree on what success looks like. The best collaboration results in clear and achievable key results. Suggestion:  Pay attention to senior leadership communications; if something is changing, bring it to team leadership to ensure planning remains aligned. Calendar:Communicating to meet the needs of the team members is our responsibility so that they can be successful, even if doing so takes more of our time. Develop and publish a calendar of activities; highlight what teams should expect. Use multiple channels, such as team calendar, organizational calendar, e-mail, and collaboration space. The benefit of a public calendar is that it reduces the chances of surprising team members. Leaders with full schedules will appreciate reminders. Their teams will need several hours over several weeks to be fully prepared. Providing them a calendar is a key ingredient to their success. Suggestion:  Identify the event day and work backward. Begin pre-planning at least 6 weeks before the event day. Team Communication:Do more than just provide the dates; describe what the teams should be doing. For example, you might suggest reconciling their current plans to new leadership objectives. This helps by reducing surprises. When team leaders discuss possible changes coming, team members can help avoid serious problems and delays. Encourage team leaders to frame the work they are performing in terms of how they are achieving the objective. Showing the connection between work and leadership priorities can help people feel they are making a difference. Leading up to the event, begin meeting with an individual of each team who will aid in the orchestration activities during the event (typically a team lead, project manager, or scrum master). Suggestion:  Send the same messages through multiple channels on a predictable cadence. Step 4: Planning the Quarterly Event When you have the right people helping and clear objectives, orchestrating the event is simplified. For a 2-day event (in-person or virtual), the way you spend time will be similar, but the logistics are different. Build a pre-event checklist, and walk through the following topics with your key influencers and team leaders. Quarterly planning checklist topics: Propose event dates: Review dates with the leadership and key influencers. Avoid dates around holidays, and if you can, avoid Mondays and Fridays. Identify participants: Ensure decision-makers and key members are all identified. Choose a venue: If virtual, most video conferencing now has break-out rooms if needed to facilitate small group sessions. If in-person, select a location that inspires creativity and has room for an all-hands gathering as well as break-out areas for teams to meet. Publish dates: Do this once dates have been established; publish at least 3 weeks before the event for virtual; provide more advance notice for an in-person event. Duration of the work: These will be full days. Be sensitive to the organizational culture and how teams work together. Remember more time does not equate to more productivity. Send invites: Send out invitations to the 2-day event. Query your influencers to review the list so that you don’t miss key individuals. Solicit content: Ask team leaders what they think should be included that will help teams achieve objectives. Work deliberately to bring the right content to the participants. Every minute is precious. Secure materials: During an in-person event, have all the necessary materials in the room and test the equipment. Organize content: Prioritize content that influences the design or thinking about architecture or solutions to be developed. Develop a survey: Ensure you have a survey ready to go during the last session of day 2 so that feedback is received immediately and can be shared. This list is not comprehensive but is a good start in developing your logistical checklist to be sure everything is in place. The goal here is to create a safe environment for teams to do the work. Ensuring the logistics are well-managed takes the pressure off of team members. They will thank you when they recognize how smooth the event ran because of the thoughtful planning. Step 5: Orchestrating the Event The goal for the morning is to ensure clear articulation of the quarterly objectives and the importance of each contributor. The importance of hearing directly from the organizational leaders cannot be underestimated. Not only does it remove ambiguity, but it also introduces a higher level of accountability to both leaders and their teams. You might even choose to record the session if some key individuals are unable to attend so that they can hear the conversation for themselves. Following the morning session, teams break out. For self-organizing teams, this will be easier, although some guidance may still be required. During pre-planning time, we identified event coordinators on each team. This is when they can shine and use their influence in helping their teams complete the event goals. For organizations requiring more help, additional planning can be performed before the event. Specific sessions, times, topics, and agendas can be developed. If needed, a facilitator can help at the team level to time-box topics and ensure they are successful. What follows is my day 1 agenda with topics and descriptions. Day 1 agenda Image created by the author Day 2 continues with teams continuing to work together--on their terms. Experience shows teams know best how to achieve results. Giving them as much time as possible to do their work is important. A short meeting to align and ask questions starts the day to maintain alignment. After lunch, the teams will be expected to share their outcomes. The summary will include the key results and how they will measure them. They may also identify important milestones that will occur throughout the quarter. These are especially important to senior leaders who want to have a sense of how the team is doing along the way. Having publishable milestones and a way to measure progress demonstrates the team did their job. When a team has developed their plan and mechanism to measure, they are more likely to achieve it. After each team presents how they intend to deliver on the quarterly objectives, you begin evaluating the event. Survey during the presentation time so that results are compiled within 2 hours works best. Then a summary and aggregation of the results can be shared with the teams and leadership right away. See the day 2 agenda below. Day 2 Image created by the author Step 6: Closing and Evaluating the Event Closing the event deserves attention too. It bookends work performed over the past 6–8 weeks leading up to the event. What follows will give you a good start on ending your event on a positive note while maximizing the work teams have accomplished. When done right, this ritual will make the subsequent event easier! Considerations to end the event well: Ask for verbal feedback: Do this throughout the event, but afterward too. As much as you can listen, listen, listen. Conduct a survey or poll: This will provide you with objective data that is sharable with teams and senior leadership. Use the same format each time and now you have a powerful time-series. Establish regular check-ins: Schedule meetings with key team members. Keep your key influencers informed on progress. If you have a tool to reflect how teams are executing, all the better. If not, have each team walk through how they are progressing using the measure they identified during the event. Publish dates: Schedule the next event to aid in team planning. Incorporate lessons learned: Work the findings into the next event. Write it down: Develop asummary and include survey results and share with leadership. Writing this can be a good aid to teach newer members of the team what was accomplished and how the team is working. Send recognition: Reward to those who helped you most. If your firm has a formal way of doing this, use it. If not, an e-mail to them with a cc to their manager can show your appreciation. Highlight what they specifically did that helped. Schedule follow-ups: Meet with teams that need your help. Some will. Share what you learn: Share with other teams and organizations in your firm or even outside if you have an opportunity. We can all get better. Sharing also brings new ideas and partners. Last thoughts: Performing quarterly planning offers many benefits to the organization, including increased focus leading to better results. Teams are energized when they understand how the work they do contribute to the success of the firm. A well-orchestrated quarterly planning session provides the organization a pathway to superior results.   References for this Blog Series Doerr, John E. 2018. Measure What Matters. London: Penguin. Doerr, John E. https://www.whatmatters.com. Niven, Paul R., and Ben Lamorte. 2016. Objectives and Key Results: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs. Hoboken: Wiley. McChesney, Chris, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. 2012. The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Glencoe: Free Press. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Eric Peterson is a creator, coach  and servant leader. He writes about leadership, team building, and community. You can find more about him and his work through his website: Shepherd Leadership (shepherdingheart.com).  Learn how objectives and key results (OKRs) can position teams for remarkable results. Part 1 describes the benefits of the OKR framework and provides 2 of the 6 steps to successful OKR event orchestration. When teams receive prioritized assignments from leadership, their effectiveness improves. To the high-performing team, few scenarios excite them more than having a clear direction and autonomy to act. Part 1: How Do Objectives and Key Results Help? Today Objectives and Key Results (OKR) have become an important tool. Developed by Andy Grove, (of Intel), the framework helps teams across all types of organizations focus on the most important. Selected to align teams to strategic goals, properly defined OKRs answer a very important question. What Is the Work that Matters Most? Teams have the opportunity to achieve more when they focus on the most important. Having fewer priorities brings focus. Along with greater focus comes an increased probability of accomplishing the goal. The key benefit of implementing the OKR framework is understanding work in the context of what brings the most value to the organization. Effectively, it provides a team with a mechanism for evaluating new work. Reducing interruptions and performing fewer low-value tasks allow teams to invest their best energy into high-value activities. The framework is easy to understand and might be what your team(s) need to establish and maintain alignment. It also can complement the Agile framework your organization may already be using. This article explains how to convert organizational goals into achievable quarterly objectives. It also shows a practical method of bringing them to your agile teams. While the approach won’t fit every circumstance, it will help the reader think deeper about the issues they face while using OKRs on a team. Step 1: Identifying Key Contributor Groups Identifying key contributors will inform how best to structure pre-planning activities. For simplicity, there are four groupings; leadership, coordinators, team leaders, and team members. Leadership:Leadership refers to those who possess the authority to set direction and make strategic decisions. These are the people we help to execute the organization’s vision. Sound followership is important to achieve alignment. Our ability to make change relies on how effectively we can deliver results. Think of it this way: Achieving results is what we are paid to do. Coordinator: Coordinators are the integrators. They are skilled with getting work accomplished through their networking and influencing abilities. Nearly anyone can perform this work if they can organize, communicate, and act with integrity. Typically, a project manager or agile leader plays this role. Team Leaders:Team leaders are the positional leaders within each group. If the organization has bureaucracy, they will typically be managers. Teams need them on board and their support. These leaders are responsible for process, procedures, and oversight. All these responsibilities enable the sustainability of the organization. To receive the best effort from these leaders, consider asking senior leadership to send official messages. When they do, their requests are the responsibility of their managers to fulfill. Anyone who believes they are a leader thinks about how they can give teams the credit they deserve for the work they performed yesterday and for the work they intend to do tomorrow. Team members:Team members are the most important group; they are people doing the work. These are the individuals whom the coordinators, leadership, and team leaders are there to serve. Their voice must not be marginalized but amplified by the coordinators. It is the team that will plot the path to success. Step 2: Aligning the Work to Strategic Objectives Strategic objectives typically come from the senior leadership team and may cover up to 5 years. Strategic objectives are statements that indicate what is critical or important in your organizational strategy. ~ Dan Wolf and Brooke Felger Some may call them themes, priorities, or initiatives. The strategic team typically owns the process of developing, publishing, and driving an understanding of them across the organization. The objectives are higher-level groupings that might include categories such as talent development, client relationships, financial management, or process improvements. An example of a strategic objective might be something like the following: “Deliver a remarkable experience to our clients.” Teams within the organization contribute to the success of the objective by defining key results that can be measured. Key results should be focused on what the team has control over and can commit to for the quarter. Examples of areas where a team might find key results include: Higher engagement levels with published content Increased speed of delivery More interactions with a client during the period An increased overall engagement score Defining a key result that can be controlled by the team and objectively measured takes time. Let’s explore “increasing the speed of delivery.” Context:  Assuming a team takes 1 full week to produce and ship a product, a 20% increase in delivery speed translates into cutting out 1 day from the existing process. The tracking system recording when the order is placed (start date) and when it has been shipped (fulfilled) can be measured. In real terms, an order placed on Monday morning would go out the door at the end of the day Thursday versus Friday. Key Result: Increase the speed of delivery by 20% by the end of the quarter. Alternative Key Result 1: Reduce fulfillment time by 20% by the end of the quarter. Alternative Key Result 2: Reduce fulfillment time from 5 business days to 4 business days by the end of the quarter. Objectives Are Not Business as Usual (BAU) Not all important work falls into organizational objectives. This doesn’t mean the work the teams do is not important. On the contrary, BAU makes defining and executing objectives possible. Strategic objectives require more focus outside the BAU, or they won’t be accomplished. Teams have other mechanisms for tracking results for BAU. They are called key performance indicators (KPIs), and most operations groups follow some industry-standard of measure. KPIs can be radiated on a dashboard. Below is an example.  Image created by the author Key Performance Indicator A word about KPIs: KPIs are important because they monitor progress. Many organizations place their KPIs on a dashboard and have control levels with upper and lower bounds. If a KPI materially changes, some action may be required. Find more about orchestration and the final four steps in part 2 of this blog series.   References for this Blog Series Doerr, John E. 2018. Measure What Matters. London: Penguin. Doerr, John E. https://www.whatmatters.com. Niven, Paul R., and Ben Lamorte. 2016. Objectives and Key Results: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs. Hoboken: Wiley. McChesney, Chris, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. 2012. The 4 Disciplines of Execution. Glencoe: Free Press. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Eric Peterson is a creator, coach  and servant leader. He writes about leadership, team building, and community. You can find more about him and his work through his website: Shepherd Leadership (shepherdingheart.com).  The phrase “I’m triple booked during that time" is not a sign of being important. It’s a sign of not managing priorities, not treating your time as your most valuable resource, and not making tough decisions about how to spend your day. Time is a finite resource and you can’t purchase more.  Managing time properly, either for yourself or your project, can help you be more effective and accomplish your goals while working fewer hours. Many professionals make the mistake of working additional hours to accomplish more, but this approach often leads to diminishing returns and burnout. An occasional increase in hours often happens during critical phases of a project. But if you are living tied to your work laptop and/or phone, then you may have a time management issue. Throughout this blog series, each article will introduce one or more guiding principles related to time management. In addition, we will explore some common systems and tools to effectively managing your work. In the last post, we explored a productivity tool called Toodledo and some tips for setting up a to-do list. This post focuses on managing your calendar. I hear all the time: “I’m triple booked during that time." That’s not a sign of being important. It’s a sign of not managing priorities, not treating your time as your most valuable resource, and not making tough decisions about how to spend your day. It’s true, most knowledge workers' schedules are packed. And the more senior you are the more packed it will likely get. But I’m going to tell you a secret. You are not going to attend all of those meetings. Leaving them on your calendar creates clutter and inhibits you from focusing on the key priorities. In addition, the organizers have no idea whether you plan to attend or if they need to reschedule because you are a key attendee. Calendar Clean-up Clean off your work calendar weekly. There are certain days of the week when I have four or five conflicting meetings in a single timeslot. I recommend going through your calendar once a week (I do this on Mondays) and declining the meetings that you won’t be able to attend. I include a note to the organizer so that they know I won’t be attending. If the meeting I am planning to attend is often cancelled, I might keep a second meeting marked as optional, and I let the organizer know I may attend. Next, look at next week’s calendar for any important meetings you need to prepare for or any scheduling conflicts that need to be addressed. You should end up with no more than one booked and one tentative meeting in every timeslot for the next two weeks. I know this is not always possible. But I find that I typically only have multiple conflicts when an important meeting comes up or when I’m in a training class but popping out to run my regular project touch points. Hopefully, that's the exception and not the norm. I’ve had managers tell me they like to keep meetings that are run by their directs on their calendars as tentative (just to be aware they are occurring). That’s fine, but keep in mind it does create visual clutter on your calendar. However, staying in the loop on the meeting series may be more important. Another option is asking your directs to share their calendars with you. Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution for times that you need to meet with important stakeholders. You’re usually at the mercy of the stakeholder’s schedule, and that often means throwing a grenade into your calendar in order to have a meeting. But remember, if it’s the top priority, pull the pin. If it can wait, find a time that will be less disruptive to your schedule. Recommendations for Calendar Management Use your calendar to keep track of time-bound activities. Getting Things Done makes some great recommendations about how to use calendars. My recommendations are similar. Time-bound activities, meaning an activity that has to happen on a certain day/time, should be placed on your calendar. I typically put tasks with a deadline in my to-do list system. If the task is really important, I might put a reminder on my calendar and in my to-do list. I also recommend that you put personal time-bound activities on an electronic calendar. Are you really going to remember when that electronics recycling event is happening two months from now? Consider putting meeting-specific reminders as a calendar event next to the meeting. Sometimes I need to remember to send meeting minutes to someone who isn’t attending the meeting. Or I need to raise a specific topic or question that I don’t want to forget. I put those reminders next to the meeting so that I see them when I’m reviewing my daily schedule and when I am joining meetings throughout the day. The screenshot below is an example. I also place reminders on my calendar for things that I might need to remember but do not need to take action. For example, I note a change freeze around a holiday. It’s good to remember that information, but it doesn’t need to go into my action item tool. I usually create these as an all-day event and set the show as dropdown to “free." That way, the all-day reminder doesn’t block your calendar. Block off time for priority work. Consider scheduling time for yourself, that is, blocking off your calendar, if you have tasks that need large blocks of uninterrupted time. This discourages other meetings from being booked during that time. Try your best to keep to your plan. If something comes up, reschedule the block of time to another day. Remember, you thought it was important enough to dedicate time. so don’t let the day to day noise of the office derail you. I’ve developed these strategies over my 20+ year career, and they certainly help me stay organized. I hope you find these tips helpful as well. Actively managing your calendar does take time and energy. But you can either actively manage your calendar, or it will manage you. Related Information Read additional blog posts in this series: Time Management: You Can't Buy More Time Time Management: Too Many Messages!  Time Management: Implementing a To-Do List Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Jonathan Addair, PMP, has been a lont-time volunteer with PMI Mile Hi Chapter and is a practicing project manager. Why is it that with all the information and tools available to us as project leaders, it’s still so hard to capture the attention of our internal, extended, and external stakeholders through a project lifecycle?The Standard Stakeholder Engagement Toolkit The practices of stakeholder engagement, previously known to PMI members as stakeholder management, are well defined. Templates and tools are readily available. Project management software suites have features and modules well fitted to the task. Dedicated stand-alone platforms are available for projects of any scale. Summarizing the practice as a whole could be useful but that exercise has been done before. Listing my favorite platforms and tools is tempting but might only apply to my particular approach and preferences. So this blog post focuses why stakeholder engagement efforts stutter, stall, or are abandoned completely. Why is it that with all the information and tools available to us, it’s still so hard to capture the attention of our internal, extended, and external stakeholders through a project lifecycle? Overwhelming. Underperforming. I do not believe that primary sources of failure can be found in individual tools or practices. Established standards are standard for a reason. They are valuable exercises that apply to a broad range of use cases. Neither is the root of our trouble found in technological or systemic issues. Most platforms, especially those designed for the task, have all the features and functions we need. The mechanics of stakeholder engagement are not inherently complicated. Another commonly cited cause of failure is the personal investment or interest level of stakeholders themselves. Have you ever encountered a version of ‘They aren’t interested’, ‘They don’t care’, or ‘They’re too busy’? Common exercises explore this very problem, mapping stakeholders ‘Power vs. Interest’ or ‘Interest vs. Influence’ across Cartesian grids. My personal theory is that general stakeholder disengagement, and therefore engagement failure, is not caused by lack of effort, information, or interest but by excess of irrelevant information. Specifically, I believe that excess irrelevant information distracts and overwhelms individual stakeholders to the point where they cannot effectively influence the project or engage with the project team. While the project manager’s attention is often spread thinly across many projects, systems, and tools, the stakeholders’ attention is often spread thinly across many communication channels, calendars booked with many weekly-update meetings, and a bookmark bar stuffed with documents, intranet sites, and dashboards. Failure doesn’t come from lack of knowledge or lack of tools, it comes from lack of focus. Thinking Strategically about Stakeholders In a world with unlimited time, money, and attention there would be no need to think strategically. In our world broadly, and in the world of a Project Manager specifically, the allocation of limited resources for maximum results is a primary concern. Therefore, thinking strategically about how we spend our time budget and how we spend our stakeholders’ attention budget is a primary concern. The most concise academic explanation for strategic thinking that I have found comes from Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt. He describes three elements that make up the kernel of a good strategy: The Diagnosis - What is really happening here? The Guiding Policy - How do we make decisions in this area? Coherent Action - What do we do about it? Rumelt acknowledges the simplicity of this model compared to the more in-depth strategic planning processes, stating that… “Good strategy almost always looks this simple and obvious and does not take a thick deck of PowerPoint slides to explain. It does not pop out of some “strategic management” tool, matrix, chart, triangle, or fill-in-the-blanks scheme. Instead, a talented leader identifies the one or two critical issues in the situation—the pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of effort—and then focuses and concentrates action and resources on them.” ~ Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, loc. 247 Let’s take a closer look at strategy as applied to project stakeholders. Each internal, extended, and external stakeholder has some pivot point that constitutes their core concern for the project. Each stakeholder also has one or two (no more than a few) levers, with which their position, profession, perspective, or investment can be best used to deliver on the project goals. Our job as builders and maintainers of project environments is to identify these core concerns and give each stakeholder the information they need to know and the agency to do what they need to do. If we can do this without burning attention budget on extraneous information, we can maintain maximum traction and engagement. Strategic Engagement in Practice So the theory sounds great but how do we make it work? Let’s apply strategic thinking to the standard tools and practices. For each stakeholder on the register, do you know what their core concern is? What are their primary levers? What they need to know and do within the evolving project environment? The best way to answer these questions are exploratory 1:1s or small group sessions. Resulting examples will look something like: Financial Stakeholders - We need to know if the project spend will go over this quarter or come in under. If it’s over, we’ll allocate more funds. If under, we’ll earmark the balance for other projects. Marketing Extended Team - We need to know if the launch date is stable, delayed, or at risk of delay. We’ll keep the same launch announcements if stable, push them out if delayed, or publish a teaser if at risk. IT Management - I need to know if the right resources are allocated. We can add or reassign developers but two weeks’ notice is ideal. Local Government - We need to process any new permits four weeks in advance or changes to existing permits two weeks in advance. Give us a list of potential changes so that we can plan ahead. There are as many examples as there are project and stakeholder combinations, but you will notice that each of these examples has a specific type of information, a specific timeframe, and a specific action. Therefore, the key to engagement is providing exactly the information needed, in a single location, without excess clutter. Consider the actions we take every day, based on information at our fingertips: Check the Weather - ‘I can see that it’s going to be cold. I’ll wear a hat.’ Or ‘I can see it’s going to rain. I’ll bring a jacket. Check a Stock Price - ‘We’re trending up. I’ll hold.’ or ‘It’s dipping down. I’ll put in a buy order.’ Check Driving Directions - ‘Looks like there’s construction on the tollway. I’ll take another route.’ If our project stakeholders have a single URL that condenses the data relevant to their core concern, they can check it and take action, just as they would check the weather. The industry default seems to be providing all information to everyone in project update meetings or comprehensive dashboards, then relying on individuals to filter out the noise and find information relevant to their core concern. With stakeholder-specific links and communication, they can see what they need first, then look around for more information if needed. If we can build the information each stakeholder needs to know and deliver that along with the actions they need to take, we can make stakeholder engagement a frictionless process. What’s Next? During the PMI Mile Hi Virtual Roundtable, on February 24th, 2021, a lively group discussed the topic of strategic stakeholder engagement and exchanged some ideas on real-life examples as well as some tips and tricks. If you couldn't make it, connect with J. Deckert on LinkedIn, and ask for a copy of some of those examples.If you have some additional ideas, feel free to comment here on this blog post.  Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author J. Deckert manages a consulting team specializing in complex, multi-party projects and platform implementations. He partners with businesses to develop collaborative working practices, plan strategically, and simplify then systematize processes. A PMP since 2011, J. focuses on bridging the gap between enterprise level strategic planning and ‘boots on the ground’ project management.Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile approaches are relatively simple to understand but difficult to implement. Innovation needs discipline, an open mind, an ability to listen, and a keen focus on driving value.A quick Google search on “failed products” will fill up your browser screen. These are products by well-known companies that were successfully launched but ultimately failed in the market. Companies are fast learning how to increase their chances of success by tweaking their traditional ways of product development and the product development lifecycle itself. They are moving away from a “making people want our products” approach—to making things that people want. Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile approaches are relatively simple to understand but difficult to implement. Innovation needs discipline, an open mind, an ability to listen, and a keen focus on driving value.   Lean Startup Leveraging Lean Startup practices, business owners are discovering which products will give them the best chance for success. Employing Design Thinking, they are making that connection with their consumer base from the onset and getting feedback early. Using an iterative Agile approach, organizations are able to validate incrementally and go to market faster with quality products. MAKE ONLY THINGS THAT PEOPLE WANT The Lean Startup way is a systematic process for quickly vetting program and product ideas, thus raising the odds of success. Experimenting with low-fidelity prototypes in an actual customer environment provides deep insights into the real use of a product and the problems it is meant to solve. COLLABORATE TO SEEK YOUR ANSWERS Serial entrepreneur-turned-academic Steve Blank emphasizes learning about customers and their problems as early in the development process as possible. The Customer development model appears as follows: Find a Problem/Solution Fit Customer Discovery - Understanding customer problems and needs Customer Validation - Developing a replicable sales model Find a Product/Market Fit Customer Creation - Understanding end-user demand, and how to create and drive it Customer Building - Focusing on growth instead of learning UNLEASH THE ENTREPRENEURS ON YOUR TEAM Organizations are learning to get early insight into their customer needs and market reactions through rapid cycles of the following: Leap-of-Faith Assumptions - Identify the beliefs that must be true for startup success Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - Experiment to test assumptions quickly and inexpensively Validated Learning - Learn what is working and not working. Build - Measure – Learn Feedback Loop Pivot or Preserve - Decide to change strategy or continue Design Thinking To visualize potential trade-offs among customer, markets, and products, Alexander Osterwalder developed the Business Model Canvas. This strategic management template and variations of the concept enable early collaboration. The goal is to illustrate opportunities and challenges by using existing knowledge or research. With a business model thus inscribed, a startup can enjoy a firm foundation from which to launch its products. DESIGN STARTS WITH CONVERSATION The traditional process for launching a new product is to write a business plan, pitch it to investors, getting funded, assemble a team, introduce the product, and start selling as hard as you can. Proof of whether you have a successful product comes after launch. Most consider that too late a time horizon to find out about market reality. Design thinking is an approach of really understanding and matching people's needs with what is technologically feasible and has business viability. Adopting creative strategies, innovative teams solve complex product problems that sometimes start with an idea that has many unknowns. FIVE PHASES OF DESIGN The five phases of Design Thinking, according to Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school), are as follows: Empathize – with your users Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions Prototype – to start creating solutions Test – your solutions with your users Agile Organizations competing in the market place are taking an iterative and incremental approach to building their products. In an Agile methodology, requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration among self-organizing cross-functional teams. RESPOND TO CHANGE: AGILE MINDSET Agile is a mindset, based on the Agile Manifesto, which values individuals and interactions within a team as well as across multiple teams. All self-organizing teams collaborate to develop working software and hone an ability to respond to change. BE RELENTLESS IN DELIVERING VALUE FOR YOUR CUSTOMER With Agile, the shortness of an iteration allows teams to focus on the most valuable of deliverables. Every iteration involves the complete cycle of design/development/testing and building a potentially shippable increment. On demonstration, the tangible incremental delivery allows rapid feedback from the customer. An iteration means priorities can be shifted from iteration to iteration, and new features/changes can be added into the next iteration. Responding to customer, course correcting, and doing only what adds value helps to build the right product and the product right. Conclusion Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and GE, have rapidly adopted innovative approaches to problem solving and product development. Approaches such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile have revealed to the business world innovative practices that allow an early insight into customer and market reactions to a new idea. Get ready and open to experiment with these new concepts, blend them with traditional practices, and give your programs/projects/products a chance to truly make a world impact. Helpful Links http://theleanstartup.com/ https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking https://www.scrum.org/ References Brown, Tim. 2020. “Design Thinking.” HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Design Thinking. Book 41 in HBR’s 10 Must Reads series. Cambridge: Harvard Business Review. Pichler, Roman. 2010. Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love. Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional. Ries, Eric. 2011. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business. Additional Resources Som Ghosh is a favorite speaker at PMI Mile Hi Chapter's Saturday Workshops at Regis University. For the next available workshop, check our events calendar. We welcome members and non-members alike. Membership information is always available, too. About the Author Somnath Ghosh is an Enterprise Transformation Consultant with over 25+ years of strategic consulting experience in software development, Agile/DevOps enablement, and change management. As a thought leader, he guides organizations to achieve dramatic improvement and efficiency—from their product ideation to delivery. He has been a frequent speaker and contributor to PMI local and global conferences and offers workshops on advanced topics that help organizations manage large programs in digital transformation and innovation.  Find Som on LinkedIn at SomGhosh or http://www.linkedin.com/in/somghosh.Methods to scale agility help multiple small teams collaborate to develop, deliver, and support large products, while simultaneously improving business agility across an organization. Methods to scale agility help multiple small teams collaborate to develop, deliver, and support large products, while simultaneously improving business agility across an organization. The Origins of Agile The values and principles of Agile came out of the software development community, specifically from a group of software engineers who worked with so-called lightweight development practices.  Their overarching goal was to eliminate the negative aspects of the traditional software development model. The traditional model was project-based, plan-driven, and followed a linear-sequential software development life cycle (SDLC) approach.  A graphical depiction of the traditional model displays a stepwise approach to development through a linear-sequential process, as a single development cycle, thus leading to the name Waterfall approach. There are multiple problems with the waterfall model. For example, the linear-sequential process needlessly extended the length of the overall development and project delivery cycles.  The project-based nature of the traditional model is predicated on an idea that customers know upfront what their needs and priorities are for the entire project period, which is seldom the case.  Given its plan-driven nature, which drives product delivery schedules and budgets, project teams are reluctant to change the original plans and schedules even when customer priorities and needs change.  Moreover, the late-stage testing approach makes it a complicated, time-consuming, and costly process to find and fix bugs, or address performance issues. Lightweight But Powerful In contrast, the lightweight software development methodologies deliver updates in a continuous and customer-centric manner, adding incremental value rapidly through frequent releases. The iterative development approach enables more frequent testing on smaller sections of code, minimizing the impacts of bugs and defects while improving overall development throughput and efficiencies. The lightweight approaches generally install small, autonomous, and fully self-contained teams, which minimizes communications, work integration, and dependency issues associated with managing larger teams or organizations. Instead of excessive documentation and reports, the lightweight methodologies provided visibility on priorities and progress through publicly displayed charts and lists. These include product backlogs, burndown and burnup charts, velocity charts, and Kanban boards. All of this works well in relatively small product development activities. Among the lightweight methodologies, Scrum emerged as the leader in Agile-based software development at the small-team level. It retains its leadership position in that space to this day. But it wasn't long before organizations attempted to employ the values and principles of Agile on more extensive product development requirements, and across both value creation (i.e., development) and value delivery (i.e., customer-facing and support) activities. The empiricism and small team models within the Scrum Framework are scalable, as teams of teams. But large organizations represent complex systems that require additional ways of thinking to deal with network density issues that make communications, integrations, and dependencies much more challenging to manage. The question then becomes, how to do it? Scaled Scrum and Lean-Agile Strategies As it turns out, several strategies evolved to enable agility across large product organizations and also to support enterprise-wide business agility initiatives.  Some scaling strategies deal more strictly with large software development projects. Others incorporate systems thinking and lean development practices to implement business agility across all value creation and value delivery activities on an enterprise scale. A short list of leading scaled Scrum and Lean-Agile practices include the following: Scrum-of-Scrums – The original Scrum scaling strategy as a team of teams. Scrum-At-Scale – An extension to the Scrum Guide that scales the basic Scrum of Scrums concepts enterprise-wide and across business domains with minimum viable bureaucracy (MVB) via scale-free architectures. The Nexus Framework – The software developer's extension to the Scrum Guide that implements Network Integration Teams (NIT) to manage cross-team dependency, integration, and synchronization issues on multiteam product development efforts Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) – Another scaled-Scrum approach, with two Scrum scaling frameworks, that helps coordinate the activities of multiple teams, around features (LeSS Framework) and requirements areas (LeSS Huge Framework), working in collaboration to develop large and complex software-enabled products Disciplined Agile (DA) – A Lean-Agile approach to development that provides six product development lifecycles, numerous process guides, and hundreds of potentially useful techniques that allow teams to choose their preferred Way of Working based on their unique business and organizational needs and situations Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) – With four configurations, a Lean-Agile approach for large organizations working on large-scale product development efforts that can leverage their economies of scale as strengths to provide greater efficiencies and yet incorporate Lean-Agile practices to enable business agility on an enterprise scale At the time of this writing, the Scaled-Agile Approach (SAFe) is the leader among the scaled-agile approaches. But business agility is a relatively new field, and time will tell which practices stay at the top of the leader-board. Scaling to Achieve Business Agility Our modern digital economy drives today's competitive landscape, and organizations need to be agile at all levels of their businesses to compete effectively. Therefore, despite its early origins within the software industry, the values and principles of Agile must apply to all value stream activities across an enterprise. In short, this means all aspects of a business must have the ability to respond quickly with frequent improvements that deliver customer-centric value at the lowest possible cost. At one level, this shouldn't be a surprise. Software and computing systems add useful functionality to products while also making it easier and quicker to add new features. Those two capabilities alone change the competitive landscape dramatically. However, if we only apply Agile practices to software development activities, the rest of the organization will lag and fail to deliver the new capabilities to their markets in a timely and cost-efficient manner. So we must expand our thinking about applying Agile's values and principles on a larger scale to enable enterprise-wide business agility. Business agility is the ability of an organization to rapidly evaluate alternatives and competitively respond to changes driving both a business and its industry and do so from a customer-centric and value-added perspective. Installing business agility practices across an organization helps it respond appropriately to competitive drivers while simultaneously keeping a customer-centric approach across the enterprise. In short, business entities must evolve all their value creation and delivery strategies, taking a systems-level view, to stay competitive in our fast-paced and digital-enabled world. Organizations that make ad hoc or opportunistic changes, without looking at the systemic impacts, fall into a trap called local optimizations. The organization can expend much time, effort, and money and not achieve any significant gains. Instead, the enterprise must take a holistic view to optimize and streamline all its value streams. Systems thinking is the essence behind lean development, which is an essential component of any serious attempt at becoming agile on an enterprise scale. Modern Scrum and Lean-Agile practices aim to achieve enterprise-wide agility by allowing synchronization and coordination between all the value stream activities across an enterprise to produce high-quality and profitable products. The same concepts equally apply to non-profits and government agencies that seek to deliver high-quality and customer-centric services at the lowest possible costs. No one should think it's an easy task to obtain business agility on an enterprise scale. It takes executive level commitments, strategy, structural changes, a lot of trial and error, and leadership. Ultimately, success breeds success, and organizational culture evolves incrementally to support the most effective business strategies. It's impracticable to provide much more detail on these Agile scaling practices within a single article. I invite those readers who want to dive deeper to read my book, titled Scaling Scrum Across Modern Enterprises: Implement Scrum and Lean-Agile techniques across complex products, portfolios, and programs in large organizations. The book is available via Amazon.com and PACKT Publishing. References Ambler, S., Lines, Mark. (2020) Choose Your Wow! A Disciplined Agile Delivery Handbook for Optimizing Your Way of Working. Newtown Square, PA, The Project Management Institute, Inc. Beck, K. et al. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. http://agilemanifesto.org/ (2020) SAFe® for Lean Enterprises 5.0. Retrieved from: https://www.scaledAgileframework.com/ Larman, C. and Vodde, B., Large-Scale Scrum: More with Less (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)), Pearson Education, Inc., Boston, MA (2017) Schwaber, K. (2018) The Nexus™ Guide. The Definitive Guide to scaling Scrum with Nexus: The Rules of the Game. Scrum.org. Retrieved from https://www.Scrum.org/resources/nexus-guide. Schwaber, K. Sutherland, J. (November 2017) The Scrum Guide™ The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game. https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf Sutherland, J. (March 2020). The Scrum At Scale® Guide. The Definitive Guide to the Scrum@Scale Framework. Version 2.0 https://scrumatscale.scruminc.com/scrum-at-scale-guide-online/ Related Information PMI now offers a progressive path to agile mastery through an extended set of Disciplined Agile certifications. Refer to our chapter's PDUs page for how to record your PDUs toward any of PMI's certifications. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Cecil 'Gary' Rupp, SPC, CSPO, CSM, PMP, brings more than 30 years of executive-level experience in information technology (IT), spanning IT and management consulting, professional services, program and project management, and sales and marketing. Gary has directly managed more than 30 enterprise-class IT programs and projects, with the last 10 years, focused almost exclusively on managing large enterprise health and government IT Programs. His professional experience includes supporting large software and systems development projects and promoting and delivering IT solutions that involve computer-aided systems engineering (CASE), middleware, portal, and software development tools. Gary is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has an MBA from National University.  He is also the author of three books on software and systems development and Lean-Agile practices. This blog post is reposted with permission from Gary's Command Results website. During a pandemic, leading a team when everyone is working virtually from their homes magnifies those challenges. Questions arise: How do I keep team members engaged? How do I keep the team productive? How can I be a more resilient leader?  In June, my workshop partner Andrea Buell and I facilitated a workshop for the Mile Hi Chapter’s North Professional Dev Workshop on "Virtual Team Leadership in a Time of Pandemic." For that workshop, we focused on the first few months of the pandemic, during which many of you were working from home while leading your teams. We want to share with you more about that workshop and the results from a related survey. During the workshop, we discussed how leading a project team can be a challenge even in the best of times. During a pandemic, leading a team when everyone is working virtually from their homes magnifies those challenges. Questions arise: How do I keep team members engaged? How do I keep the team productive? How can I be a more resilient leader?  To help answer some of those questions, Andrea and I conducted research and solicited feedback. We examined how people were doing during those first few months and what changes, if any, they had experienced since team members had had the opportunity to work from home. WFH Drawbacks and Benefits To start, click here to view the survey with the responses. While 16% of those surveyed stated that they had already worked from home and many (81%) felt that they were as productive WFH now as being in the office, the largest obstacle people found with WFH was the lack of in-person interactions (71%). We all know the benefits of leading virtual teams: To the Organization – decreased costs in operations, travel, and so on To the Team and Project Leader – diversity of perspectives and ideas; leveraging talent from around the world; greater flexibility But the challenges of leading during the pandemic has added stressors that we have not had before. What's Not New: To the Organization – technology infrastructure; uneven knowledge dissemination To the Team and Project Leader – relaxed inhibitions; longer time to make decisions; increased difficulty in making decisions; feelings of isolation or exclusion; communicating without the benefit of nonverbal cues What's New: Society – concern about how the pandemic might reach the family; effects on the economy (both macro and micro if someone in the family has lost a job); racial inequality; politics While we were used to dealing with the "Not New" challenges, the "New" challenges add another layer of complexity to the conversation, both for our own work and leading our teams. Communication If 90% of a PM's job is communication, how do we continue to break down the barriers when we can no longer interact with people we used to see daily? We have some suggestions: Set team norms or agreements or revisit the ones you had when you were in the office. Because people indicated in the survey that more of their time was being taken up with meetings, ensure that you are on top of your meeting effectiveness game: Create a detailed agenda - and stick to it! Provide brief recaps as you move through the meeting. Ask open-ended questions and ensure everyone is getting their chance to speak. If necessary, have one-on-ones with people who are not comfortable speaking. Afterward, send a synopsis of the agenda with decisions and action items. Follow up! Resilience Most of us are not on the overtaxed frontlines of the healthcare battle, but all of us can be first responders to the need for emotional support. The need exists in every industry and economic sector, among physically healthy people as well as those who are sick or whose loved ones are sick. There are needs in our families, extended families, congregations, and communities, as well as within our network of professional associations. Almost everyone needs connection to others and the opportunity to give and get support in the abnormal new normal of deep uncertainty and the fearful specter of a pandemic. From:  looms large. (See https://hbr.org/2020/04/to-take-care-of-others-start-by-taking-care-of-yourself.) Given that it's more of a challenge to lead our teams during the pandemic, the workshop touched a lot on building resilience within ourselves. By creating that resilience first, we could then take care of our teams. From Johnson and Humble, this concept was a good segue into our section on Taking Care of the Leader (because if you aren't taking care of yourself, who is taking care of your team?)   Here are seven ways you can build your resilience: Find compassion Prioritize relationships Take care of your body Avoid negative outlets Move towards your goals Accept change Change your perception of the situation The item above about avoiding negative outlets generated a lot of comments from the attendees. Many stated that they had to watch the news to keep caught up on things; COVID was everywhere, from the news to Facebook to Twitter, and so on. Note that we are not advocating to hide under the covers or go completely dark. How you choose to avoid or decrease negative outlets is for you to decide. One way would be to commit to watching the local news one night and the national news the next.  How about putting a snooze on some of the news outlets on your feeds? Given that we do not know how COVID will affect our jobs and society until we have a viable vaccine, working from home and leading our teams under more stress is here to stay. Here are the key takeaways from our workshop: Focus on the technology, engagement, and trust that enable productivity Build your virtual team effectiveness by building trust Update your team norms or agreements to take into account the complexities of WFH Concentrate on how to make your meetings more effective Communicate – Communicate – Communicate Check out your listening levels and when to use them Ask curious questions Reflect back Reframe Build your resilience Don’t be a workaholic Take care of yourself, physically and mentally. Related Information Here are some of our favorite resources when we were creating the workshop: Leading virtual project teams dos and don'ts: https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/leading-virtual-project-teams-10190 The real challenges of leading virtual teams: https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/real-challenges-leading-virtual-teams-communication-6959 Susan David, Emotional Agility Pandemic Skills for Pandemic Times: https://instituteofcoaching.org/blogs/pandemic-skills-pandemic-times New articles to consider: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200827-why-in-person-leaders-may-not-be-the-best-virtual-ones https://www.fastcompany.com/90483201/5-ways-to-build-trust-when-your-teams-are-working-from-home-indefinitely   Pamela Wagner and Andrea Buell presented this PMI Mile Hi Workshop on June 13, 2020. To register for the next North Professional Development Workshop (NPDW), please review the calendar on pmimilehi.org. If you would like to speak at an upcoming NPDW workshop, please contact NPDWorkshops@pmimilehi.org.  About the Authors Andrea Buell is a Certified Co-Active coach and project management specialist who enables people and teams to bring significant results to their projects and themselves.  Currently working as a Product Development Manager at medical device company, Medtronic, in Boulder, Andrea continually uses her varied skills in coaching, facilitating, training, and project management. She focuses primarily on the planning and scheduling areas. Pamela Wagner is a Sr. Project Manager for the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Safety division of Denver Health and is the principal for White Bark Blue Sky Consulting. This post in our time management series introduces two new principles and explores the functionality of task management software. Time is a finite resource, and you can’t purchase more. Managing time properly, either for yourself or your project, can help you be more effective and help you accomplish your goals while working fewer hours. Many professionals make the mistake of working additional hours to accomplish more, but this approach often leads to diminishing returns and burnout. An occasional increase in hours often happens during critical phases of a project. But if you are living tied to your work laptop and/or phone, then you may have a time management issue. Throughout this blog series, each article will introduce one or more guiding principles related to time management. In addition, we will explore together some common systems and tools to help you effectively manage your work. In the last post, I introduced a new structure and workflow for email. Now here’s the cool part… You can apply nearly the same structure and workflow to your “To Do” list. In this post, I explore time management tools as well as introduce new principles. You don’t have to use the exact tools from this article. My wife swears by her physical bullet diary, but paper is like geek kryptonite. The point is to apply the principles in a way that is comfortable for you. First Principle Time for a new principle: Don’t keep reminders in your head. I can remember maybe 3-5 things, and then things start to get lost in the noise. There is no way you can keep all the loose ends straight between home and work, and it just creates stress. In addition, you likely have more than one project at work. Let your organizational system remind you when things are due or items that require follow up. As a first step, David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, recommends spending 1-2 hours emptying all of the reminders you have accumulated into your new system. I wrote them out on post it notes and put them into a pile. They were then entered into my new shiny organizational tool. Now let me talk about tools. I’ve used Toodledo for many years. It supports the Getting Things Done system well, and the sync from the mobile app is reliable. Toodledo is not the best looking app out there, but is has powerful features built for purpose. In addition, most users can do everything they might need with a free Toodledo account. The premium tiers add features, such as the ability to create sub-tasks and a longer task history. I like that it’s a web application, most companies do not block it, and I don’t have to worry about backing up my data. There are probably thousands of alternatives to Toodledo. However, the purpose of this article is not to compare time management software solutions. Here are some features to look for: Recurring tasks Alarms and reminders Create new tasks from an email Mobile app or mobile web Organize tasks into folders and categories Make sure you can access it on your work PC or Mac Do you need to back up your data? If an app is running locally on your machine, you should give this one some thought. Second Principle Ready for another principle? Tasks and reminders go in one place and only one place. I don’t keep a separate task list for home and work. I keep one list that is organized based on context, priority, and dates. I create a task in Toodledo as soon as I identify a work action item, or I think about something I need to remember at home. The nice thing about having a web and mobile version is you can open the mobile app, create the reminder, and get on with your day. How you set up the structure of your system is going to greatly influence the effectiveness of your filters. Here are some additional pointers about structuring your task/reminder system. A context is a top level filter that helps separate home tasks and work tasks. Here are my context options in Toodledo: Contexts Description Calls Calls I need to make. I tend to use this for personal calls. Computer Tasks I need to complete at my home computer. Errands Bet you would be shocked to hear this one is for errands! Home Tasks I need to complete at home (e.g., change furnace filter). iPhone Before COVID-19, I spent a large amount of time commuting via light rail. I created this context to organize things I could take care of from my phone. Work Computer Work tasks, including phone calls. Work Office Tasks I need to physically be at the office to complete (e.g., get new badge or drop off paperwork).   You can create folders to further filter your tasks within a context. For example, when I was in graduate school, I would create a new folder for each class. The context would remain “Computer,” but I could filter between classes. Your software may call these something different, but there’s probably something like a category that can be applied. Below is a screenshot of my Toodledo that shows some example tasks. Toodledo has several views, including status, tags, and priority, but I generally only use the calendar view. One final bit of wisdom. I don’t store delegated work tasks or work project plans in Toodledo. I tried at one point. It’s just not worth it. Typically, I create a reminder for myself to follow up with someone on a critical task for decision. However, the details of those tasks should be stored within a project plan or JIRA. I view Toodledo as secondary storage for my brain, and a list of things I need to do. Need more help? Check out Toodledo’s guide to implementing the Getting Things Done system in Toodledo. https://www.toodledo.com/info/gtd.php Caveats Your company won’t be thrilled if any sensitive information is being shared or entered into your third-party task management software. Be mindful not to record too many potential confidential details and only enter enough information so that you can remember. It could be “Call Bob about ProjectA testing – testing behind schedule.” Use code words for project names if you are really concerned. You could also consider using company-provided tools, like Outlook Tasks, if you will be unable to using an external tool. That said… Don’t store any proprietary company information in your task management software Don’t forward company email to your task management software Don’t store any company files in your task management software Time is finite, but you can learn to use it wisely. This post introduced two new principles and explored the functionality of task management software. These tools are powerful and can help keep you organized, whether you are managing 1 or 15 projects. But switching to a new organization system can feel daunting. Don’t procrastinate. Consider picking up a copy of Getting Things Done. Dive in, and start emptying all your to-dos and reminders onto post cards or a notebook. You will probably think of additional items to jot down even a few days after your initial inventory. I know I won’t remember something unless it’s recorded in Toodledo. The best part is I don’t have to stress about trying to remember. I let Toodledo do that for me. Related Information Read additional blog posts in this series: Time Management: You Can't Buy More Time Time Management: Too Many Messages! Time Management: Calendars About the Author Jonathan Addair, PMP, has been a long-time volunteer with PMI Mile Hi Chapter and is a practicing project manager. As project leaders, we should commit ourselves to speak powerfully and positively to the people around us.I believe a person’s credibility is impacted more by what they do, than by what they say. I have seen many inspiring presentations from leaders that never got executed. However, words do have consequences. There is a lot of research today on the impact of words and how they change our brain, impact our health, and influence the course of our lives. The words we use impact how people perceive us, how they feel about themselves, and ultimately determine the strength of our relationships. I know that leaders who speak in powerful, positive ways are more fun to work with, and I want to be more like them. As project leaders, we have choices every day in how we speak to our business partners, to our team and within our organization. Speaking Our Minds We speak our minds every day. Whether we are positive or negative in our choice of words, ultimately, our words come from our thoughts. The old adage of “watch your thoughts, they become your words” is very true. If we are suspicious of other people and their motives, we can develop the habit of using negative words. Harsh words may be used to point out faults and failures, or attribute evil intentions to the actions of others, with the effect of diminishing others and making us feel superior. We may stop looking for or expecting good behavior in other people. Our media propagates negative and harsh language that spills over into the business environment. While co-workers may believe they are providing a public service by sharing their views, these highly charged conversations are more likely to create conflict and erode trust within the team. Some people just seem steeped in negativity. Debbie Downer was the name of a Saturday Night Live character who would add bad news and negative opinions to every conversation. These individuals are focused on sharing bad news, peddling office gossip or kindling office disputes. They distract people from their work, feed pessimism and can ultimately destroy a team. To paraphrase a biblical saying, the negative tongue subverts many, demolishes walled cities, and topples powerful dynasties. Combating Negative Conversations As project leaders, we should commit ourselves to speak powerfully and positively to the people around us. In my experience, a few things are effective in reducing negativity. When faced with negative people and situations, I refrain from speaking too quickly. When a response is required, it helps to keep words factual and fair and avoid disparaging other people (whether present or not). To reduce my own negative attitude, I try to curb harsh judgements of others and assume the best of intentions. Over time my own outlook and language has become more positive and mature. A “Debbie Downer” can ultimately destroy a team. I have made efforts to curb their gossip, ignore their negativity and laugh off their provocation but whenever possible, find a way to move them out. Most news and programs are downright demoralizing! I set personal time limits on these and spend more time with other people, volunteering in the community, or reading inspiring books. If you have children, I encourage you to go out and play! By putting good experiences and information into our minds, our thoughts and words become more compassionate, kind, and respectful. Words Are Like Feathers A story from Jewish tradition illustrates the consequences of harsh words. I don’t know the author’s name, however, a similar children’s book is titled A Sack Full of Feathers by Debby Waldman. A young intern is working with a senior manager and begins to share a negative story about him. The story is spread all over the office, but later the intern learns that the story he has shared isn’t true. He goes to the manager to apologize and asks what he needs to do to restore their relationship. The manager tells him to bring a feather pillow to the office the next day. Confused, the intern does what he is told. The next day, the manager takes the intern to a second story window and tells him to cut the pillow open. The feathers fall into the street below and the wind scatters the feathers far and wide. Then the manager tells the intern to collect the feathers. The intern responds, “that would be impossible!” The manager says, “Yes, and so it is with words. Once said, you can’t take them back, and our relationship can’t be restored to the way it was before.” Harsh words have a lasting effect on the people around us. They cause anger, hurt feelings, and a loss of self-esteem. Even unintentional harshness can create misunderstandings with long term consequences for a relationship. When we stay authentically focused on being positive, making our projects successful and helping others, it becomes easier to speak in positive and powerful ways to others. Related Information During a roundtable discussion hosted by Regis University on Oct. 28, 2020, Emotional Intelligence expert Deborah Westcott described how project managers can leverage their empathy towards and awareness of others to improve team rapport and communication. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a transformation consultant working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, establish program structure and oversight, and build and coach teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources, and leading practices as a project management mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog.Email can be a major distraction, and changing how email is managed can quickly improve productivity. Time is a finite resource, and you can’t purchase more. Managing time properly, either for yourself or your project, can help you be more effective and help you accomplish your goals while working fewer hours. Many professionals make the mistake of working additional hours to accomplish more, but this approach often leads to diminishing returns and burnout. An occasional increase in hours often happens during critical phases of a project. But if you are living tied to your work laptop and/or phone, then you may have a time management issue. Throughout this blog series, each article will introduce one or more guiding principles related to time management. In addition, we will explore together some common systems and tools to help you effectively manage your work. In the first post in this series, I introduced the first time management guiding principle, You Can’t Buy More Time. We also explored our first tool which focuses on getting your top three tasks done daily. Now, we’re going to turn our attention to getting your email under control. Why? Email can be a major distraction, and changing how email is managed can quickly improve productivity. Like any tool, email is great for certain use cases. Email excels at distributing information, like a project status report, to a large audience. In addition, email is very useful when you are communicating with individuals, with whom you don’t already have an instant messaging solution, such as a vendor. Email should typically be treated as formal business communication, but this can vary based on the culture of a company. Remember that punctuation and tone matter. Finally, remember that having a voice or video call is often much more effective than continuing a long email thread. Chat is better than email but not as rich as voice or video. A System of Folders Now, let’s take a look at how to best organize and manage your email. I’m a big fan of the book, Getting Things Done by David Allen. Most of what I’m going to share with you is derived from the GTD system. My recommendations assume you use Microsoft Outlook to manage your work email. However, many of the recommendations can also be implemented in web-based email, like Gmail. Let’s talk about folders. You might be tempted to create folders to organize your email. You might even create a rule to automatically put email into that subfolder. Folders are usually bad and you generally spend more time searching for things than dealing with email. That said, everything should arrive in your inbox. The only exception is deleting unwanted messages before they enter your inbox. Only let items into your inbox that you really need to read. I’m looking at you IT notifications for projects/applications that I’m no longer involved with. The content of an email can usually be grouped into four categories. Once you realize this, it is much easier to manage your email. Category Examples Items that require action from you Question about your status report Request from project sponsorDiscussion about project issues you want to chime in about New company policy you need to review Items that contain useful information to reference in the future Root cause of an issue Design document Long-term roadmap Customer contract Informational messages that are useful in the short term Meeting is cancelled Cupcakes in the break room   Requests you have sent to others and are awaiting action/response Did the task complete on time? How far along is the testing? Are any of the cupcakes red velvet? Ok, great. Four types of email content. Awesome. Now what? Below is how I organize my folders. You can also use categories in common webmail platforms, like Gmail, to accomplish the same result. Inbox Needs Action Reference Waiting Duplicates Inbox Duplicates Sent Duplicates A Duplicates Archive The first four should look familiar. What are duplicates? These folders contain a golden copy of everything you have sent and received. You shouldn’t delete anything in these folders. Here’s why it’s powerful: You can delete any email in your inbox without worrying about being able to retrieve that email at a later time. To create your Duplicates archive, create two rules that copy all received messages into Inbox Duplicates and all sent messages to Sent Duplicates (see example screenshots below).You may need to purge old email from these folders to stay within your organization’s email quota and/or retention policy. Some organizations allow an Outlook PST file to be created on the local hard drive. If you can do this, then your storage is limited to your hard drive space. Caveat: These rules only run when your Outlook is open. If you delete an email from your mobile when Outlook is closed then you won’t have a copy. Workflow Ok, we’ve got our folders created. Let’s talk about workflow. As I mentioned earlier, all new email (that isn’t deleted by a rule) should arrive in your inbox. Process your email oldest to newest from your inbox. The table below shows the actions to take from the inbox. The goal is to get the inbox to zero messages by the end of the workday. Work the items in your needs action daily and try not to cherry pick the easy items. Trigger Actions New email item arrives Read and delete it Read, respond/take action, and delete it Read and move it to “Needs Action” to be worked on later Read and move it to “Reference” to be easily found later   Microsoft Outlook has a feature that allows emails to be categorized. I highly recommend using the category feature to organize items stored in Reference. I typically create categories for a project or parts of a project, e.g., development, testing. Once you have everything stored in Reference, you can sort the folder by sender, date, category, or even search by subject or within the body. Below is an example of what my Reference folder typically looks like: PROJECTA PROJECTB ORGCHANGE PROCESS SAFe  Ok, you’re really excited to use this new system, but what about your old emails and folders? I recommend creating a new folder called “archive” and moving all your old emails and folders there. As you have time, you can clean out the archive folder. Or you can simply access the folder only as needed and the usefulness of the content will decline over time. Eventually you’ll be switched over to the new system.  I’ve trained about 20 people on this system, and most implemented it with only minor modifications. Maybe you liked the idea of duplicates but not the folder structure. That’s OK. Pick what works for you. That said, hopefully you discovered at least one tip that will help you better manage your email and have more time to for important things – whether those cupcakes in the breakroom are red velvet. Related Information Read additional blog posts in this series: Time Management: You Can't Buy More Time Time Management: Implementing a To-Do List Time Management: Calendars Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Jonathan Addair, PMP, has been a long-time volunteer with PMI Mile Hi Chapter and is a practicing project manager. Whether you are building your resume, planning for interviews, or building your on-line presence, having a personal project management brand is a great way to better communicate your unique skills and abilities and find project work that you will enjoy more.You aren’t alone if you are looking for a new job.  Finding a project management job is a challenging process today, but having some self-awareness can help you look for the right type of jobs and better communicate your capabilities and value to a prospective employer.  Reasons for a Personal Brand Whether you are building your resume, planning for interviews, or building your on-line presence, having a personal project management brand is a great way to better communicate your unique skills and abilities and find project work that you will enjoy more. Examine Past Experience Consider your past experience and identify specific examples of when, how, and in what circumstances you have been successful. As you do this, there are three areas to reflect upon: What process or approach do you consistently follow to complete your projects? What are your areas of strength? What do you enjoy doing? Many of us need help determining “what we are good at” and building a full picture of our strengths. If you have difficulty with this, consider asking your boss, your co-workers, or your mentors. Their responses may surprise you but will likely touch on similar themes. Read More For a personal example, some tips on working through these three steps and additional resources, review my blog: Finding Your Project Management Brand.  Related Information Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer, CMA, PMP, SA, is a transformation consultant working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, establish program structure and oversight, and build and coach teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources, and leading practices as a project management mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog.Time is a finite resource, and you can’t purchase more. Managing time properly can help you be more effective and help you accomplish your goals while working fewer hours. Time is a finite resource, and you can’t purchase more. Managing time properly, either for yourself or your project, can help you be more effective and help you accomplish your goals while working fewer hours. Many professionals make the mistake of working additional hours to accomplish more, but this approach often leads to diminishing returns and burnout. An occasional increase in hours often happens during critical phases of a project. But if you are living tied to your work laptop and/or phone, then you may have a time management issue. Throughout this blog series, each article will introduce one or more guiding principles related to time management. In addition, we will explore together some common systems and tools to help you effectively manage your work. The Project Management Body of Knowledge 6th Edition speaks to time management in the Project Schedule Management process group. However, it is focused on the defining and sequencing of activities for a project. The PMBOK doesn’t address personal time management, likely because so much material already exists for improving personal time management. But many of the principles in the PMBOK are applicable to personal time management on a smaller scale. Time Is a Valuable Resource I would like to introduce you to the first guiding principle in this time management series: You Can’t Buy More Time. Think about that for a second. You can control the scope of a project, the timing of project activities, the amount of resources assigned, but you cannot stop the calendar. Until I can finally get my time-traveling DeLorean working,I have to acknowledge the fact that time is my most valuable resource. We have a fixed amount of time but how we chose to use it is up to us. On a side note, I acknowledge that scope, deadlines, and resources are typically controlled by project stakeholders. Many organizations are running leaner and asking employees to be more productive with fewer resources. You may have a mountain of work because a position in your department was eliminated and you had to take on some or all of those duties. Or your company is acquiring or merging with another organization, and the process of bringing the organization together is creating more work for everyone. The unfortunate truth is that these factors are not going away. The overall pace of work in the workplace will likely continue to increase. Delaying, or sometimes not doing, low-value and low-priority work is critical to surviving in today’s workplace. Focus on Value  But I’m too busy to think about time management! I have encountered several project managers in my career who confuse activity with value. They are very busy but create little value for the organization. They often schedule endless meetings but never with a published agenda or minutes. Another example is when your PMO has an extensive checklist that takes a significant amount of time to complete and maintain. Collaboration and organization are good, but did the project get done? Did you spend your time helping the organization meet its goals? I’m not saying that proper documentation and processes are not important. They are. Ask anyone who has taken over a poorly organized or documented project. Just make sure you have handled the more critical tasks to keep your project on track first. The first tool I recommend is focusing on the top three tasks you need to complete each workday. You can implement this tomorrow. Make a list at the end of the previous day or the start of the current. Identify the three things you need to do to keep you and your team on track. Make sure to break larger tasks down into something you can accomplish in a day. For example, if you need to write performance reviews for your staff, you might write one per day or a section each day. Write down your top list items or record them digitally. Do not rely on your memory to maintain your list. More on this later in the series. Knock Out Your Top Three Tasks ASAP Get your top three things done as soon as possible each day. Don’t cherry-pick from your top three. Do them in the order you wrote them down and start your day by immediately knocking them off the list. If you start your day in daily stand-ups, consider starting 30-60 minutes earlier so that you can have quiet time to work through your list. If you are not a morning person, find time later in the day that you can reasonably not be disturbed. These tasks are probably not very fun, but getting them out of the way early in the day will ensure your critical tasks are done and will keep you from procrastinating. As an example, one of your critical tasks may be getting a requirements change approved so that development can start. If the change is delayed, it won’t make it into the next sprint, and bad things will happen. You can’t approve the requirements change yourself, but you can make sure that an email or notification goes out ASAP. You can also be proactive by ensuring that the development team has reviewed and understands the requirements.   Time management is not a silver bullet to all your troubles. Your boss will still ask you to work on urgent tasks that you hadn't planned for. You will be interrupted because QA found an critical defect. That person you don’t like will still be annoying. But the overall level of stress should, hopefully, be reduced with the clarity of knowing you cannot create more time, but you can control how you spend it. Related Information Read additional blog posts in this series: Time Management: Too Many Messages! Time Management: Implementing a To-Do List Time Management: Calendars Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Jonathan Addair, PMP, is a volunteer with PMI Mile Hi Chapter and a practicing project manager. As project leaders, we are always looking for ways to get more done and drive faster results. Here are a few simple actions you can take every day to amplify your impact. These are not complicated but over years of experience, I’ve found them effective. As project leaders, we are always looking for ways to get more done and drive faster results. Here are a few simple actions you can take every day to amplify your impact. These are not complicated but over years of experience, I’ve found them effective. Focus 1: Work Focus on the Right Work: We can all get overwhelmed by the fast pace of our projects and the volume of work. So, we can’t afford to waste project resources on work that isn’t important. To keep your team moving as quickly as possible on the right work, the project leader needs a reasonable level of understanding of the work required and a clear picture of work priority. If you need the expertise of several people to document requirements, conduct a focused discussion that results in clear deliverables. Break work into manageable pieces and clearly articulate what you need done by whom and by when. Avoid open ended discussions and vague work expectations that allow team members to go in different directions or nowhere at all. Strive for clarity every day so your team is certain of your expectations. Focus 2: People Engage the Right People: The second area where you can amplify your impact is by recognizing the strengths of the people around you. Leaders know people across the organization and what they do well, whether they are part of their team or not. While its important to give people the opportunity to learn new things, its also important to know who can get a specific job done quickly and successfully. One of my managers at Hewlett Packard was a master of knowing people and their strengths. Several times, he contacted me to partner on a project that needed to get finished rapidly. He knew that I had a specific strength in driving things to closure. He did this with many people and on a regular basis. In fact, if I was struggling to launch a program, he would partner me with someone skilled in that work. Two benefits, the work at hand was accomplished more quickly and secondly we all learned new skills from our ‘partners’. His leadership example has influenced me to do the same. Focus 3: Timeliness Increase Speed: This last point is the simplest of all and I'm continually surprised and dismayed at the frequency that I see failure here. Answer your team member's emails! Sometimes project leaders think their individual work is so important that they don’t have time for email. Insane! Every email you answer amplifies your productivity because other people are moving forward to accomplish the goals you gave them. At one point in my career, I had a team in the U.S., one in Singapore and one in Germany. It became obvious that if I failed to answer an email request in a timely way, I could waste two days of people’s time on the other side of the world. It was a valuable lesson. Take advantage of resources waiting to take action or someone else will use their time. Leaders that don’t respond in a timely way to email questions and requests are losing productivity and speed every minute of the day. Did you find this tip helpful? Share my Transformation Tips blog with your colleagues and share your comments with me! Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer is a transformation consultant working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, establish program structure and oversight, and build and coach teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources and leading practices as a project management mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog. No one, especially project managers and sponsors, like surprises and project managers are responsible for understanding potential surprises and risks in their projects. Annette has shared some ideas on how to creatively consider risk exposure in projects and how to approach risk management. Managing Risk No one, especially project managers and sponsors, like surprises and project managers are responsible for understanding potential surprises and risks in their projects. I’ve shared some ideas on how to creatively consider risk exposure in projects and how to approach risk management. However, when it comes to having discussions with your sponsor about risk, you want to focus on building credibility and reducing anxiety. Concentrate on these four areas: Be Prepared for Known Risks You need to plan for and mitigate risks throughout your project. To identify potential risks, engage your team and project stakeholders to get a comprehensive picture. It’s easy to overlook “knowable” risks if you aren’t casting the net wide enough. As you identify risks, document them and conduct both a qualitative and if possible, quantitative analysis for each. If your organization doesn’t have a standard risk identification template that supports capturing and analyzing risks, check out ProjectManagement.com. PMI members get free access to all PM templates, including this risk identification template. Or contact me and I’ll send you a sample template. Manage Organization Change at a Detailed Level Organization change is a huge area of risk that project managers ignore at their own peril. Most of us have experienced an implementation where the project manager didn’t consider change management and how a project would impact various teams in the organization. The receiving team was given a brief presentation just days before the new system or process was implemented. No one knew what to expect or what to do and the implementation created chaos. Not a good strategy for protecting your project or your sponsor from risk. To reduce the risk from organizational change, you need to understand at a detailed level the impact of your project and who will be affected. Create a worksheet of the current and future state of major areas of functionality and identify the specific work needed to implement that future state for each team impacted by the change.* What are the downstream impacts? Do procedures need to be modified, does documentation need to be updated, will reports need to be changed, do websites and links need to be modified, does a team require training?* Who needs to be aware of the changes? Do specific groups need to be briefed, should change champions be engaged to prepare their organizations, are updates needed for support FAQs and scripts? If you want to become a stronger project manager, learn more about change management and find resources to help improve your capabilities. Read my other blogs on change management and contact me if you are interested in a change assessment template. React Quickly to Emerging Problems When the unexpected hits, time is not on your side. We have all experienced “unknown” risks in our projects. You realize that your “subject matter expert” isn’t much of an expert! or a team member underestimated the difficulty of completing a deliverable and now your time and cost estimates aren’t adequate. Whatever the problem, it’s important to react with speed and focus to understand the issue, to find ways to mitigate the problem and to communicate those to your sponsor. Communicate Risks Regularly Being transparent about project risk requires some courage. Often, project managers don’t want to share bad news and “hope” to figure things out. When it comes to project risks, that’s not a winning strategy and it won’t build credibility with your sponsor. To communicate effectively, highlight project risks and mitigation planning as part of your regular status reporting for sponsors and stakeholders. As new risks come up, make your sponsor aware and let them know you are working on mitigation plans. This reduces the “surprise” element for your sponsor and often they can accelerate your risk mitigation efforts. Risk management is a good area to focus some of your sponsor’s time, so be courageous! Practicing these risk management tactics builds your credibility and demonstrates a level of awareness and leadership that sponsors will appreciate. Did you find this tip helpful? Share my Transformation Tips blog with your colleagues and share your comments with me! Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Annette Leazer is a transformation consultant working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, establish program structure and oversight, and build and coach teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources and leading practices as a project management mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog. With the new decade shining down the way, entrepreneurship is on the rise more than ever. People are opting for opening their own businesses and becoming their own boss instead of working under someone. And with famous female entrepreneurs paving the way for women empowerment, it is now being recognized all over the world. Staff Empowerment Ideas For Women Entrepreneurs “Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when you’re knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on.” – Hillary Clinton, Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee. With the new decade shining down the way, entrepreneurship is on the rise more than ever. People are opting for opening their own businesses and becoming their own boss instead of working under someone. And with famous female entrepreneurs paving the way for women empowerment, it is now being recognized all over the world. So here are some ways our new generation women entrepreneurs can empower their staff members, despite of gender; for a successful, futuristic, and more inclusive business. 12 Ways You Can Empower Employees at Your Company being a Female Entrepreneur 1.    Take inspiration from famous leading female entrepreneurs Women like Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and Tory Burch, CEO of the infamous global brand Tory Burch are some prime examples of successful ventures owned by women. According to statistics collected by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, there has been a 10% increase in top roles being taken by women as compared to previous years. New women entrepreneurs should take inspiration from these people and numbers to sustain themselves in their well-deserved positions. People hold such women in high regard because of their ability to hold such senior positions in possibly male-dominated industries. 2.    Deal with clients who hold women in high regard The first rule of business as a female should be to do business with clients that hold women leaders in high regard. Many brands, even today, condemn female empowerment by not hiring women employees or sabotage their growth by not promoting them to more senior positions. Such brands are a terrible influence overall. And your employees, regardless of their gender, don't need to have any relationship with such an organization. Instead, opt for organizations that are open and friendly towards all. They accept people for the value of their skill instead of their gender. 3.    Offer flexible working conditions It doesn't matter who you choose to hire, that's a leader's call. Whoever you seem would be a profitable employee for you should be rightfully chosen. However, your working conditions should be flexible to accommodate all groups. For example, we need to empower women in the tech world, but rigorous norms that it is a men’s field have made women conscious of entering it. Other departments shouldn’t follow this.  Your employees should be allowed to discuss stuff with their colleagues freely. Giving an open environment and a comfortable workspace to your employees is crucial. It affects their profitability if they can exercise their power as an employee. 4.    Accommodate their personal needs A successful leader takes after their employees like a team leader working towards a mutual goal. Therefore, you must step down and look from their perspective that your employees have a life of their own outside the workspace. Your startup might be your life's dream to achieve, which your employees don't share it with you. Take it like they are helping you to achieve your goal because they are passionate about the responsibility assigned to them, in exchange for monetary value. Similarly, if an employee of yours wants to buy Jessica Jones Leather Jacket, you aren’t going to buy it for them. You will just share their enthusiasm in the product and give them salary for their work which they will use to buy it. It is why the company they have joined should look after their personal needs. So that it gives them the incentive to look after yours just as responsibly. 5.    Exercise unbiased rules and policies It's high time we bring equality within our workplaces. If your employees are women who are married with a family and choosing to work with, you should be offered compensations and flexibility to work from home and leave early. Whereas if you have hired men working to provide for a family, even then they should be allowed to look after their family duties first and then fulfill their work duties. Company rules should be unbiased. They shouldn't be made or practiced concerning people's gender. For example you can’t say that marketing dissertation topics is only a women’s job for any reason. Provide the said job to anybody based on skill and not gender. 6.    Health and child care standards A lot of people work to provide for their families. So as employers, we need to understand that if families are their priority, we hold their care and health most high for us too. Because it will directly affect how our employees respond to their work. A happy, healthy household will allow them to work better and without any extra stress from their family's side. It is why health care provision is essential for organizations. 7.    Connect them with mentors Establish managers or team leads who not only train and report to a higher authority, but who mentor the new recruit. Mentorship works great for employees to motive them and help them understand the aims, goals, mission, and vision of the company. The more empathetic they become towards the company, the more they will proceed to work in the direction of the bigger image as their own. 8.    Encourage Self-Improvement Being a boss doesn’t mean that it is your responsibility to improve the shortcomings of your employees. As a leader you need to empower self-improvement for them to understand the dos and don’ts. The best outcomes happen when an employee is able to rectify their own mistakes instead of it being pinpointed. 9.    Have an open door policy An open door policy allows the employees to know that there is no barrier for them when it comes to communicating. They can easily intimate their bosses or seniors about any matter they would like to discuss. It encourages them to see that their opinions and input is valued so they work well towards achieving it. 10.   Delegate more than just work As a boss it is not necessary that the only thing you delegate to your employees is work. Make sure to empower them to take on other roles like undertaking a project meeting or leady a presentation. Taking on newer tasks of high importance gives confidence to the employees as well as add to their overall skill set. 11.    Openly Recognize Employee Input It is in human nature to feel encouraged when appreciated among other people. Same goes for employees in work space. It is encouraging to have your hard work being appreciated among your colleagues by your bosses. You as a boss can even start a practice of awards and monthly certifications to give as a token of appreciation. Conclusion – Remind Them that They Are Valued Last but not the least; remind your employees every now and then that they are a valuable asset to the company. Without them, you wouldn't have been able to establish the organization that stands so tall now. Such motivation will keep them going longer for you and your business goals. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. We also have a recurring event focused on Women in Project Management Leadership. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter!  About the Author Claudia Jeffrey is currently working as Assistant Manager For Research & Development at Crowd Writer, an excellent thesis writing service provider. She has worked with many known companies under the human resource department as well. She believes in women's empowerment and shares her opinions online. Poor communication skills in the business environment could lead to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and disorganization of facts. Hence, it is crucial that every business sphere, employers and employees must possess the right communication skills. Communicating effectively is a vital skill for making headway with a deal, and in the same way, poor communication could lead to one losing a deal. Business owners must be able to communicate their thoughts and ideas effectively to customers and clients about products and services. In the same vein, communication made with poor English grammar would lead to confusion whether the information is delivered verbally or in written form. The hearer or reader would find it hard to comprehend whatever information is being passed across. So, as much as one develops their communicative skills, one must also develop their speech for clear and correct communication. What Is Communication? According to business Queensland, Communication involves sharing information and understanding the meaning that information is conveying, whether verbally or in writing. If both, the person listening and the person speaking is easily understood, then that conversation is regarded as a success. Communication skills are essential to deliver and understand information quickly and accurately. Communication is context-based; hence, the meaning of a message is dependent on the context in which the communicative event takes place. Having excellent communication skills is a plus to any business owner or personnel working in the business sector. Communication could be verbal or written. Verbal Communication Verbal communication involves a face to face communication between two or more persons, which includes words. The manner of expression is just as important as the words used in communicating. While verbal communication is ongoing, body language should be looked out for. Written Communication This is a type of communication that involves the use of written words for communicating ideas and facts to people. If you have to work with people of other languages, you can pass across your message, and within context using online translation services like The Word Point. Communication in the Business Environment?    Communication in business occurs in a business setting, and it is concerned with the promotion of a brand, product, and services. The concept of business communication is related to the fields of professional and technical communication. One can communicate politely in a business environment and still convey all the information the other party needs to get. To communicate effectively in a business setting, relevant topics such as corporate communication, marketing, customer relations, consumer behavior, advertising, public relations, etc. are the bane of the discussion. Within the workplace, effective communication will help build long-lasting and cordial relationships between members of the workplace. Developing the right communication skills would go a long way to affect our interactions with people in the family, professional, and social spheres of life and improve relationships. Communication is amongst the top ten in-demand skills, as shown by statistics, and is the skill employers look for in their potential employees. As simple as it is, poor communication skills can mar the goal and aim of an organization. Listening is an important communication skill that people must cultivate, especially in the work area. It is important to pause during a conversation and let the other person talk. It makes the other person feel important and relevant in the discussion. It is a pointer that their opinion counts. How To Communicate Better Having understood what communication is generally and what it entails in the business setting, it is essential to know how to communicate effectively. If the information is to be passed in the written format, it must be clear and concise as unclear and lengthy messages can put readers off. Correct spellings and punctuation must be taken into consideration. Wrong spellings and use of punctuations can lead to the distortion of messages; these are semantics. In a verbal setting, the other party must not be left out of the discussion. It is important to give room for the other person to chip in one or two things. Engaging the other party during the conversation is a sign of respect. Avoid the use of technical terms and Jargons, especially if they are not relevant. Ensure that your speaking style is in sync with the discussion. Using a positive speaking style can serve as motivation to listeners, just as they can be put off by a negative style. Benefits of Effective Communication in a Business Environment A better rapport with customers, clients, and coworkers is built when communication is effective. The ability to make your customers feel like they are heard is a clue that communication is effective and progressive. Customers would use your services over and over again. Effective communication within the business sphere enhances the image of the business as well as the person involved. Making a good impression on the people around you is one key to representing oneself appropriately and positively, as well as the organization they work for. The ability to communicate effectively in a work setting is as valuable as keeping customers closer. It is a valuable asset company lookout for because excellent communicative skills are beneficial to the growth of the corporation. Proper communication means being understood as well as understanding. Right and effective communication would leave both parties satisfied and convinced of whatever has been discussed. A successful conversation is likely to be achieved when the listener and hearer understand what is being passed across. Meaning is, at this point, conveyed. Useful communication skills for building positive interpersonal relationships include active listening, non-verbal understanding of signals, maintaining eye contact, assertiveness, being mindful of people's personal space, using positive body language, dealing with different points of view. Final Thoughts So far, it is evident that the importance of excellent communication skills cannot be overemphasized in our daily business dealings. From sales to marketing, promotion, branding, etc., it goes a long way in determining the success of a business. Every business owner dreams of growing his business successfully. Why not develop exceptional communication skills for your business today? Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! In a good mood, you arrive in the office with your coffee and a spring in your step. You acknowledge your coworkers as you make your way to your desk. In your email, there's a message from your boss requesting a meeting. Your coworker's Project X is not on track and the boss wants you to do project recovery. In a good mood, you arrive in the office with your coffee and a spring in your step. You acknowledge your coworkers as you make your way to your desk. In your email, there's a message from your boss requesting a meeting. Your coworker's Project X is not on track and the boss wants you to do project recovery. Your coworker has been reassigned to somewhere else in the company and you'll get about 20 minutes for knowledge transfer and then any phone calls your coworker decides to take after he leaves. Project Recovery: Where to Start? Once you get over the shock and confusion around being assigned an ongoing project that's failing, it's time to do some assessment. Set up a time to talk with the sponsor and stakeholders of the project. You need to ask a few questions and need to hear the answers from the individuals involved. What is wrong - exactly? Dates missed? Deliverables incorrect? Budget busted? All three? Find out what the sponsors and stakeholders think is the problem. What do they expect? By what date? No solutions yet Don't offer any solutions yet. You don't know enough. Now it's time to go to the team. Gather the Team Ask the team the same questions that the sponsor and stakeholders. Write down the answers and listen. If you hear your voice more often than anyone else's, you're talking too much. This meeting is not for solutions - it's for information gathering. Time Is Probably Important Seldom do companies transfer control of projects because there's plenty of time to get the project complete. No doubt something was due yesterday, and now you're farther behind. Know the documentation Even so, part of project recovery is reading through all the project documents and comparing those documents to the answers you received from the team, the sponsor, and the stakeholders. Before you can recover the project, you need to know and understand what you're trying to accomplish. Find Some Help Once you feel you understand what needs to be done, delivered, or managed, ask your team for help. They have been involved and probably have some idea of what needs to be done to fix it. Figure out how to get some wins quickly. Let the team help Chances are they are just as eager to get this fixed as you and the sponsor. Get Started Once you've got the new plan devised, make sure your sponsor and stakeholders agree. Dates have probably moved and deliverables might be changed. It's important to have facts and figures when you meet. Be sure your plan is reasonable and accurate. Schedules aren't magic. Development of deliverables can't always be sped up. Be honest and be frank about what needs to happen going forward. Management may not be happy, but most managers prefer the truth. Execute Your Plan Project recovery is about taking stock of what you have, what you need, and how to get there. Execute and manage your new plan, keeping management informed. Hit your dates and deliverables to prove your plan is working. What are your steps for project recovery? Tell us in the comments.   This post was originally published on www.proprojectmanager.com 3/27/18. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Deb Schaffer, PMP, has 20 years’ experience managing projects and teams in large software and manufacturing companies. She's an expert in time management, productivity, and just getting stuff done. She resides in the Denver, Colorado area, helping companies manage training and marketing projects, writing whitepapers, newsletters and blog posts, and mentoring staff. When she's not managing a project, find her traveling or on the golf course taking notes to update her new book, Play Golf, Colorado! Find her on LinkedIn at DebSchafferPMP and at her blog, Proprojectmanger.com As a member of a project team, what is the leadership style of your team leader? Over the years, I've seen many different styles of team leadership. Sometimes it was fascinating watching leaders attempt to get the project complete - often with little success. In other cases, it was seeing pure poetry as the deliverables and the project is quietly achieved. As a member of a project team, what is the leadership style of your team leader? Over the years, I've seen many different styles of team leadership. Sometimes it was fascinating watching leaders attempt to get the project complete - often with little success. In other cases, it was seeing pure poetry as the deliverables and the project is quietly achieved. There are plenty of options for testing and figuring out the management style of your team lead. Here are five styles leadership styles and suggestions for handling the situation if you find yourself on their team. Which leader do you have? Tyrant These folks lead through fear and intimidation. They threaten and bully members in order to get work done.  I've found that being on this team is like being trapped on a boat that is slowly sinking. Wondering when the next outburst might occur is very stressful. Some company cultures allow this frightening behavior. Perhaps there are folks that need threats and intimidation to focus on what they need to do. I've never met any. The team is miserable and results are often inadequate. Tyrants have difficulty understanding why their techniques don't work for everyone. I've seen teams completely shut down and undermine the project just to prove to the lead who really has the power. What to Do? In my case, I get off a team run by a tyrant as soon as possible. I've seen very few cases where tyrants change their style. I'm not willing to deal with the tirades and the stress. Your mileage may vary. If your company allows this type of behavior to continue, my advice is to find another job as soon as possible. Over-collaborator I once worked with a Director that believed complete consensus was necessary before any decision was reached. Naturally, this meant that very few decisions were made, and the ones that were made were often inadequate or too late. This is the symptom of the classic over collaborator. When companies hire people, they spend a great deal of time looking for qualifications and determining fit with the team. I agree that allowing the trusted folks should be asked their thoughts. If you didn't trust their expertise, why did you hire them? That doesn't mean everyone must agree with the decision made. Giving everyone a voice is good. Trying to get complete agreement from everyone is difficult and time-consuming. As a team leader, your job is to make the decision and keep the team moving forward. Over-collaborators are often afraid of making the wrong decision, so they insist everyone agree or they make no decision at all. What to Do? My response to being on a team like this used to be frustration and exasperation. With experience, I've learned to just let this go and tried to work around it. If someone is afraid to make a decision, it's unlikely your influence can change their behavior. Get as much work done as possible while waiting for the decision to be made. Do it All This leader is the person who doesn't trust anyone on their team to do anything right. They are not good at delegating, or if they give you something to do they call you three times an hour to see how you're progressing. It's nice that the team lead knows how to do the project tasks. On the upside, the team lead knows which questions to ask to understand progress. On the downside, pestering the team takes lots of time out of everyone's day. And most people do not like to be micro-managed, lowering productivity. Sometimes this lead takes the most important tasks for themselves. Unfortunately, running a project team and also trying to do the critical tasks can be a recipe for disaster. In my experience, the "do it all" leader, or micromanager has trust issues. They don't trust their teams and they don't trust their own judgment. Over time, upper management won't trust them either. What to Do? When I'm on a team with a "do it all" lead, my first instinct is to offer to take tasks off their plate and complete them.  When this works, and trust is established, sometimes the micromanaging gets better. If the lead won't accept help, or only accepts help if you do everything their way by micromanaging the process, I look for another team. Success is difficult to achieve when a 10-person project is basically being done by one person. Absent This lead is the opposite of the "do it all" manager. An absent team lead disappears during the project, being unavailable to the team and sometimes management. For a team that is cohesive and has worked together before, an absent lead may not slow them down. Unfortunately, most teams have not worked together before and need some type of leadership to be sure to get the deliverables completed on time and on budget. Is your team having regular status meetings? Do you see your team lead around the office, or hear from them at least once per week? If the silence from your lead is deafening and you can't get your questions answered, you've got an absent leader. What to Do? If you're self-motivated, just get your work done based on your understanding of the task. If you have any questions, document the questions and your solution to your lead. Then if you don't get a response, implement your solution. If you have a question that won't wait, go the individual that is the designated back-up to the team lead. Then, get on a different team. Lead by Example Luckily, I've had a few of these team leads in my career. This leader shows up, takes charge, delegates tasks to the appropriate individuals and then lets them work. When a task or deliverable was late or at risk, they talk with the assigned members and worked out a solution to the problem. This leader communicates with the team and upper management. The "lead by example" leader is available to the team members when an issue arises. As a team member, you know what you need to do and by when. If you get assigned to this team lead, be thankful. Do your job, complete your deliverables on time and on budget. When this project is done, ask to be assigned to this team lead again. The Team Lead Is Important A project team lead is an important part of the overall project effort. When leaders bully team members, spend all their time trying to reach consensus, try to do everything themselves, or check out of the process the project suffers.  When your team lead treats the team like the professional individuals they are, success is much more likely. More Information on Leadership Styles For more questions and information about leadership styles, check out the Harvard Business Review for a quick assessment. What leadership styles have you experienced? Let us know in the comments below. This post was originally published on www.proprojectmanager.com 3/13/17. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Deb Schaffer, PMP, has 20 years’ experience managing projects and teams in large software and manufacturing companies. She's an expert in time management, productivity, and just getting stuff done. She resides in the Denver, Colorado area, helping companies manage training and marketing projects, writing whitepapers, newsletters and blog posts, and mentoring staff. When she's not managing a project, find her traveling or on the golf course taking notes to update her new book, Play Golf, Colorado! Find her on LinkedIn at DebSchafferPMP and at her blog, Proprojectmanger.com Scrum is a popular Agile methodology and is perhaps the number one framework when it comes to iterative software development. Scrum is currently the most widely used Agile framework. A Scrum is a specific approach that is implemented for team management purposes when developing software. Scrum is a popular Agile methodology and is perhaps the number one framework when it comes to iterative software development. Scrum is currently the most widely used Agile framework. A Scrum is a specific approach that is implemented for team management purposes when developing software. The real definition of scrum is that it is a methodology that helps people to handle intricate adaptive issues, while effectively and innovatively providing high-quality products. A Scrum framework may not provide in-depth and complete guides on how the software development process is conducted by software developers. This is why a Scrum software development team is required since its experts are knowledgeable when it comes to addressing any problems encountered throughout the development process. Seven Reasons In this post, we’ve compiled a list of seven reasons to use SCRUM in your team management. 1. Freedom of Operation Scrum as a framework defines the roles, artifacts and evens and whether there are rules to be followed. Within a Scrum, you can use numerous tools and techniques. Note that you cannot change the Scrum framework and so you must apply it as a whole so that it can work effectively and house other methodologies and practices. It is crucial to understand that it is possible to apply only some parts of the Scrum framework; however, the outcome won’t be Scrum.Scrum offers freedom in that it limits the tools to use and the application of the framework. 2. Power to People Everyday decisions- this where many things happen. Scrum supports day-to-day decisions. When at the sprint the developers are given the freedom to work without being interfered. Communication is made in a continuous manner within the team since short status meeting that is conducted makes team members be aware of the daily goals and progress. 3. Constant Progress During the Sprint review team members get feedback from customers, and then a retrospective meeting is held. In the meeting, members talk about what went well and what needs to be improved. Whenever there is something to improve in which case there is, the most important improvement suggestions are considered first to be improved during the next sprint. 4. Emphasis on Delivery The greatest thing about scrum is that it ensures something of value is delivered to customers earlier in the process and then constantly at consistent intervals during the course of a project. The customer sees the product early, provides some suggestions on the way it is being developed and improvements are made constantly. Scrum makes the progress of your project to be visible throughout until a product is delivered to the customer. 5. Constant Learning Throughout and at the end of the sprint, scrum members usually review the achievements and failures of the sprint with the aim of improving the coming sprint.The team advances as the project continues to progress. A successful project is delivered by meeting deadlines and incorporating feedback from customers. 6. A Flexible Team Unlike the traditional waterfall model in project management, scrum teams are more flexible when it comes to developing business goals and varying requirements. The waterfall model follows a sequential approach.Work is done in a sequential manner, from one stage to another. Scrum makes a team be flexible and productive; there is transparency of flaws, so teams can go back and address a problem when it occurs. 7. Customer Centered Scrum ensures customers are in the focus. In this case, the customer is placed at the core of the development process. Team members use customer feedback during the development process. This makes the team meet the needs of the customers and provide products of value to them. Final Words Scrum is a framework meant to enhance the productivity of a team, responsiveness to customers and offers freedom of implementation. Scrum is easy to learn and use and brings more benefits to a company and to the customers as well as the Scrum team. Additional Resources Check out this post by Ben Aston on the 11 best scrum tools to increase your team's productivity. He run's down some of the best software options your team can use to implement scrum easily and effectively. Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Chris Richardson is an editor at https://www.essaygeeks.co.uk. He is also a professional content writing expert in such topics as career growth, self-improvement, blogging, and technology innovations. Feel free to connect with him on Google+. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but I do remember my mom subtly telling me to continue to be smart in whom I chose to befriend. I’ve heeded her advice and it’s never let me down. This advice applies to us in the workplace and as leaders too.My mom shared an impactful saying with me when I was in my teens. She said, “You are the average of the five people with whom you most often associate.” I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but I do know she was subtly telling me to continue to be smart in whom I chose to befriend. I’ve heeded her advice and it’s never let me down. This advice applies to us in the workplace and as leaders too. Your Workplace Five In the workplace and as project managers, you are the average of the five people with whom you most often spend time, listen to, give your time and energy to, and become associated with. Who are you allowing to influence you, access your time, tap into your energy and wisdom, and impact your reputation and brand? If you at all doubt the power of another person’s influence on you just by interacting with them, take a few seconds and visualize various team members with whom you’ve spent a fair amount of time just this week. Who energized you? Who caused you to take a deep calming breath? Who challenged you to think deeper, differently, or more objectively?  Who made you laugh? Who surprised you with a skill you hadn’t seen before? Who gave advice that again proved sound? Who gave advice that, once again, was not sound? Who impressed you with the perfect reaction or appropriate response in a tense situation? Who embarrassed you? Who helped you? Who frustrated you or left you feeling taken advantage of or used? Who made you feel good during your time together, and who were you ready to get away from? Your Psyche and Your Inner Circle People you spend time with have a tremendous impact on your psyche, your attitude, your health, your ability to think clearly and make sound decisions...your ability to lead. The point of this article isn’t to suggest you isolate yourself from colleagues, project team members, vendors, or customers who frustrate you. You can't. You lead projects. The point is to ensure you have a personal leadership inner circle of roughly five key people who positively impact your life as a leader. You may have a special someone who loves you and who understands and supports you in your leadership role. But who else are you intentionally allowing in and keeping in your inner leadership circle? Sources of Your Five Your project team may be the source for a key individual or two to include in your inner circle, but your team shouldn’t be your only source. Reach outside your own project teams and organization to connect with others whom you trust and respect. Who do you want to get to know and learn from? Who understands you, your values, and your work world and is willing to tell you the hard truth? Who are you willing to admit mistakes to and be vulnerable with? Who causes you to think deeper? Who brings new ideas from outside your organization and industry? Who is a voice of reason to help you think through challenging leadership, project, or team issues?  Your leadership inner circle may be a combination of project team members, professional friends, colleagues, advisers, and mentors. It’s not a group that you bring together for formal gatherings. Instead, it’s a team of individuals you like, trust, respect, and admire and reach out to individuals as needs arise. You know who to call with an impromptu question. You know who you can let your guard down and laugh with about the idiocy of a recent team issue. You know who will drop everything and be available if needed. Be smart in developing your inner circle, your leadership network, your key five. They’re people you’re proud to call colleagues and friends because knowing them makes you a better person. But, knowing you makes them better too. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Liz Weber and her team work with leaders to create focused plans for their organizations' future. Then they work with the leaders to ensure their plans are implemented effectively. Copyright MMXVIII - Liz Weber, CMC, CSP - Weber Business Services, LLC – www.WBSLLC.com +1.717.597.8890Being able to communicate clearly is a skill essential to any project manager and leader. That’s no surprise. Clear hand-off communication is imperative when transferring a project to a new project team or to the client. It’s a must for business owners and CEOs when articulating strategies for company-wide strategic initiatives.Being able to communicate clearly is a skill essential to any project manager and leader. That’s no surprise. Clear hand-off communication is imperative when transferring a project to a new project team or to the client. It’s a must for business owners and CEOs when articulating strategies for company-wide strategic initiatives. In addition, a 2016 study by Korn Ferry found organizations that were able to achieve a high level of engagement with their employees realized 4.5 times greater revenue growth than those with the lowest-engaged employees. A key factor in engagement is clear communication from leadership. Engaged employees are connected to the company. They understand their roles. They understand what is expected of them. And, they feel as if they’re understood and valued as individuals. So besides simply telling your team what they need to do, what are you doing to ensure you are communicating with them in ways that resonate with each of them individually? Evaluate Yourself To get a sense of how well you’re communicating with your project teams, let’s see how you respond to the following: When you try to communicate with team members, Do they interrupt, ‘shut down’ or stop listening? Do they misinterpret what you say? Do you find yourself wondering why they behave the way they do and say the things they say? If you answered ‘Yes’ to just one of those questions, you are not alone. And you are not alone in needing to take a step back and realize: If team members are frequently shutting down when you try to engage with them, misinterpreting what you say, or responding in ways you didn’t expect, you are not reading them, communicating with them, or interacting with them correctly. You are communicating at them. You are not intentionally communicating with them. Most basically, you are not seeing them as individuals with individual communication style needs and preferences. You’re communicating to them in ways that are most comfortable and logical for you, not them. You are not ‘reading’ them correctly, and therefore, your ability to communicate effectively across a spectrum of personality types, is limited. Focus on Others Likely, you are not ‘reading’ others correctly, and therefore, your ability to communicate effectively across a spectrum of personality types, is limited. When communication fails to effectively convey to others, we’re often focusing more on what we want to transmit, and not on how it needs to be conveyed so others will best receive it. We default to communicate in the style and manner that resonates with us. However, the differences in personalities and communication style preferences have been studied for centuries. The current, dominant personality and communication style assessments – such as DiSC®, Myers & Briggs, and Dr. Tony Alessandra’s The Platinum Rule®, – all build upon four, core personality and communication styles and attributes. The underlying insight presented by every assessment is summed up in Dr. Alessandra’s Platinum Rule® credo: Do unto others as they want done unto them.  This simple mantra of communicating with others in ways that resonate with them, not you, is easy to say but not easy to do. When it comes to effective communication, forget the Golden Rule. To communicate clearly and effectively, you need to focus on them. But Forget the Golden Rule When it comes to effective communication, forget the Golden Rule. Though we each have aspects of all four personality and communication style preferences within us, we each have one style that is dominant. When pressured slightly, we also tend to default to our dominant style as our ‘Go To’ mode of communication. However, when we try to communicate with someone with a different dominant style, if their dominant style isn’t the same as ours, they may quickly shut down, misinterpret, or react in ways we don’t expect or want. To prevent them from shutting down, and disengaging quickly, we need to ‘read’ them, identify their dominant personality and communication styles, and then adjust our mode of communicating to one that better resonates with them. Know Their Communication Style So let’s review the four dominant styles to identify how to better read our project team member and communicate more effectively with them: Supportive/Relaters/Doves are helpful team members, calm, and methodical. They don't like tension, fighting, or rushing. They listen more than they speak, and they will slow down and withdraw when they feel pressured. To communicate effectively with them, physically slow down, speak slower, be friendly, and give them time to think and ask questions. This personality type thrives on helping others, so communicate with them in ways that allow them to feel as if they are a contributor, supportive, and an essential team member. Influencer/Socializers/Peacocks are energetic, creative and full of ideas. They don't like routine or detailed work. They tend to speak more than they listen and are easily distracted. They will talk more when they feel pressure. To communicate with these individuals, show a bit of energy and “personality”, smile, make strong eye contact, and give them time to share ideas. This personality type needs to be with people and thrives on the energy of and interactions with others, so let them express themselves, and then refocus their energies. Conscientious/Thinkers/Owls are methodical, logical, and linear thinkers. They enjoy data and intellectual challenges. They think before they speak or act. They will become quiet and withdraw to focus and identify how to resolve problems or conflicts. When communicating with these individuals, give them time to think and process information before pushing them to make decisions or even comment on what you’ve shared. This personality type thrives on accuracy so give them time for processing, but clarify they need to be concise in summarizing their analysis or recommendations. Dominant Force/Directors/Eagles are quick and decisive in how they speak, move, think and act. They tend to speak before they think things through completely. They seek progress and completion, marking off goals and checklists, and being quick and efficient. They become more direct, quick, and decisive when they feel pressure. To communicate with them, get to the point. This personality type thrives on getting things done, so frame conversations to help them make decisions, move things forward, and accomplish tasks and goals. Keep in mind: Clear project communication is about them – not you. Everyone has a dominant and preferred personality and communication style. Keep your dominant style in mind and in check. Hone your communication skills by focusing on reading and mirroring others’ communication style preferences and needs better. The more you focus on them, the better your interactions will become, and the more powerful your project communications will be. Remember: To communicate clearly, focus on them, not you. Additional Resources Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter! About the Author Liz Weber and her team work with leaders to create focused plans for their organizations' future. Then they work with the leaders to ensure their plans are implemented effectively. Copyright MMXVIII - Liz Weber, CMC, CSP - Weber Business Services, LLC – www.WBSLLC.com +1.717.597.8890When I first started working as an IT Project Manager at Procter & Gamble, I thought I had all of the skills I needed to be successful. I had a degree in Computer Science & Engineering so I could understand all of the technical aspects; I had studied up on things like scope, budget, time, and resource allocation; and I knew all of the acronyms like NPV, COB, and LOL. When I first started working as an IT Project Manager at Procter & Gamble, I thought I had all of the skills I needed to be successful. I had a degree in Computer Science & Engineering so I could understand all of the technical aspects; I had studied up on things like scope, budget, time, and resource allocation; and I knew all of the acronyms like NPV, COB, and LOL. And then I started working and realized that I didn’t have great skill in managing the most challenging of all resources: humans. As an engineer, I had always been obsessed with efficiency (for example, I believe efficiency should be a one syllable word), but quickly learned you can’t be efficient with humans. They have “emotions” and “feelings” and get “sick” and “tired” and have to “eat” and “sleep.” Instead of being efficient, you have to be effective. Over time, I learned there is one really effective tool for engaging with humans: humor. So, here are five ways project managers can use humor to get better results. 1. Create Interesting Subject Lines The average person sends and receives 112 emails per day, so if you want someone to actually open your email, you have to give them a compelling reason to do so. One way to do that is to use a little incongruity to help your email subject line stand out from all of the others sitting in your team's inbox. For example, one of my first teams at P&G was comprised of a few Trekkies, so I decided to have fun with my weekly status emails. Instead of using a standard subject line like Project X Weekly Status Update - February 10, I decided to use Project X PM Log Stardate 47634.44 [2/10]. (Yes, I would actually calculate the stardate). I heard from multiple Star Trek fans from my team that every time they saw my email, they couldn’t help but smirk like Kirk. It was a simple way to get people a fraction more excited to see my email. 2. Reward Readers at the End of Long Emails Along the lines of email, another way to encourage people to read the electronic mail you’ve sent them is to reward their diligence with something at the end of the message. It can be a quotation, a link to a humorous video, or, my favorite, puns. During one particularly challenging integration project I was leading, I had to send out a long multi-project update every two weeks to the entire sales team. It covered a lot of detail but was necessary for updating the entire group as to where we were. At the end of each update, I started including puns I would make up based on the primary topic of the email. I found that people started replying back to these updates. Not to ask questions about the project, but mostly to tell me how good, or more often, how bad, these custom puns were. While I would have preferred they thought the jokes were the funniest thing they’d ever read, any comment meant they were actually reading the emails (or at least opening them and scrolling to the bottom). Adding a small humor thank you is an easy way to reward people for reading your messages. 3. Use Meetings to Get to Know People One of the disadvantages of labeling people as resources is that sometimes that's all we think of them as. We forget that people on the other side of an email or other side of a conference desk is a fellow human being with human emotions. When we get to know each other as humans and build stronger relationships, we create more engagement and positivity in our teams. One easy way to do that is to either start or end each team meeting by having everyone answer a question. These questions don't have to be crazy personal or wacky, just something to get people to share a little more about their human side. Some of the most popular questions I still use with include: What's the first thing you remember buying with your own money? What's been your proudest moment of this past year? What story does your family always tell about you? It's amazing how simple questions can strengthen a team's dynamic. 4. Pep Up Your Presentations with Pictures We all know about the dreaded death by PowerPoint: presentations where someone reads slides to you as if it's the worst audiobook you've ever heard. And yet, when it comes to our own presentations, we often fall into the same trap because it's easier to write out a script of what to say than actually memorize key points and speak to them. But just because we can make slides full of text doesn't mean we should. It may be efficient, but it’s not effective. Instead, take advantage of doing a presentation by including images and graphics. This will keep people more engaged and likely improve their recall of the material. One of my favorite ways to do this is to find ways to sneak a picture of myself into every presentation I do. Not because I'm narcissistic, but because I've always wanted to be more like Alfred Hitchcock. Sometimes the pictures of me are obvious, other times it’s just a silhouette in the background. It got to the point with one team that it became a game to be the first person to spot me in the presentation. Bonus note: If you don't want to use your own photos, one easy way to find compelling pictures is to go to Flickr, set a filter for Creative Common images, and type in the theme of your presentation. You'll get results for hundreds of images you can readily use (just make sure to give proper credit) that are way better than 10 bullet points on a slide. The image above is one I use in my presentations when talking about the power of a smile. 5. Improve Understanding with Analogies Sometimes as PMs, we have to explain complex (and often dry) subjects to a range of people. Getting into the details isn’t always exciting and can be confusing for some of our resources. One way to get around this and actually improve team understanding is by creating metaphors and analogies for our subject. One summer at P&G, I was tasked with taking a 3-day PM course and distilling it down into a 3-hour lesson that we gave to our interns. In order to frame the entire training, I decided to find a metaphor that I could come back to that would explain the terms. Eventually, I settled on a wedding: Project Management is a lot like getting married. There’s a project initiation (proposal), a project charter (vows), stakeholders (parents), and about 50% of both don’t end up working out… This analogy worked because we learn new concepts by relating them to concepts we already know. By relating to a wedding, something everyone knows at least a little about, I added humor throughout the program and the interns had a clear framework to go back to when trying to understand the various stages of a project. More Fun = Better Results There are countless other ways Project Managers can get better results by having more fun. And the more humor you use (so long as it has a specific purpose and you are still getting your work done), the more impact you can have. One thing you might have noticed in these examples is the value of consistently using humor. Once your emails are known to include a bit of humor, people actually read them. Once your meetings have elements of fun, people actually come to them. Once people realize they’ll have enjoy working on your projects, they’ll want to join your team. Have any examples of how you’ve used humor at work? Share them in the comments!   About the Author Andrew Tarvin is the world’s leading humor engineer. He is the founder of Humor That Works, a consultancy in human effectiveness that provides training in human skills. Prior to starting Humor That Works, he was a top-rated project manager at Procter & Gamble, leading multi-million dollar projects for a $350 million business. For questions or comments, reach out here or learn more at https://www.humorthatworks.com.   Image credits: Humor that Works by FunnyBizz SFSmiling Dog by Allen Skyy, CC by 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/