A Learning environment for Continuous Project Improvement

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Learning environment for Continuous Project Improvement graphicHigh-performing project teams embrace continuous improvement. And continuous learning is the core of that mindset. Here are tips for developing a learning environment in a project that enables continuous improvement and long-term performance.

  • Allow for experimentation. New tools and approaches can produce significant changes but deploying them can be a challenge. You can get better performance and improved business results when you allow project team members to experiment without excessive deadline pressure. This is easier said than done. You have to include time for experimentation into your plans and then defend those plans with key stakeholders. Note: To gain approval, discuss the potential for significant improvements and also create alternate plans in case the team’s experimentation doesn’t work out.
  • Focus on “what did we learn?” rather than blame. Setbacks occur in every project. To enable learning, focus on what led to the setback, rather than who was at fault. Identify training and processes that could help avoid setbacks, or look for ways to learn from them. This positive approach embraces what makes learning organizations productive.
  • Make mentoring a high priority. In learning organizations, leaders support project team members by sharing their background and experience. Pair team members and leaders carefully to maximize the value the team member gains from the interaction. Schedule meetings regularly and follow through with those meetings. Don’t treat them as a “when time is available” exercise. 
  • Offer plenty of formal and informal training opportunities and don’t create time constraints. Make sure that training opportunities are available. Build them into project schedules, so taking a course doesn’t put team members under time pressure to deliver their project tasks. Provide training in many forms, including lunch and learns, accredited training courses, and online tutorials, to maximize their availability and applicability. Note: Not all training needs to relate directly to the team member’s current project. Learning organizations take a longer-term approach to expanding team member skills. That way, they can increase their capabilities for current and future projects.
  • Maintain an organized, formally administered project data repository. Learning from past projects is key. Learning is sporadic at best without an efficient way to reference historical project data. Have an administrator collect lessons learned, categorize them, and provide guidance for finding and retrieving information.

Many project managers won’t have the authority to deploy all these approaches. You can adopt some of them.  For example, you can probably create a lessons learned repository, ask leaders to spend time with a promising team member, mentor team members yourself, and hold your own lunch and learn meetings. 

Take stock of your project environment and see where you can fit in more learning. Gauge your authority and perhaps push the envelope a bit with your project sponsor.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 95,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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I Used Project Management to Get Through a Personal Crisis

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PM for a Personal CrisisIn April (2025) I learned that pathology from surgery showed stray carcinoma cancer cells in my body. After the shock wore off, the project manager in me took charge. Now that this ordeal is over, I can’t imagine handling it without project management. Here are some things I did to make it through.

  • What is the goal? I’ve said many times that the project goal is crucial. My goal isn’t to overcome cancer cells. I delegated that to my doctors. The goal has been to get through the treatment as comfortably as possible while also managing the rest of my life.
  • Understand the project. Cancer treatment has a lot of moving pieces. In my first appointment with the chemo oncologist, he handed me a packet with at least 80 pages of information about the treatment, side effects (and how to handle them), things to do, things to not do, what to eat and not eat, and so on. I read the entire packet – twice – and then created my own document to organize and highlight what I needed to know to succeed along with all the questions I had.
  • Confirming the requirements. Part of the pre-treatment was reviewing the information with a nurse. I was able to ask my questions, jot down more notes, and then update my home-made treatment document.
  • What are the risks? This project has been annoying in so many ways, but mainly because I am a planner and cancer treatment has a gazillion unknowns. What side effects will I get? How bad will they be? When will they happen? Will I be able to drive to treatment or will I need help? What should I have on hand? 
  • Risk response strategies: A, B, C. With so many unknowns, you might think there is no way to plan. In fact, my plan was a set of risk response strategies depending on what I might face. First, I bought supplies and food (resources!) recommended for dealing with side effects. Then, I scheduled friends (more resources!) to drive me to treatment the first week. And if I felt so bad that I couldn’t handle the 35-minute drive to treatment, I would get a room near the hospital. This was an iterative project. I stopped there to see how I was at the end of that week.
  • Communication.
    • Confirm details: If someone on the medical team told me something that differed from what the doctor or other provider had told me previously, I spoke up to say that was not what I had been told. If necessary, I would push back and ask them to confirm what was correct before proceeding. (In every case, I was correct to question the discrepancy.)
    • Ask questions: I called the doctor’s office when I had issues and major questions. I wrote up points to make, details about status, and questions, so I wouldn’t forget anything.
    • Don’t back down on important issues: Unfortunately, my two big issues happened on the first and then second weekend. That meant I had to get through the difficulties of getting support outside of normal work hours. I did not take no for an answer until I was able to speak to a doctor.
    • Streamline communication: I knew from experience that I did not have the bandwidth to communicate with my friends individually. I created an email group and a smaller text group to update people on my progress and to ask for help when I needed it. If anyone got impatient and emailed or texted to ask how I was, I would not respond to them directly but would send an update to the group when I was able.
  • Get advice on big decisions. My second big issue was life-threatening. I was in the hospital for almost 4 days. (That could be a whole separate article.) This issue required revisiting my treatment plan – digesting information and making a significant decision to change the second round of chemo. I asked a good friend to attend the meeting. The oncologist ran through all the possibilities with pros and cons of each. He said I couldn’t take another full round of chemo, but there were 5 other options. A lot of information and my head was spinning. My friend asked several questions, which prompted a good discussion and got my brain back in gear. After the meeting, she and I compared notes to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
  • Ask for help. I’m rather independent and take care of myself. Ask anyone who knows me. But I learned a long time ago to ask for help when I need it. Asking doesn’t make you weak: it shows you’re strong. Asking doesn’t mean you’re incapable: it means you’re smart. Asking means you are proactively choosing the best path to success.
  • Celebrate small wins. The course of treatment was grueling, although I know that it was minor compared to what other people go through. At the 4-week mark, I was ready to be done. So, I looked for small wins to celebrate, to motivate me to hang in there: when I disconnected the pump when chemo was done, when the PICC line was removed. I counted down the number of radiation treatments to go. I reminded myself how quickly time passes, especially when it seems to move slowly when things suck. I booked a couple trips and planned fun things to do when I was done.
  • Stay positive. I had plans. I had a good team. I had support. I focused on what was good. Even after my bad bouts, I acknowledged that I bounced back quickly. I had some moments of negativity. When those occurred, I thought about everything that went well. If I was really negative, I would reach out to a good friend to talk it through.
    • Staying positive doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine. It’s more like lessons learned: focus on what went well and do more of that, what could be done better and adjust the plan, what went wrong and figure out how to correct that in the future. For example, I was concerned about a second life-threatening episode on a holiday weekend, so I spoke to the oncologist’s nurse. I learned that one of their locations had regular hours on the weekend and could provide the injections I needed if necessary. Fortunately, I didn’t need to go there because our adjusted treatment plan worked well.

I hope you find this real-world example helpful. If you’ve used project management to get through things in your life, I’d love to hear about it.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 94,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Setting Appropriate Traffic Light Thresholds

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Setting Appropriate Traffic Light Thresholds graphicProject reporting often uses traffic light indicators (green-yellow-red) to present status. The colors usually represent variance of actuals from the baseline plan. This article describes how to associate percentage ranges with traffic light colors for several project conditions.

Quick refresher on traffic light status: Green means all is well. Yellow indicates caution. And red is danger, danger! Green might be less than 2% over schedule. 2% to 5% over schedule is yellow. And greater than 5% over schedule is red. 

Here are ways to set traffic light indicator ranges for different purposes.

  • The priority of the triple constraints. Each project will prioritize the standard constraints of cost, time, and scope. If you must make changes to meet a government legal compliance mandate, time and scope will be critical to avoid legal penalties. In a market where the organization needs to stay ahead of the competition, scope might be a top priority, so the product stays best-in-class. If delivering a project for a client on a fixed-fee basis, cost can become the highest priority. For example, if there’s a penalty for missing a compliance deadline, you would set up a traffic light indicator for schedule variance with a low percentage for red, such as greater than 2%. 
  • The consequences of missing critical constraint targets. The time and scope percentages could be broad (5% to 10%, for example) if the organization only pays a $10 penalty for a missed legal compliance mandate. On the other hand, with a $10 million penalty for a missed government deadline, the time and scope percentages should be narrow (0% to 1%), because you don’t want to miss that deadline. The red light comes on with the smallest slip in schedule, so you have early warning to work on getting the project back on track.
  • The team’s familiarity with the tools and processes they use. When the project team is familiar with the context and tools they will use, narrow traffic light percentages are reasonable, because the risk of delays from unfamiliarity is low. However, you must factor in the learning curve when new tools or processes are being developed. With unfamiliar new tools and processes, broader percentages are appropriate because the team might spend more time experimenting or back-tracking. Because narrow percentage ranges convey confidence in the estimates, you want broad ranges in this situation, so stakeholders recognize the uncertainty within the project. The broad ranges (5% to 10%) indicate that things might change.
  • Industry standards and expectations. Specific industries have generally accepted variances for project constraints. For example, the construction industry utilizes variances to accommodate unpredictable weather patterns (up to 15% in many cases). Manufacturing, which is much more controlled and predictable, often sets percentage ranges no greater than 5%.
  • Stakeholder expectations. Organizational history and strategy elements may dictate stricter compliance to constraints, and thus narrower percentage ranges. Alternatively, plan to hold up-front discussions if percentages are broader than usual to explain the rationale for the variance range.

If you use traffic light indicators on your projects, consider whether you would adjust the variance ranges due to the preceding conditions. And think about other conditions that might affect the ranges you choose.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 94,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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