The fate of most projects is determined long before the first task is assigned. It’s decided early on during conversations where scope is shaped. Getting scope right while drafting the Project Charter doesn’t just avoid problems later on; it builds the case for why the project deserves to exist. Check out these approaches to help you define scope in a way that maximizes success. 

• Tie scope to the business problem or opportunity, not the proposed.  Invest time in defining the problem or business opportunity. Clearly determine what’s broken, who is affected, and the cost of doing nothing. Scope that’s built from a well-defined problem is easier to justify to sponsors and stakeholders. And it’s typically easier to trim or adjust if needed without losing the project’s core benefits. 
• Engage end users early to validate assumptions before scope is set. Scope defined entirely by sponsors and subject matter experts often contains blind spots. Evaluate these areas by involving people who do the day-to-day work. Bringing end users into early scoping conversations identifies constraints, workflow realities, and other needs that would otherwise emerge later, increasing cost and risk.  
• Compare scope size with available capacity. Before the scope is finalized, test it against the team’s capacity to deliver the project. Assess competing priorities, skill gaps, and the ever-present demands of team members’ day jobs.  If the scope cannot be delivered with the available resources within the defined timeframe, refine it early. Don’t make an unreasonable commitment with the intention of figuring things out when the time comes. A smaller, well-scoped project that succeeds is worth far more to an organization and to project management credibility than an ambitious one that causes day-to-day business issues.
• Use a phased scope to separate must-haves from desirables.  Work with stakeholders to explicitly prioritize scope into categories. Three potential categories are: a) Minimum Viable Product (MVP) items – mandatory items for the project to achieve its core objective, b) important items that are useful if capacity allows, and c) nice-to-haves that can be deferred. This structure not only sharpens the business case by keeping the core investment focused but also gives you a principled way to manage scope if time or cost constraints tighten.
• Stress-test scope with your delivery team before sign-off. Before the scope is formally baselined, bring in the delivery team for a formal review. Look to identify requirements that are ambiguous, technically risky, or dependent on factors outside the team’s control. Try to identify areas of complexity and compare the risk of complexity against the potential business benefit. Delivery teams involved in scope definition are usually energized and feel greater ownership and clarity. And that clarity can mean faster project launches and fewer misaligned expectations.

Grab the scope from a current or past project and use these steps to evaluate the scope. If it’s a past project, would these approaches have helped avoid some of issues you experienced? 

 

For more about project scope, check out my Project Management Foundations course.

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 104,000 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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Playing favorites with stakeholders causes all sorts of problems and makes your job as project manager more difficult. Taking an impartial stance with all stakeholders and their requirements is the way to go. Here’s why: 

• Project success is founded on trust. Favoritism destroys it. When stakeholders sense that you’re closer to some stakeholders, confidence in the project management process drains away. Why should they trust you, when they aren’t sure whether your decisions are made on merit or on relationships? Without trust, you’ll spend more time and energy managing politics than the project.
• All stakeholders feel listened to when you’re impartial. When stakeholders feel heard, they’re more likely to support ALL project objectives, not just their own. You can increase stakeholder support by truly understanding their issues and concerns and then communicating those to your project team.  
• Every stakeholder has a significant contribution to make. A project requirement that seems less important might turn out to be a critical dependency. Bring equal curiosity and thoroughness to all parties and their viewpoints. If you dismiss or deprioritize some voices, you risk blind spots that could require costly rework.  
• Impartiality helps maintain your credibility. Projects always involve some conflict. When stakeholder disputes arise, your ability to successfully mediate depends on them seeing you as impartial. If you’re known for playing favorites, your career as mediator is over.
• Disgruntled stakeholders can present significant risks. Stakeholders who feel ignored are still important to your project. They don’t disappear, but they might disengage, escalate, or turn into project detractors. I’ve seen late-stage projects derailed by a stakeholder who wasn’t listened to in the planning phase and came back to torpedo the project at the worst possible moment – during implementation. Proactive, equitable treatment of stakeholders is much easier than uphill relationship management.

Have you seen someone in your work world play favorites? How did that make you feel? And how did other people react to it? On the other hand, have you seen other benefits when you or another project manager has been an impartial arbiter in stakeholder dealings? Share with us in the comments section! 

For more about stakeholders, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s, Managing Project Stakeholders course.

 

Coming Up

Many different audiences make up a project team, from the project sponsor and customer to numerous stakeholders, to various teams that take on the work in the work breakdown structure. These audiences often need different information, prefer different communication methods and frequencies, and come with unique perspectives and idiosyncrasies. I’m a big believer in effective communication, so I’m looking forward to this conversation with Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes. I hope you’ll join us on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 11am MT/1pm ET. Click here to join!

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 104,000 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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“We’re too busy” kills many justifiable projects before they start. Some organizations overcome this resistance, not because they’re less busy, but because they view their business holistically and fit projects into their daily activities, without hiring expensive contractors. Here’s how:

• Prioritize more than the project portfolio. You might think you’re all set by prioritizing all the projects in your portfolio based on business strategy, objectives, business value, and other factors. But that isn’t enough. To balance workload between projects and day-to-day operational activities, PMs and sponsors need to prioritize both project work and day-to-day operations effort.  For example, a senior help desk analyst might jump off the support line to work on project tasks. If the call queue reaches 20, they go back to taking calls until the queue drops to 10. In another example, financial staff might be assigned to project work for 2 hours every day, except for when they complete month-end accounting. In addition, if there’s an emergency, such as misclassified transactions, they would stop project work until the emergency is resolved. Otherwise, their highest-priority work is completing project tasks for their designated project time.
• Evaluate the capacity of organizational change agents in the organization. In most organizations, a small number of highly experienced, capable people drive large-scale change. They are typically called “change agents” and comprise a mix of management and expert team-leaders. Instead of focusing on the capacity of all employees, look at the workload and remaining capacity of these change agents. Identify the business impact of their work and prioritize accordingly. See which part of the business they change and check the priority of projects in that area of the business. Then launch the highest priority projects in their area when they have available time to work on it.
• Use phased rollouts with minimal scope. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach works for several reasons. For justifying a project, the smallest possible scope requires less immediate commitment from operational team members. Start with a pilot that delivers quick wins with a few resources.  This reduces the perceived burden of additional work. It also builds credibility and enthusiasm that makes it easier to staff subsequent phases.
• Justify and describe project objectives in terms of operational work relief. Don’t focus on the workload that project work creates. Instead, highlight how the projects will ultimately make day-to-day operational work easier and less annoying. When team members see that a process improvement project will eliminate the tedious manual data reconciliation that eats up their Fridays, their resistance might change into enthusiastic support. Connect each project directly to the pain points people feel, and they’ll make time for project work.

 

Coming Up

Many different audiences make up a project team, from the project sponsor and customer to numerous stakeholders, to various teams that take on the work in the work breakdown structure. These audiences often need different information, prefer different communication methods and frequencies, and come with unique perspectives and idiosyncrasies. I’m a big believer in effective communication, so I’m looking forward to this conversation with Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes. I hope you’ll join us on Friday, April 10, 2026 at 11am MT/1pm ET. Click here to join!

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 103,000 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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A job search is a project, so what better way to make it a success than to use your project management skills on it? By approaching it this way, instead of passively waiting for opportunities, you’ll lead your own career transition with intention. Anna Anderson and I joined forces to explain how to apply your project management skills to a job search. 

Begin with measurable goals and objectives. Just like any other project, it’s important to know the outcomes you want. Clear objectives support better decisions. With your job search, lay out your goals and objectives. Don’t say, “I want a PM job.” Spell it out. What industry(ies) are you targeting? What level of role? Identify any constraints you have. What salary range do you need? Are you willing to relocate? How much flexibility do you need in your work schedule?

Make your job search goal concrete: “I will obtain an associate project manager role in the healthcare industry with a hybrid work schedule within six months and at a salary range from $X–$Y per year.” Your resume and LinkedIn profile become strategic artifacts, tailored positioning tools aligned to your goal.

Define your job search scope. What are you going to do to successfully snag your next job? Here are typical activities:

• Update your materials including your resumé, LinkedIn profile, project portfolio, and cover letter templates.
• Build a target company list.
• Set up a system to track applications. Set a target of 5 or more companies per week.
• Network with recruiters, industry or professional contacts, school alumni. (Note: Use the 80/20 rule of 80% networking to 20% applying. You network with people at places where you want to work, so that you apply to the right places with intention.) Hold informational interviews.
• Prepare and practice for interviews. Practice questions. Prepare your offer negotiation strategy.

Don’t forget to identify what is out of scope, such as jobs that don’t meet your salary requirement, unsuitable location, or short-term freelance gigs.

You can even define personal metrics: number of networking conversations per week, interview-to-offer conversion rate, response rate to outreach messages. What gets measured gets improved.

Build a timeline with milestones. Work backward from your target date. If you want to land a role by July 31, when must you complete all the tasks in your scope? Create milestones for weekly applications, networking, and interview stages. 

Manage your search the way you would manage any initiative. Conduct weekly reviews. Identify risks: skill gaps, confidence barriers, market conditions – and create mitigation strategies. Use a simple Kanban board in Excel, Trello, Asana, or another tool to visualize progress.

By structuring your search this way, you’re not only increasing your chances of landing a role, but you’re also actively demonstrating the planning, adaptability, and ownership that hiring managers expect in today’s project environments.

Add a comment or question to the comments section. We’d love to hear whether you find this approach helpful in your efforts.

 

Anna offers a lot of resources for careers in project management including job searches.  Check these out:

Her program – www.womeninpmnetwork.com/enrollnow to help you learn the steps to your next Project Manager role.

Book your Free 20 min clarity call while spots last: https://PMDiscoveryCall.as.me/ 

Subscribe to her podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/4TpOpKXNjFqLb2F8ir2tON?si=b24ba7825ca84546

Subscribe to her YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@projectmanagerconnectshow

 

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 103,000 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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