Create Standards for Communication Response

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Create Standards for Communication Response

 

Have you ever sent an urgent email and panicked when you don’t get a quick reply? Or maybe you receive a text message asking how you’re doing and then get a second text 3 minutes later asking why you haven’t responded. In projects as well as personal life, it’s a good idea to get people on the same page about which communication methods to use for different situations and what response time to expect. In this video, Bob McGannon and I provide some ideas on how to set these standards.

 

 

 

Coming Up

I’m starting to work on updating a couple of my projects. Stay tuned for more info!

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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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Is It Time to Shut Down Your Agile Project?

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Is It Time to Shut Down Your Agile Project

 

Agile planning involves allocating an amount of money (or time) to produce functions that deliver business improvement. When that time or money runs out, the project ends unless a business case to continue is made and approved. There are other situations, though, when an agile project should be stopped – even one that appears to deliver business value:

  • Priorities should be changed. Although the project might still be making a positive contribution, those contributions might have decreased in importance to the organization at this point. If other initiatives are poaching skilled technical and user team members, assess THIS project’s contribution relative to other initiatives. It might be best for the business to stop this agile project to allow skilled team members to focus elsewhere.
  • The primary business problem or opportunity has been addressed. Projects are launched to deliver value and specific changes. Once the value and changes are realized, user and sponsor interest might wane. Indications of this lack of interest can show up as inconsistent meeting attendance or features not being completed within prescribed sprints. Review the project to determine whether work should be stopped.
  • Technical debt is increasing. When there’s pressure to deliver value, taking little shortcuts is common. Add code without comments, skip some testing scripts, or install a bit of code that doesn’t quite fit into the overall solution design. Is this the wrong thing to do? Maybe, maybe not. What these shortcuts do is create technical debt, that is, an accumulation of work that needs to be addressed downstream. If this starts to happen more often, the team might be working beyond their current experience and capabilities to deliver value and creating issues in the process. When this occurs, it’s time to address technical debt and close the project. Evaluate whether the right skills – and business case – are in place to continue.
  • Benefits rationalization is increasing. When agile projects are launched, features in the backlog typically have a clear-cut purpose and business case. As the original backlog is completed and new features are added, the business value for those features can become a bit fuzzy or be based on broad assumptions. This rationalization of benefits to produce more features can be a waste of time because they don’t deliver solid value. In addition, maintaining them downstream can add unnecessary complexity and financial burden.

For more about agile projects, check out Doug Rose’s Agile Foundations course.

 

 

Coming Up

I’m starting to work on updating a couple of my projects. Stay tuned for more info!

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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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Don’t Skip Risk Triggers in Your Project Risk Plan

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Don’t Skip Risk Triggers in Your Project Risk Plan

 

Risk triggers are occurrences that provide an early warning that a risk may become a real issue in a project. Yet, many risk management plans don’t document them. In this video, Bob McGannon and I discuss the benefits of documenting risk triggers to support our strong suggestion to include them in your project plans.

 

 

 

Coming Up

I’m starting to work on updating a couple of my projects. Stay tuned for more info!

_______________________________________

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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Managing Projects in a Regulated Environment

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Managing Projects in a Regulated EnvironmentIn most projects, the primary stakeholder is the sponsor. For projects in regulated environments, the regulator becomes an equal, maybe even the primary stakeholder. Here are six actions to consider when your project runs in a regulated world. 

  • Make sure you completely understand relevant regulations. Regulatory compliance is a deliverable! To successfully deliver that compliance, the PM and team members need to grasp all aspects of the regulations and what is needed to satisfy them. This understanding helps when talking with key stakeholders and senior leaders, too. Their confidence in the project increases when you’re able to describe the regulations clearly and accurately and what needs to be done to address them.
  • Understand the difference between regulated output and regulated processes. Make sure you know what you can and cannot change. Some regulations address the required output and the processes used to create that output, such as with new drug development and testing. In other cases, accurate reporting is regulated, but the processes to generate those reports aren’t. People in regulated environments often assume that the processes to produce regulated output are also regulated. As a result, they might overlook valid and efficient process changes. 
  • Designate a compliance owner(s). Choose a team member to coordinate the interpretation of regulations, track organizational obligations, and monitor compliance-related risks. A business process and legal expert is typically the best person for this role. For larger projects, consider appointing more than one owner. If you have more than one, make sure the responsibilities of each owner are clear so you don’t create overlaps or gaps in compliance monitoring.
  • Treat testing as mandatory. Testing is often reduced to decrease duration when the project schedule is tight. However, in regulatory projects, the deliverables need to demonstrate control, traceability, and conformity. Thorough testing is the only way to do this. Reduced testing in these projects is high-risk.
  • Assume a regulator will audit your records. Keep thorough and detailed project records throughout the project lifecycle. Those records could become evidence in an audit to confirm regulatory compliance. Solid project records are fundamental to demonstrating control, which auditors will use to identify how your project and organization plan to comply with the regulations.
  • Consider regulator assistance if feasible (they are a stakeholder)! One way to ensure that regulations are understood and followed is to involve regulators throughout the project. They can review solutions, propose test scenarios, and examine processes and data stores to ensure compliance in advance. This can save time and money and promote goodwill with regulators.

 

 

Coming Up

I’m starting to work on updating a couple of my projects. Stay tuned for more info!

 

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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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An Overview of Clear Communication

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Newsletter 5-5I’m revisiting communication this week because someone made me realize that I wasn’t communicating clearly in an earlier article. Ironic, huh? In projects (as in the rest of life), effective communication can prevent a lot of problems and make things run more smoothly. Here is an assortment of thoughts and tips on communicating clearly (followed by links to courses when you want to dig deeper).

  • It is primarily the sender/speaker’s responsibility to make sure that recipients understand the message. You’ll find this in PMI documentation, but really, it’s common sense. Communication is about conveying information to someone else, whether it’s notification, decision-making, problem-solving, and so on. To succeed, make your message as easy to understand as possible and confirm that the recipient understands. Recipients have a responsibility to ask for clarification if they don’t understand. They should also ensure that they have interpreted the message correctly.
  • Take the time to communicate clearly. Have you ever dashed off a quick email or sent a text that you immediately regretted? You probably spent tons of time fixing the results of those misunderstood messages. Don’t rush. Take the time up front to think through what you’re trying to accomplish, how to communicate that, and how you can keep your message from being misconstrued.
  • Listen well. In conversations and meetings, everyone has a responsibility to listen and listen well. That means no scrolling on mobiles, multi-tasking on laptops, texting, or daydreaming. Plus, different situations require different types of listening. (The course Effective Listening, linked below, talks about this.)
  • Give people time to think. Like listening, in conversations and meetings, people don’t get as much time to think things through as they do when they’re writing. Quick responses might miss important information. Keep in mind, some people, such as introverts, often need time to gather their thoughts. If you’re facilitating a meeting, give people time to think, and also make sure every voice has an opportunity to be heard. If you’re one of those people who needs time to think, don’t be afraid to ask for it.
  • Consider the audience. In project management, there’s a communication management plan that spells out what is communicated, to whom, in what manner, and how often. Step through a mini-communication plan for each message or interaction: what are you trying to communicate, who should you communicate to, what’s the best method to use, and when. Consider cultural norms, too. I’ve included a link to a course on communicating across cultures.

Methods

There are a lot of methods and tools for interacting with others and they all have their pros and cons. You might be constrained by the tools available in your organization. You might have your own personal preferences. Keep in mind, the goal is to communicate successfully, so choose wisely.

  • Text-based communication in general. Text can communicate different types of information, but vocal inflection, facial expressions, and body language is lost. Humor doesn’t come across (and emojis don’t help). When using text, write, review, and edit to produce a clear message. Consider how information might be misunderstood and adjust your delivery accordingly.
  • Documents, spreadsheets, graphs, infographics, etc. For larger amounts of information or complex topics, different types of files help communicate clearly. Documents are great for organizing a lot of information and are searchable. Spreadsheets are great for numbers and calculations. Use graphs, charts, and tables to help convey and highlight key information. Infographics help summarize. Files require management: they need to be stored so people can find, access, search, and collaborate on them.
  • Email. Email is versatile. It can handle longer messages, formatting, and attachments. It is searchable. It can be asynchronous (if recipients turn off notifications when they need to concentrate). But people often misuse email, because they use it casually. Files are attached instead of stored in a shared location, proliferating copies. Reply-all is overused. Action items are buried at the end.
  • Texts. Texts are great for quick and immediate confirmation. They’re also disruptive and people have grown to expect immediate responses. Texts aren’t searchable. They can take longer to resolve situations than a phone call or face-to-face exchange. For long messages, it’s probably faster to type on a computer keyboard than on a phone. 

 

  • Collaboration tools in general. These come in all shapes and sizes, so be mindful of their strengths and limitations when you use them. Also keep in mind that these tools often increase distractions and information overload, promote expectations of immediate response, blur work/life boundaries, and more.
  • Face-to-face interaction. This method provides all the information that comes from inflection, facial expressions and body language. It also helps build relationships between people. But it can take longer with time spent on social niceties and digressions. Conversations must be documented to confirm the information discussed and to share with others. 
  • Meetings in general. Meetings are necessary when you need to collaborate with others in real time, such as brainstorming, making decisions, and emotionally sensitive topics. Meetings are often dreaded because they are misused in many ways. They can be huge timewasters if too many people are invited, don’t have an agenda, people show up late and topics restart, don’t manage time, allow digressions, don’t track actions items, use all the time reserved instead of the time that’s needed, and so on. Always ask yourself whether a meeting is required before scheduling one.
  • Video conference. Video and audio provide inflection, facial expressions, and body language. It helps build relationships and is especially helpful when teams are geographically dispersed. If not run well, video meetings can make people tune out, multi-task, and lose productivity. 
  • Telephone. Telephone calls can resolve some things quickly but can also address meatier conversations. They don’t provide facial expressions and body language. They are disruptive, because most people consider a telephone ringing as urgent even when they aren’t important.

This is not a comprehensive list! It’s an overview of my thoughts on communicating clearly. There is a lot more to it, so I’ve included several links to LinkedIn Learning courses on communication. And there are many more courses that dive deeper on the topic in the LinkedIn Learning library. Communicating clearly is a powerful skill, so it’s worth developing.

 

Communication Foundations (Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/communication-foundations-23064093

Communication Tips (Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/communication-tips-23012499

Communicating Across Cultures (Tatiana Kolovou)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/communicating-across-cultures-2023

Effective Listening (Tatiana Kolovou and Brenda Bailey-Hughes)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/effective-listening-28116108

Improving Your Listening Skills (Dorie Clark)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/improving-your-listening-skills-19238090

Interpersonal Communication (Dorie Clark)

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/interpersonal-communication-22638889

 

 

Coming Up

I’m starting to work on updating a couple of my courses. Stay tuned for updates!

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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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Getting People to Participate in Virtual Meetings

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Getting People to Participate in Virtual MeetingsKeeping attendees engaged in a virtual meeting is a challenge. The potential for distractions is high. And once people tune out, it’s hard to get them back. Here are some techniques for keeping team members engaged from meeting start to finish.

  • Line up participation activities for all attendees. Give each attendee a purpose in the meeting with a role to fulfill. Think summarizing tasks or performing meeting administrative duties, such as delivering project status updates or sharing stakeholder perceptions. This approach is a win-win because it relieves some project management workload while increasing meeting engagement.
  • Use polling and collect opinions.  Most video platforms offer built-in polling tools. Even a quick two-question poll at the start of a topic can re-engage participants.  Also, real-time reactions — thumbs up, raised hands, emoji responses — give introverted attendees a low-stakes way to contribute.  Seeing input reflected on screen signals to attendees that their participation is expected and valued.
  • Use silence to generate high-quality participation. Remain silent after posing a question. This allows participants to think before responding. The richness of information and viewpoints improves when participants aren’t pressured to provide immediate answers.
  • Use the chat window. Pose questions and ask participants for reactions or ideas after a speaker has finished. This creates a second layer of engagement without interrupting the meeting flow. Assign someone to monitor the chat and ensure notable contributions are shared before topic transition points.  This approach also helps team members joining from noisy environments who feel uncomfortable unmuting.
  • Use small virtual rooms to support focused discussion. Use breakout rooms and allocate specific questions or tasks to each sub-group. This injects energy into the meeting and makes reporting back to the entire group feel purposeful. Even five minutes in a small group can give people ownership of significant topics and expand the viewpoints available to all participants.
  • Close in a meaningful way. Ask everyone for a word or short phrase that captures their takeaway from the meeting. This ensures everyone speaks at least once, reinforces accountability, and helps the project manager determine if the meeting satisfied its purpose. It also creates a more memorable meeting closure than asking “any last questions?” ever will.

Have you discovered other ways to keep people engaged in virtual meetings? If so, please share with us in the comments. We all need as many tools as we can get to run good meetings, whether in person or online.

 

 

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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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Fine-Tuning Scope for Project Success

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Fine-Tuning Scope for Project SuccessThe 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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Is Email a Communication Tool?

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Is Email a communication tool 414

 

Spoiler alert! Email isn’t a communication tool. In this video, Bob McGannon and I explain why email isn’t good for communication and what it is good for. We also describe the best way to use email (as well as other text-based tools).

 

 

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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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Don’t Play Favorites with Stakeholders

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Don’t Play Favorites with StakeholdersPlaying 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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Why the Project Sponsor Must Attend the Kickoff Meeting

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Why the Project Sponsor Must Attend the Kickoff Meeting 331

 

If your project sponsor doesn’t want to star in the project kickoff meeting for whatever reason, your project will be in trouble from the beginning. Bob McGannon and I explain what the sponsor’s role is in a kickoff meeting and we highlight all the ways their absence creates problems. Don’t worry. We provide some tips for convincing the sponsor to show up.

 

 

 

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!

______________________________________

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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