Focus on How Project Tasks Support the Business

Teams that work cohesively and understand both the business and technical ramifications of their tasks are a big part of producing successful projects. Explaining business relevance of work to team members can be tedious. No worries! Here’s how to do this without taking up too much project time:

• Assign technical team members to shadow the people whose jobs will be impacted by the members’ task outcomes. Shadowing not only shows the relevance of the task; it can also generate other business improvement ideas the team can pursue. Note: Review those new ideas with diligence and leverage a change control methodology to avoid scope creep.
• Review mission statements of affected departments. The business goals and priorities outlined in a department’s mission statement often help project team members complete their tasks with the business in mind. After reviewing the mission statements, hold a follow-up discussion between business and project team members to ensure they understand the department’s current approach.
• Attend business team meetings or ask the business team to attend sprint sessions. That way, specific business objectives and current shortfalls can be discussed, along with technical options for how systems might work. It can also strengthen the relationship between the project team and the business, yielding benefits in this and future projects.
• Include the desired business outcome in task descriptions. Instead of just describing a task as “Fix the data validation bug,” add a description like “Address the issue that customers abandon checkout at a 12% higher rate because of this bug.” When team members understand the objectives, their decisions will better align with the business’s desires and direction.
• Use process maps to show how technical components and business value align. Embrace the approach business analysts use to figure out project requirements. Don’t just create text versions of project requirements. Put them in graphical form, showing the ties between technical tasks and business requirements. Place these maps somewhere visible and refer to them in conversations. When someone asks why something is a priority, it serves as a quick reference to answer the question.

Have you used any of these approaches? If so, what was your experience with them? If not, can you see using any of them in your current PM approach?

For more about business goals and objectives, check out my Project Management 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 105,000 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.

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