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The Truth About Trash Talk: How to Deal With Gossip in the Workplace

Dealing with office gossip

“Pst! He isn’t paying his child support!”

“Pst! Did you hear what happened last week? This project’s getting scrapped.”

“Pst! They’ve been together a lot lately. That can only mean one thing…”

Wink, wink.

It’s easy to spot workplace gossip. People speaking in hushed tones at the end of the hallway, or ending conversations abruptly when you walk into the break room, are sure signs that something secretive is being discussed.

Whether we like it or not, gossip is part of our everyday life.

Rumors that flutter around the office, alighting in one ear and then another, may look feathery and harmless.

While in fact, they can deliver a heavy blow. Patterns of spreading malicious gossip break down team dynamics, deaden company culture, and hurt professional reputations.

But gossip isn’t entirely bad. Some of it is pretty harmless, and participating in some gossip circles may even help you.

From the good, the bad, to the downright ugly, let’s look at the impact of drama, and how to deal with office gossip in the workplace.

The Good Gossip in the Workplace

The Good

Some forms of gossip are pretty much unavoidable and can even help us in the long run. Let’s look at a few.

Benign Chatter

Any time a team casually gathers together at the end of the week and exchanges stories, the conversation eventually turns around to discussing people. Who doesn’t want to hear about things that happened back in the day, who’s dating who, and the details of a coworker’s divorce?

This sort of banter, so long as it’s light and honest, helps build rapport. In order to create cohesion in a team, you need to know who you’re working with. When you know personal details about other people, it makes them more relatable.

“Good to Know” Gossip

Do you know those people who always seem to be abreast of what’s going on? They know who’s leaving the company and why, which managers to avoid working under, and why the office “it” couple just broke up.

We can learn all sorts of things from water cooler discussions that human resources would never be able to reveal.

It’s very helpful to have this sort of professional information under our belt. When we know about new projects on the horizon, a department with turnover issues, and a toxic manager, it’s much easier to safely navigate a workplace environment.

Of course, it’s always important to take this sort of information with a grain of salt. The problem with playing workplace telephone is that the story may be really skewed by the time it reaches your ear.

Helpful Small Talk

Sometimes, when people sit around talking about coworkers, they come up with the nicest things to say, such as: “He’s such a laugh,” “She’s been awesome to have on the team,” and “I wish I had a manager like him. He seems so kind.”

This sort of talk serves to build other people’s professional reputations. A workplace culture that accentuates people’s contribution also boosts team morale and creates a positive vibe around the workplace. It increases psychological safety, because people feel valued and appreciated.

Although as a general rule discussing people isn’t the best way to pass time, gossip can serve a purpose. When it helps you get to know another person, improves someone’s reputation, or helps you to navigate office politics, you can’t lose.

The Bad Gossip in the Office

The Bad

Some workplace gossip serves no constructive purpose at all. Here are a few examples.

The Juicy Story

Let’s face it. People’s personal lives are fodder for some good stories. It’s easy to relish in the details a divorce, a scandalous affair, or a business plan gone awry.

However, when we dish out the lives of coworkers for the sheer enjoyment of it, the company culture declines. Leaders who give license to this sort of behavior aren’t looking out for the well-being of employees. No one feels psychologically safe when everyone’s personal lives get drug through the mud from time to time.

If you work in a culture where gossip runs high, let the stories stop with you. Don’t play a part in perpetuating pointless, juicy gossip.

It’s good to have a few phrases in your pocket to deflect slanderous conversations. Statements like “Well that’s a juicy tidbit. Maybe let’s resume this another day. Can you look at these reports for me right now?” or “I’m making a commitment to being more positive, this conversation isn’t helping,” keep idle, harmful chatter at bay.

Jealousy Over Position and Pay

Compensation is one of the things employees most enjoy discussing with each other. Sometimes they’ll huddle right outside the bosses door on payday, comparing paychecks and griping.

This sort of gossip easily leads to friction and rivalry between employees, and suspicion toward the boss. People wonder why they’re being paid less than someone else, and why certain people receive raises.

Transparency puts an end to this kind of gossip. When a company creates benchmarks around pay and raises, and posts them clearly, all puzzlement goes out of the issue. And when it states policies around promotion, everyone understands why one candidate is chosen over another.

In sum, destructive gossip harms company culture and the spirit of a team. Sometimes, it just has to stop with you. Transparency also puts divisive chatter to rest.

The Ungly Gossip in the Workplace

The Ugly

Some forms of workplace gossip are downright abusive, and destructive to a workplace environment.

Power Play Innuendo

A certain type of person might be compelled to create a salacious story with a deliberate scheme behind it. By spreading a dirty rumor about someone, they hope to sabotage that person’s career and advance their own.

This sort of behavior spells disaster for a company. For a culture to thrive, advancement and promotion need to be based on merit, not silly workplace rumors.

Most companies have policies about gossip in the workplace. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to document. If you happen to have written documentation of a malicious rumor, it’s important to report it to human resources so they know about the problem.

Anyone who uses gossip in such a manner needs to receive a stern warning from the manager as well.

Grapevine Work Culture

In some workplaces, you have to be on the gossip chain in order to know about things like upcoming projects and new hires. Rather than attending a weekly meeting, you receive office updates by tagging along to “coffee chats” with a group of coworkers.

When rumors are the only ways to discover basic things about the workplace, it means a company culture has gone toxic. Gossip flourishes when people don’t learn critical information through proper channels like email and company meetings.

In order to fix systemic gossip, a leader needs to facilitate a transparent culture. This entails regularly holding meetings that keep the entire company abreast of all the goings-on within the company. It’s also critical to seek feedback and create policy around it.

Personal Smears

It’s never fun when people gossip about you. Not only is it hurtful, but it can impact your career when people hear and believe unfair stories about you.

When you’re being gossiped about, check your attitude first. Even though it may be tempting, you don’t want to jump into the fray with retaliatory backbiting.

Gossip is oftentimes about power dynamics, and so in order to deflect it, create a positive group of people who get you, and take your side on the issue.

And be sure to manage your self-talk. When people say hurtful things, it reflects back on them, not you. When you put up protective psychological walls around yourself, the hurtful comments won’t get to you.

Dealing with Workplace Gossip

Say What? The Power of Words

Have you ever noticed how one little comment like “You look great!” or “I’ve been hearing things about you…” is enough to make or ruin your day?

Words are powerful. Gossip has an impact on an employee’s psychological well being, the company culture, and team morale.

Although gossip always should be kept in check, some of it can be helpful.

A sure sign of a solid professional is someone who rises above the fray of workplace pettiness.

If you make a practice of stopping the spread of juicy stories, and of not getting embroiled in office drama, then your professional future looks bright.

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7 Common Challenges Faced by Distributed Agile Teams…With Solutions to Boot!

Challenges with distributed teams working agile

Charting a course for a distributed agile team is no small feat.

Practicing agile fundamentals like face-to-face communication is totally outside the realm of possibility. And it’s pretty tough for teams to feel cohesive when most people haven’t even met one another.

Any sense of “team” easily breaks down when everyone works from separate locations. People can feel like they’re all alone, typing away in their home office with no connection to anyone at all.

The truth is, however, that the agile methodology really can flourish in a remote space. It entails getting creative, and finding solutions to suit each individual team.

Let’s look at some common problems faced by distributed agile teams, alongside methods for working through them. With a little tweaking and practice, you can have a highly motivated team, with strong kinship and connection…even while being spread out across the world.

Time is Wasted in Excessive Meetings

1. Time is Wasted in Excessive Meetings.

It’s common for teams to overcompensate for the challenge of working remotely by holding meeting…after meeting…after meeting. The fact is, however, that people need to use blank slots in their calendar for getting work done.

All this meeting time really adds up. In some instances, remote workers find themselves working two to three more hours per day than in an office! This is a scenario ripe for burnout, with zero potential for team building. No one has time for casual catch-up conversations when they’re completely tuckered out at the end of the day.

Solution:

One of the keys in the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interaction over processes and tools.”

Rather than following a scripted meeting plan, a leader or project manager needs to step out of the way and let the team create a system that balances its work needs with meeting time.

Together, an agile team can determine meeting protocol that works for them. When is it acceptable to opt out of a meeting? Can people leave halfway through, when the content is no longer relevant to their role?

Perhaps a scrum team may jettison one of its ceremonies. But agile isn’t about doing everything by the book—it’s about suiting the needs of individuals.

2. Teams Don’t Trust Each Other.

When teammates haven’t met each other in real life and their daily interaction is limited to email and chat messages, they don’t feel like they know one another.

Trying to implement the agile methodology into a team dynamic that is stiff and formal just won’t cut it. Self-organization, at the heart of agile, only happens when teammates know and trust one another.

Teams Don't Trust Each Other

Solution:

Although it may sound silly to say it, gossip and break time are instrumental in creating team bonds. When you know details about the people you work with, such as what kind of dogs they have, where they grew up, who they’re dating and where they went to school, it makes them relatable.

Strong rapport is the foundation of a high-functioning agile team. This doesn’t “just happen” in a remote environment, however, since people can’t chat in the hallway or meet each other for lunch.

One way to establish personal ties is with a bi-weekly meeting, where the agenda is simply about getting to know what’s going on in people’s lives.

Another way to create a casual “break room” environment is to set up channels on the team’s software, dedicated to fun topics such as pet photos. This gives people the chance to chill out and share common interests with one another.

Teams Never Communicate Face-to-Face

3. Teams Never Communicate Face-to-Face.

One of the principles from the Agile Manifesto is that “the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Teams miss out on all the benefits of in-person interaction when they communicate exclusively through email and instant messages. All non-verbal communication is lost.

This creates a disconnect that impedes the team’s collaborative endeavors.

Solution:

Although a remote team won’t ever be able to completely receive the benefits of face-to-face communication, it can come pretty close.

When teammates interact through video messages, on a video conference platform or in phone conversations, it brings interaction up to the level of a conversation. People are able to pick up on facial cues, tone and voice inflection.

When teammates create habits of communicating verbally, tasks are completed with greater ease. Text and email have a place too, but are more suitable as follow up to verbal conversations.

People Feel Isolated

4. People Feel Isolated.

Individual team members start to feel fungible when they’re working from a desk in their home, and the only interaction they have are a few emails each day.

When people start to think their contributions don’t really matter, team morale declines.

Solution:

A highly motivated team is at the heart of the agile methodology. Finding ways to boost team spirit is the objective of any scrum master or agile leader.

One way to engage the team is by utilizing a phenomenon called social facilitation. This is the idea that performance improves by the presence or perceived presence of others.

Acknowledging jobs well done and milestones reached goes a long way toward making an employee feel valued and a part of the team. One way to implement social facilitation is by calling out individual performance during the sprint review.

In order for people to feel less alone during the workday, it’s helpful to utilize activities that simulate the office environment as much as possible.

Live remote coworking is one way to do this. This is where team members turn on the video conference platform at their desk, then work as they would on any other day. People can have casual conversations as they work, and are motivated by seeing everyone together at once.

This could feel awkward at first, and so the leader can start with an ice breaker and emphasize that no one is being supervised. Everyone is free to step away from the computer when they want. Depending on the preference of the team, this activity can be for the entire day, or just a part of it.

With engagement practices such as these, teams start to feel bonded and the sense of isolation melts away.

Attention is Divided During Conference Calls

5. Attention is Divided During Conference Calls.

Back in the day of in-person meetings, everyone sat through a presentation in its entirety, even when it got pretty dry.

While sitting in front of a computer, however, and listening to those same presentations, it’s oh-so-difficult to resist all the distractions calling out to us from the world wide interweb. Not a few of us have diverted our attention to reading emails, catching up on the news, and doing a little shopping while intermittently focusing back on the meeting.

Agile is about simplicity, and maximizing the amount of work NOT done. This means utilizing every moment efficiently. When a team regularly divides its attention during a conference call, people have to catch up later on things they missed.

Solution:

In the interest of saving time, it’s important that an agile team allows people to skip out on meetings that don’t impact them directly.

When someone does need to be at a meeting, it’s good to implement systems that keep people engaged. For example, when everyone has their screen monitor on during the meeting, it increases engagement and decreases the likelihood of chronic distraction.

Although everyone has to step away from a meeting from time to time, it’s important, as a policy, that people who show up stay engaged. It builds camaraderie and trust.

The Home Office Distracts Employees

6. The Home Office Distracts Employees.

People have a lot going on in their homes that you’d never encounter at in-person offices. Kids come home from school and need snacks and attention, dogs need to be walked, and Fed Ex shows up with deliveries.

All these distractions create a scenario completely different from the in-person office. When people are not readily available during work hours, the team feels divided and unfocused.

Solution:

One principle from the Agile Manifesto is to: “build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the tools they need, and trust them to get the job done.”

Trust plays a central role in a remote office framework.

Even if someone steps away to fix their kids lunch, it doesn’t mean they are’t committed to getting the job done.

Monitoring employees isn’t the role of the agile leader. Rather, it’s about identifying impediments and course correcting.

Let a team work through these issues and develop a system that works for them. Perhaps when the team is committed to the daily standup, it’s possible for everyone to be flexible for the rest of the day.

It’s also important for the team to keep its focus on the sprint objectives. This way, even when an individual workday looks different from other people’s, everyone is still working toward the same goal.

Command and Control Creeps In

7. Command and Control Creeps In.

Sometimes, teams find themselves in a situation where a few people work from the office, and everyone else is remote. At these times, it’s easy for a dynamic to develop where the in-person crew sets up sprints and updates the burndown chart, while the remote team simply listens and follows orders.

Or, in a completely remote setting, the scrum master may struggle to complete all the ceremonies, and it starts to feel more like he or she is corralling everyone to fall in line.

An agile team is about self motivation and autonomy. An authoritative presence really threatens this structure. Team members stop taking initiative, and fall into the role of following orders.

Solution:

One way to identify “command and control creep” is with a retrospective dedicated to team dynamics.

From there, a team can put policies in place that distribute responsibilities equally throughout the team. Setting up sprints, updating the burndown chart, and grooming the product backlog could become tasks that rotate between in-office and remote workers.

Conclusion

It’s a challenge for a distributed team to follow the agile methodology. However, it is still possible to create an autonomous and highly motivated agile team when people aren’t gathered together in one place.

In order for a team to follow the principles laid out in the Agile Manifesto, it’s necessary for the scrum master or agile coach to think outside the box. Everyone’s solution looks a little different—it depends on the preferences of each individual team.

For some agile methods, a remote environment is even an improvement. Paired programmers say they enjoy remote working better than in-person.

Teamly is a sophisticated project management software that serves as an all-in-one resource to distributed agile teams. From kanban boards, to gantt charts, to messaging services, we make it easy for teams to plan and stay connected from anywhere in the world. Come check us out today!

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A Milestone Master Plan with 9 Common Examples for Organizing Your Next Project

Project milestones examples

To be successful at project management it’s imperative to figure out ways to effectively monitor progress and mitigate risks. That’s why it’s a good idea to identify the major milestones of your project and put together a plan for reaching them.

Milestones can help you keep track of your progress, detect potential problems, and ensure that you’re still on track for a successful outcome. Milestones simply function as checkpoints on your path to a project’s completion.

What are milestones

What are milestones?

Milestones can be anything from completing the design of your product to shipping the final version to customers. Milestones are any significant event that allows progress to be measured and made.

How can milestones help with project management?

Milestones allow for progress and risk mitigation by allowing regular check-ins on the status of your project as well as identifying potential issues early before they become major problems later down the road.

Milestone Importance

Monitoring progress is essential to keeping your project on track. By using milestones as checkpoints, you can ensure that your project is moving along as planned and identify any potential problems before they become bigger issues.

Milestones are also an excellent approach to managing risks by making precise objectives that may help you stay on track even if things don’t go as planned.

And finally, milestones can be used to measure the overall success of your project by evaluating how well you met your objectives and what changes, if any, need to be made for future projects.

Clearing Up Confusion

Before we get into specific examples of milestones, it’s important to clear up some confusion about the nature of milestones. Milestones are not necessarily everyday tasks, deliverables, or goals. They are significant events that happen along the way and allow you to track your progress.

Milestones can have several smaller actions or tasks associated with them to help you achieve the overall goal.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s take a look at how you and your team can create milestones.

Important Tips

5 Super Important Tips

So, how do you go about establishing milestones for your project? There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to this question because the milestones you establish will be different depending on the project and its intended goals.

However, here are four super important tips for creating effective milestones:

1. Be Specific

Milestones should be specific enough that anyone involved in the project can understand what they mean. It should be clear what needs to happen for the milestone to be considered reached.

For example, if your goal is to start building your online coaching program, your first milestone might be to set up your website. So you might want to create a specific task such as “Create Website Design” that needs to be completed before the milestone is considered reached.

2. Be Actionable

Milestones should also be actionable, meaning that anyone involved in the project knows what they need to do and how they’re expected to contribute at each milestone. This will allow for identifying any potential issues early before they become big problems later on down the line.

Staying with the coaching example above: the specific task was “Create Website Design” but before that milestone can be reached you notice that we need content to go with the design.

So the first milestone would shift to “Create Content” and the second would be “Create Website Design.” Note, both of these milestones are actionable. It’s very clear what needs to be done.

3. Be Measurable

Milestones should also be measurable for you to measure your progress on them and determine if things are going as planned or not. If there is confusion about what exactly needs to be done at each milestone this will allow you to clear that up and avoid confusion down the road.

To continue with our coaching program example, the specific task/milestone of “Hire Writer” might be measurable by looking at how many applications are received for the position and how many interviews are conducted.

4. Be Timely

Milestones should be timely, meaning they are set for a specific period and not open-ended. Since milestones track your progress you need to know when they’re going to happen so that you can monitor them along the way.

Because some of your team members can’t start working until a specific milestone is reached, you’ll need to know how much time they have for this project and when the milestones are going on so that work may begin.

For example, our design team is waiting for the “content” milestone before they can start working on the website. Timeliness will help create the appropriate timeline for the project.

5. Be Flexible

I say this one with caution because you don’t want to be too flexible and let things fall through the cracks. However, some events may occur that were not accounted for when initially establishing your milestones so it’s important to have a plan in place for how these situations will be handled.

For example, if our milestone “Create Website Design” is ready to begin but due to unforeseen circumstances, the content isn’t ready for it yet, what happens? Is the milestone considered reached or not and if so how does that impact your project? Flexibility will help you deal with any unexpected changes that arise.

Create Effective Milestones

Summary of tips

Use these tips to create effective milestones for your project.

  1. Be Specific
  2. Be Actionable
  3. Be Measurable
  4. Be Timely
  5. Be Flexible

Now that we know what to keep in mind when creating milestones, let’s take a look at some specific examples of project milestones.

Examples of milestones

9 Examples of milestones

Below are nine types of milestones that you may want to consider using in your next project:

  • Receive Project Approval
  • Identify Project Requirements
  • Establish Start & End Dates
  • Assign Team members
  • Design approval
  • Review Project
  • Testing
  • Final approval (end Date)
  • Launch

Receive Project Approval

Teams need to know that their work has been authorized to accomplish anything. Setting up an approval milestone will aid in this and make sure everyone is on the same page.

For approvals to be effective, you’ll need to have a clear way of communicating what’s been approved and identify who has the authority to approve tasks. Also, you’ll want to consider feedback from clients or stakeholders to ensure they’re happy with the work being done.

Identify Project Requirements

One of the most important milestones in any project is project requirements. Requirements are demands that are needed for the project to be completed. These allow you to plan for issues that may come up or anything else that could affect your timeline (or budget).

Major requirements may include the following: budget, design, features, technology, and content.

If demands are not met, the project will either need to be renegotiated or canceled outright. As such, requirements should be carefully tracked and monitored throughout the life of a project.

You simply need to answer the question: what are the major demands of the project and in what order do they need to be completed? Failing to meet demands can cause delays and even jeopardize the success of your project so it’s important to track them closely.

If there’s anything that could delay your project, it should be captured in the Requirements list.

Establish Start & End Dates

The start and end dates of any project are the two most crucial dates. Establishing these milestones will help you measure your progress and keep things on track.

To establish timelines, you’ll need to know what the overall goal of the project is and break it down into smaller tasks that can be completed along the way.

You’ll want to take into account the amount of time each task will take and set a realistic deadline for the project as a whole.

Assign Team members

Once you have a clear picture of what needs to be done, assigning team members is the next step. This helps you divide up tasks and establish accountability among your team for completing them promptly.

Depending on the size of your project it might make sense to assign different people or teams to each task that’s been planned out. You’ll also want to consider assigning people to tasks that they’re good at or enjoy.

This will help keep everyone happy and motivated while working on the project.

Design Approval

Design Approval

Any time you change the design of a website, for example, you need to get approval from the client. This type of milestone can be used in other areas of your project as well.

Typically, you’ll want to establish a design milestone when the project is about 60-70% complete. This will give your team time to make any necessary changes without putting the entire project at risk.

Review Project

Project reviews are milestones that help you assess your progress and determine if things are on track. These milestones can be used multiple times throughout a project to make sure it’s going off without a hitch or issues before they become more prominent.

There should always be milestones set for assessing the overall health of a project, making course corrections as necessary.

Testing

If applicable, testing should be factored into your project milestone plan. When you’re testing, it’s important to have a clear idea of what needs to be tested and in what order.

This will help ensure that your project is working properly before being released for public or client use. Testing can include anything from beta testing a product to user acceptance testing (UAT). UAT is when you test a product or website with real users to make sure it’s ready for launch.

For example, if the website has been shown to not convert a high enough number of sales, you’ll want to find out why before going live.

Are your settings correct? Is there a compatibility issue with the client’s browser? Or perhaps something is just not quite right and needs to be changed or fixed before being released for public use.

At this point, the testing milestone will go into effect and you’ll want to determine what the issue is, how it can be resolved, and when testing will begin again.

Final Approval

The final approval milestone is the one everyone’s working towards. This is the point where the client signs off on the project and it’s considered complete.

This can also be seen as a deliverable milestone, meaning that once it’s reached, you’ve delivered everything that was promised to the client.

Project management tools like Teamly can help you set key tasks and milestones throughout the lifecycle of your project and monitor progress to ensure that things are on track.

Launch

The final milestone in any project is the launch. This is when you finally put your product, service, or website out into the world and see how it performs.

If everything goes well, congratulations! You’ve completed your project. However, if there are problems, don’t worry – it’s not the end of the world. Just take a step back, analyze what went wrong, and make the necessary changes so that you can learn from your mistakes.

Create your project milestone plan

How to put it all together

Now it’s time to put it all together and create your project milestone plan.

One way to go about creating your project milestone plan is by using a project management tool like, Teamly. After you do the initial setup, you can then use the tool to create a timeline, assignments for team members and your project.

Teamly will help you create key tasks and milestones throughout the lifecycle of your project and monitor progress to ensure that things are on track. This will help you visualize how everything is going to progress and when each milestone should be reached.

Plus, Teamly’s chat interface is extremely simple to use, making it easy to keep everyone on the same page.

In just a few steps, you can quickly create your project milestone plan and adjust it as necessary.

Step 1 –> Go to www.teamly.com and create a login.

Step 2 –> Create a project.

On the dashboard, screen select “Create a Project.”

It’s at this step you can add an avatar to your project so that it’s easily identified. for you and your team. This will help you quickly identify what project is being worked on at any given time, making it easy to stay organized.

Step 3 –> Place your team members in the correct department.

Now, it’s time to assign teams to their appropriate department. This is important because when you’re assigning tasks and milestones, you’ll want each team working separately on the different areas of your project before putting them all together in one final product or website.

This step will help ensure that nothing gets missed when creating your milestone plan. If necessary, you can always add additional teams as your project progresses.

When your team members log in they will see what teams they are in and can begin chatting about their projects. There are several fantastic features included with our chat, such as bookmarks for quick reference to past conversations, file sharing, and the ability to quickly share screenshots.

Step 4 –> Add tasks and milestones to the workflow screen.

The next step is to add tasks and milestones, also known as “to do” in Teamly. And this is super intuitive to do, just click the “+” symbol on top of the screen. Enter in a task name, description, assignee, and due date. You can also add tags and notes for additional clarity.

Step 5 –> Assign work to appropriate team members.

Now it’s time for you to assign your different milestones to the appropriate teams so that they know what they need to work on when creating their tasks. And be sure to stay on top of your team by using the chat feature.

Conclusion

Project milestone planning can seem daunting, but by following these tips and using a tool like Teamly, you’ll be able to establish key milestones quickly and easily. And best of all, you’ll know exactly what needs to be done to keep your project on track.

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How To Assess Risk As A Project Manager: Identifying and Evaluating Project Risks

How to monitor risks in a project
@teamly
For additional information on this topic, feel free to check out this Youtube video from our channel.

Now, onto the main content...

As a project manager, it’s essential to be able to identify and evaluate the risks associated with your projects. By doing so, you can reduce the likelihood of these risks becoming actual problems.

In this blog article, we’ll go through the process of analyzing project risks. We’ll also offer some advice on how to stay one step ahead of any problems that may crop up. Then we’ll look at the most frequent events that can put a project in jeopardy. Followed by a checklist that will help you assess the severity of any potential risk. Let’s get started.

What is Risk Management

What is risk management?

A risk is defined as an uncertain event or condition that could result in a future loss to a project’s objectives. If you think about how many risks there are for projects and how many things can go wrong, it becomes clear why evaluating them is so important. Risks should be analyzed throughout their life cycle to ensure they don’t become actual problems to the project.

Risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing, monitoring and controlling risks in a project. So how can you do this for your project?

How to evaluate risks

There are four steps to evaluate risks:

  1. Identify the risks
  2. Analyze the risks
  3. Monitor the risks
  4. Control the risks

1. Identifying the Risks:

The first step in risk management is identifying all of the risks in a project. You can think of risk management as a proactive process that is used to identify risks before they happen. You need an accurate list of everything that might go wrong in your project, so be sure to take a proportional amount of time during the planning phase to do this.

Your projects potential risks come in four distinct forms:

  • Environmental Risks – These include natural disasters and other events that are out of your control.
  • Operational Risks – These are risks that are caused by how the project is being executed, such as equipment failure or human error.
  • Strategic Risks – These are risks that could have a large impact on the success of the project, such as changes in market conditions.
  • Personnel Risks – These are risks that involve the people working on the project, such as a key team member leaving or getting sick.

2. Analyze the risks:

Once you have identified all of the risks in your project, it is time to analyze how serious they are. Consider how likely each threat is, as well as the impact these risks would have on your project if they came to pass. You’ll want this information when establishing a contingency plan for your project.

Let’s say, for example, the risk of the project deadline being missed is high, but the impact – such as lost sales or negative publicity – would be medium. On the other hand, a risk of an explosion in the lab could have a very high impact, even if it is low in likelihood.

Basically, what you want to do is rank each risk according to how serious it is and then create a risk matrix. This is a document that will track all of the risks in your project, including how serious they are and what you are doing to mitigate them.

Risk Matrix = a risk matrix can be defined as a spreadsheet or grid that shows the probability of a risk occurring and how much it will cost to mitigate.

When creating your own, be sure to start with the most likely risks on top and then categorize how serious they are. You can use different colors to indicate how significant each risk is: green for low impact, yellow for medium impact, and red for high impact. You’ll want to color-code your risk matrix or register so you can easily see what needs attention first.

A risk matrix is a good way to visually track how likely and how serious each potential risk is in your project.

Monitor the Risks

3. Monitor the Risks:

After you’ve identified and assessed the dangers, it’s time to start monitoring them. Risk management is a continuous operation that should be revisited throughout a project.

So, what is the distinction between monitoring risk and analyzing it?

Analyzing is what you do when your preparing for a project. You figure out how likely a risk is to happen and what the impact will be if it does. It’s a lot more about anticipating problems before the project starts.

Monitoring is what you do when the project has already kicked off. You keep track of the risks and make sure they stay at bay.

This is an important step because you don’t want any surprises popping up during the project. You’ll want to have a system in place for tracking any changes in risk probability or impact, so you can take appropriate action.

Risk monitoring includes tracking how often each risk occurs and how much impact it has on the project. You should also update your risk documents as new information arises.

For example, you might generate a simple 5 point scale to calculate how often each risk occurs:

  • Risk is not occurring (5)
  • Risk happens rarely (once every two months) (4)
  • Risk is occasionally happening (once every one to three months) (3)
  • Risks occur frequently (more than once a month) (2)
  • Risk is always happening (once a week) (1)

This will help you to track the risks and how they are changing over time. This information can be tracked in risk logs or on separate charts. This way, your team will know how best to allocate their resources to mitigate these risks.

You should set a deadline, once a month or more frequently, to review the risk matrix along with other key documents, to stay on top of your dangers. This will allow you to consider how each risk is progressing and how likely it is that this hazard will become an actual issue.

Control the Risks

4. Control the Risks:

The final step in risk management is controlling the risks. You need to make sure the impact of each risk is limited and that you are prepared for how to handle it if it does happen. This means creating contingency plans in case a threat occurs, taking proactive measures when possible, and being ready with your response plan just in case an emergency happens.

For example, how can you control the risk of team members leaving your project? You can try to prevent the risk by offering competitive salaries and benefits along with good work-life balance policies.

At the same time, it’s important to be prepared for how you will handle this situation if personnel leave. Identify how much this would affect your team and how long it might take before they are fully replaced. Make sure your team can function without this person and that you have a plan in place for how to fill the position if necessary.

A contingency plan is a great way to control risk. It’s an alternative plan that you create in case your primary strategy fails or if the situation becomes unfavorable.

Contingency plans can help prevent some risks by being prepared for them before they happen, rather than waiting until it is too late. For example, consider what would happen with your project if you lost access to your primary data source.

Your contingency plan for this situation would be to have a backup of the data, so you can continue working on the project. This might mean having an extra copy of the data or accessing it through a different means.

Common events that need risk evaluation

Common events that need risk evaluation

Now that you know how to evaluate a project’s risk, it’s time to look at common events that can impact your project. These common events can include changes to the business environment, new technology developments, or personnel changes.

Each of these events can have a significant impact on your project and it’s important to evaluate how they might affect your risk register. Let’s take a deeper look into each of these events to see how best they can be managed.

Business Environment Shift

Businesses are never static; rather, they are constantly moving and shifting. That’s why it is important to be prepared for how a change in the business environment might affect your project. This could be anything from a new competitor entering the market, to changes in government regulations.

All of this data will have an impact on how you run your team and continuing projects, therefore it’s critical to stay informed at all times.

For example, if your company is acquired by another company, this could mean that the original goals of your project are no longer relevant. You would need to update your risk matrix to reflect this change and ensure that all of the risks are still applicable.

Another key event might be the release of a new product by your company’s competition. If you have a lot of competitors, there’s a good chance that they’re paying close attention to your business. This might suggest that you need to revise the risk matrix to include things like competitors cloning your ideas or feature theft.

Just as key events can impact your project, your project can also have an impact on key events. For example, if you are working on a new software system that is set to launch soon, this could mean that the company’s old system needs to be retired earlier than planned. This would have a significant impact on the company and would need to be evaluated in your risk register.

New Technology

Another common event to be on the lookout for is new technology. Technology is constantly evolving and new tools are being developed all the time. This can have a big impact on your project, as you might need to update your plans to account for these new tools.

For example, if you’re working on a project that involves building a website, there’s a good chance that the design of the website will change over time. This is because newer technologies are always being developed, so you need to be prepared to update your designs periodically.

Similarly, if you’re working on a web-based project, you need to be ready for the possibility that your users might upgrade their browsers and not support older versions. This could lead to design changes as well.

New technology can also affect how we use key events in your risk evaluation process. For example, if there’s an app available online that does something your project is trying to do, you need to take this into account. The app might have already solved the risk that your team was trying to mitigate.

Staffing Changes

Staffing Changes

The last key event we’ll look at is staffing changes. Staffing changes can be anything from someone leaving the company, to a new hire joining the team. No matter what the change is, it can have a big impact on your project.

For example, if someone leaves the company, they might take their knowledge of the project with them. This could leave your team struggling to continue the project without them.

Or what if you’re working on a project that’s near completion, and a key member of the team leaves, this could create a major delay to the project.

It’s important to stay on top of key events so that you can properly assess and manage risk in your projects. By being aware of these events, you’ll be able to make sure that your risk matrix is always up-to-date and ensure that everyone is working towards achieving the project’s objectives.

Summary

As a project manager, you must be able to evaluate the risks of your next project. It’s critical for success to understand how significant each risk will be for your company’s success. Knowing what actions are appropriate at different stages in the process can help you take control over any setbacks that may come up along the way.

In this post, we’ve given some risk assessment and management suggestions in the hopes of providing you with fresh ideas for how to see your teams’ future projects through to a successful end.

Knowing the risks and identifying good opportunities is essential for learning how you can control them in your next project, which will help ensure that all objectives are met on time and within budget.

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10 Powerful Hacks for Handling Project Management Challenges

Project management challenges

Do you find project management to be a master juggling act?

Whether you’re working through team issues, assuaging a client, resisting scope creep or encountering the unexpected, there’s always something coming at you.

With so many balls in the air, you’ve probably more than once wished you had a third arm!

The good news is, whether you’re working to keep costs down, stay on schedule, or deliver premium service, there is a solution to every challenge.

Let’s look at some key challenges in project management, and the steps to take to overcome them.

No Clarity Around Project Goals

1. No Clarity Around Project Goals

Sometimes a company is so intent on bidding and winning a big project that they put no focus into carrying it out. Building the team and looking into particulars is treated like an afterthought. The scope isn’t laid out and the team doesn’t even quite understand what it’s working toward.

When a project manager goes into a project blind, a whole lot could go wrong. With no clear goal in mind, the team may well meander down side alleys, causing the project to go way over budget. Or the team may not have all of the necessary skills, resulting in a subpar deliverable and an unhappy client.

How to Handle It

The role of the project manager is to oversee and monitor a project. You’ve been hired to both get into the weeds and see the big picture at the same time.

Generally the leader isn’t interested in all the minutia, and so it falls to you to create a comprehensive plan. Gather as many details as possible in order to understand the what, the how, the when, and the why of the project. Be sure to have clarity around things like the budget, the skills needed, the timeline, and any risks the project may have.

Once you have a clear understanding, the next step in the planning process is to communicate everything to the team and the stakeholders at an all-hands-on-deck meeting. Make sure everyone understands the overall goal and the timeline. Select a software system that allows everyone to keep abreast of what’s going on and stay on the same page throughout the project.

When the team knows what the objective is from day one, it’s easier to manage expectations. Both you and they know what the project is all about.

Too Many Communication Tools and Preferences

2. Too Many Communication Tools and Preferences

At the beginning of a project, it’s easy to make expectations clear and have everyone working from the same platform. However, as the project progresses into weeks and even months, people have a tendency to slide into their preferred ways of doing things. You may have a trio who communicates with voice messages, while others exclusively use text or email.

When communication gets siloed, and decisions are made on a variety of platforms, it means that not everyone is “in” on what’s going on. This creates lag, as time is wasted bringing everyone up to speed.

How to Handle It

It’s never easy to draw people out of their habits and tendencies, but a project manager’s role is to consistently monitor the project all the way to its completion. Course correction is part of the game.

Take some time at the beginning of a project to select an effective and easy-to- use communication platform. When you see team members veering away and using other apps, don’t be shy about tapping them on the shoulder to bring them back in line.

Set a strong example by consistently using the central tool yourself, and post all critical information there.

When a team understands how central communication benefits the entire team, it’s easier to get them to cooperate.

Project Keeps Getting Bigger

3. The Project Keeps Getting Bigger…and Bigger

After a project is well underway, it’s not uncommon for a client to have a chat with a team member and ask for a few extra features to the final deliverable. Or maybe the boss, mid-way through, sends a quick text asking you if the team could take on another small task.

In the interest of being agreeable and going with the flow, it’s really easy to say “sure, no problem” to these small requests.

Pretty much every project experiences some level of scope creep. As the name implies, scope creep isn’t about making one or two big changes, but is more about making lots and lots of small changes to the deliverable. When these small changes add up, they have a huge impact on the project’s overall cost, schedule, and performance.

Too much scope creep spells disaster. It means the team has to get pretty scrappy toward the end of a project. Everyone works overtime, performance is sloppy, and people work on tasks not at all in their skill set. People aren’t duly compensated for their work, and team morale declines.

How to Handle It

In order to keep a project’s cost, schedule and performance on track, a project manager needs to have a system in place for handling scope creep.

First of all, it’s necessary to create clear demarcations about the different types of added tasks. Some changes won’t really affect a project’s cost or timeline at all. In these instances, it’s usually ok for someone to give them a green light.

However, when an added task affects a project’s budget and timeline, there needs to be protocol in place to submit the change for approval. A system that permits one team member to simply verbally agree to a task which would entail hours of additional labor from the entire team isn’t going to cut it.

Evaluating each task individually allows the leader and the project manager to judiciously decide whether or not it should be approved.

Scope creep is kind of a gray area, so at the onset, be sure everyone on the team understands what sort of tasks constitute scope creep, as well as the process for getting additional tasks approved

Communicating effectively with the client is also an important aspect of scope creep. It’s important to address requests with some flexibility, while also keeping the project on track.

The solution to handling scope creep, oftentimes, is about good processes and communication.

The Team Lacks Necessary Skills

4. The Team Lacks Necessary Skills

When a project requires specialized skills, oftentimes the team doesn’t have the expertise they need. Or, maybe some people have received training, but don’t have any on-the-job experience.

Significant skill-gaps means that a project cannot be completed, or that the deliverable is below standard.

How to Handle It

A satisfied and happy client is every project’s end-goal, and so paying attention to skill and performance levels is as important as winning the job.

A skill assessment needs to take place at the beginning of the project. When the project manager sits down with the leader to go through everything, it’s necessary to make a detailed account of all the skills required to complete the job.

At this point, you can build a skills matrix, which looks at everyone on the team, and aligns them with all the tasks required. Using this matrix, it’s easy to spot gaps and weak areas, and develop a plan to address them.

Here are a few ways to go about strengthening a project’s skill base:

  • Provide training in new skills that are necessary for completing the project.
  • In instances where only one team member possesses a critical skill, implement the practice of pairing. This is where two people work alongside each other on the same task. Pairing strengthens the skill base of the team, as it trains multiple people in the same skill. This way, when one person is absent, others can pick up the slack.
  • Identify the skills and tasks that require a freelancer or independent contractor, and look into hiring them.

With a little foresight, it’s possible to overcome gaps in your team’s skill set and to build a highly skilled team equipped to complete the project.

An Ever-Changing Team

5. An Ever-Changing Team

As discussed, a project that requires specialized skills often means hiring independent contractors and freelancers. These part-time employees always have commitments to other jobs and organizations, meaning you never have their full attention.

It’s easy for team enthusiasm to wane when everyone isn’t 100% committed to a project. When a freelancer feels sidelined from team activities, it weakens collaborative tasks, and it could result in subpar deliverables.

How to Handle It

Building a cohesive team is a hard-won achievement for any project manager. Having a freelancing onboarding process and utilizing team building activities are key.

Whenever possible, hire freelancers yourself, and take some time orienting them to the team and the project. Bringing them up to speed on what the company is about ensures their work aligns to its brand, mission and values. In order to clearly communicate job expectations, have face-to-face conversations about what you’re looking for. This helps to clear up all questions and concerns.

Explain the processes and tools that the team uses to communicate. Set them up with messaging and email accounts when necessary.

Even when people are moving in and out of a project, it’s still possible, and very important, to build camaraderie amongst the base. This collaborative spirit really improves performance.

A daily scrum or standup, where the team discusses issues, and progress, keeps everyone abreast of what’s going on. Including icebreakers or casual chats as a part of meetings builds rapport as well.

Diverse and Distributed Teams

6. Diverse and Distributed Teams

Most teams are composed of people from all sorts of backgrounds and skill sets, including engineers, marketers, graphic designers, and people from completely different cultures, with varying levels of English fluency.

If all this diversity doesn’t pose enough of a communication challenge, more and more teams have become distributed. Face-to-face conversations take place rarely, if at all.

This diversity and fragmentation can lead to communication breakdown, which poses a real threat to a project. Key decisions aren’t communicated across the team, and snafus run rampant. Sometimes, a client learns about problems from a third party, causing them to lose faith in the project manager and the team.

How to Handle It

Communication is at the heart of a project manager’s role. Processes that create channels of communication allows a project to keep on schedule, and performance levels stay high.

One process for healthy communication is a daily scrum. At these meetings, everyone explains how they are progressing, and identifies anything that is blocking them from getting things done, or slowing things down. A team might adopt the mantra of “no blockers,” meaning it decides to switch to another task while it waits for an obstacle to be removed.

It’s important to conduct the scrum in an open environment, where people are able to share frustrations and get everything out in the open.

Another healthy communication method for a distributed team is an ongoing chat, where people post daily updates and status reports on the project. The project manager keeps these chats active by checking in daily, and regularly responding to messages. This practice also keeps everyone working from the same software platform.

Regular status updates with a client keeps them abreast of everything that’s going on with a project. It’s way better for the client to hear about a snafu from the project manager than a third party. So even if the news is hard to deliver, it’s necessary to keep the channel of communication open.

Teams Conflict With the Leader

7. Teams Conflict With the Leader

Sometimes, during the course of a project, the team and the boss are on completely different pages. Maybe the team isn’t at all on board with the marketing plan, or it believes the product isn’t going to benefit the end user.

Performance declines when people are not emotionally invested in the project. And if the deliverable really is subpar, then the client won’t be satisfied, either.

How to Handle It

A project manager acts as a liaison between the team and the leader. It can feel like swaying back and forth on a seesaw at times.

When a project manager notices a real disconnect between the team and the leader, the first step is to determine if the problem merits the leader’s attention. Is this just the sentiments of one or two people, or the entire team? Additionally, are the grievances backed up by data?

It’s not always easy to bring a challenging or unexpected message to a boss, but any good leader wants to understand how the team feels about a project.

When having a difficult conversation, it’s important to keep them one-on-one if possible, and plan your message ahead of time.

Once you’ve said your piece, it’s in the leader’s hands to decide what to do with the information.

A Difficult Client

8. A Difficult Client

Clients have been known to make excessive demands. Maybe they want to meet with you every day, or impose deadlines that the team simply cannot meet. Sometimes, a client constantly wants to talk about increasing the scope of a project.

A difficult or demanding client is a recipe for overwork and burnout. Meeting all of their requests means that the project is well over cost and schedule.

How to Handle It

In the same way that a client is picky when choosing a team, it’s important for a team to be picky about choosing a client. Your client impacts your mental health, and that of the team.

Finding a good fit is a learning process. You may have to work with a few difficult clients before you’re able to identify what to look for.

It’s important to set boundaries with the client at the onset. Make sure that the work and scope of the project are mapped out, and explain the protocol for introducing new tasks to the scope. Perhaps this means filling out a change order or something like that.

The initial conversations, before a contract has been signed, is the time to look for clues as to whether the client will respect your boundaries.

After a time, it becomes easier to identify red flags. For example, when a client skimps and haggles over the contract, it could be a harbinger of difficulties to come. You want someone who respects the skills and time of the team, and is willing to pay the price.

Staying on Schedule

9. Staying on Schedule

It’s really easy to get held up on a project and to spend two weeks working on something that was supposed to only take one. When delays add up, just like scope creep, they make a huge impact on a project’s overall timeline.

A company pays a toll when it doesn’t meet deadlines. It may well lead to an unhappy client. Plus, it keeps the team from taking on more projects, which translates into less income for the team.

How to Handle It

The project manager’s role is to monitor a project and keep it on schedule. In order to achieve this, it’s helpful to have a system or two in place.

A burndown (or burnup) chart is an effective way to plot the entire scope of work for a project alongside its timeline. It plots total work on the vertical and time on the horizontal. The burndown chart provides the team, client, and the leader an easy visual to understand how the project is proceeding versus its schedule.

Regular check-ins with the team are important for staying on track. At the meeting, be sure to discuss anything that’s impeding progress, and also make sure the team has the tools and skills it needs to do the job.

When the project manager knows about things that slow the team down, he or she can work to remove and fix them.

Staying on schedule is tricky for any project, and consistent monitoring, along with good systems, is key.

Facing the Unexpected

10. Facing the Unexpected

Every project throws a pitch or two that you don’t see coming. Maybe you’re in construction, and there’s a huge storm that delays everything for a week. Or else a team member has an unplanned absence that holds everything up.

Whiffing at too many unanticipated curve balls means a project is sure to strike out. Tasks won’t be completed, creating huge delays, and the project won’t meet its deadline.

How to Handle It

Although you never know what a project may bring, it really is possible to plan for the unexpected. One critical step in a project’s planning process is sitting down with the leader at the beginning and brainstorming all the risks.

Depending on your project, risks could include things like weather, equipment failures, and licensing regulations. When there’s too many hang ups in these areas, things won’t move forward.

When you look closely at each risk, it’s possible to develop a plan for course correction.

Additionally, take a close look at the team to ensure that the skill base is strong. Consider providing training in areas that look weak.

As far as the budget is concerned, it’s always smart to set aside as much as 10% for the unexpected. If you don’t use it, then completing the project under budget will be a feather in your cap.

Mitigating risk is all about putting a plan in place beforehand. This way, when you encounter a fastball, you’ll be ready to knock it out of the park.

Conclusion

Every project faces so many challenges that it’s best to approach project management with a manta like: “expect the worst, and hope for the best.”

All of these challenges, however, are pretty similar. Going into a project with as much information as possible makes you poised for success.

When you anticipate problems, they’re much easier to handle. Working through them requires consistently monitoring, planning, and communicating to all parties throughout a project.

Teamly’s project management software provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that is perfect for remote teams. Our messaging services provide a strong central hub for keeping your team’s communication strong throughout a project. Come check us out today!

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Who Wants to Improve Their Agile Fluency? 45 Important Terms Every Team Should Know

Agile Terminology

Are you new to agile? Just learning the ropes? There’s a whole lot of lingo, huh?

Yep, with its own ceremonies, frameworks, artifacts, and even a Manifesto, agile certainly is a world of its own.

For someone unfamiliar to the terminology, listening to people throw around phrases like failing-fast, kanban boards, mental agility, and scrum master sounds a lot more like “wah wah Wah wah wah waah, Wah.”

Just like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher drone on and on, you probably feel like putting your head down on your desk and tuning it all out.

But what if you could be in the know, and get in on this agile thing everyone is so crazy about? What if talking about swarming and retrospectives was part of your everyday jargon?

The truth is, it doesn’t take long to get up to speed with agile terminology. After nailing a few important terms and key principles, you’ll be as plugged-in as the best of them.

So don’t wait around! Grab yourself a cup of tea and have a seat, cause we’re going to get into it and cover the most important terms in the agile methodology.

Agile Terms

A – C

1. Agile Manifesto

In 2001, a team of software engineers met at a ski lodge in Utah and wrote the Agile Manifesto.

Composed of four key values and twelve principles, the manifesto advocates team collaboration with ongoing reflection and course correction.

The software engineers sought to overcome flaws with the rigid waterfall method of project management, which often resulted in subpar products.

The Agile Manifesto is an umbrella for several agle frameworks, including Kanban, Scrum, Lean Startup, Extreme Programming (XP), and Crystal. Each has a distinct method, but all utilize the iterative agile approach of producing work in small batches, reflecting, then pivoting.

Although initially designed for software teams, the principles from the Agile Manifesto have been incorporated into all types of businesses and volunteer organizations.

2. Agile Transformation

An agile transformation is when a company or organization transitions its systems to an agile methodology.

Often a company is switching from a waterfall project management framework, where projects are carefully planned and plotted out in advance.

Switching to agile means embracing principles of autonomy, reflection, and collaboration. Having highly motivated teams is central to a successful transition. It also requires buy-in from all levels of management.

3. Backlog Grooming

Backlog grooming means working through the product backlog, and carefully prioritizing the items of work. (A product backlog is a project’s prioritized to-do list.)

In the scrum framework, backlog grooming falls to the product owner. Two or three days before the end of a sprint, the product owner chooses tasks that add the most value to the project.

Effective backlog grooming prepares a scrum team for its next sprint.

4. Blockers

A blocker is anything that prevents a task or story from reaching completion. Blockers come from within the team or outside of it.

One example of a blocker is a client who hasn’t made up their mind about a facet of a project. Another may be that the team doesn’t have the tools it needs to complete a task.

Oftentimes, agile teams adopt the mantra “no blockers,” meaning that rather than wait until a blocker is removed, it switches to another task or story.

5. Burndown Chart

A burndown chart plots how much work is completed on a project over its timeline.
Time is plotted on the horizontal axis, and work is plotted on the vertical axis, starting from total work at the top and working down to completion.

At the beginning of a project, an “ideal work line” is drawn to indicate the work goals at each time interval. Completed work is measured using story points. A second line, the “actual work line,” is drawn as the project progresses.

A burndown chart helps a team visualize how far along they are, and whether they’re working according to plan. It is commonly used in the scrum framework.

Here is an example of a burn down chart:

Burndown Chart

6. Burnup Chart

A burnup chart is similar to the burndown chart in that it also plots a project’s total work versus its timeline.

However, rather than plotting work from top-down on the vertical axis, the burnup chart plots work heading up.

The burnup chart is helpful when the scope of a project increases mid-way. Whereas with the burndown chart, the total work is calculated at the beginning, on burnup chart work starts at zero and heads up.

A burnup chart, then, indicates all the work that is completed, even if it wasn’t accounted for in the initial calculation.

Here is an example of a burnup chart (for the scrum framework, total work is represented with story points and time is represented with sprints):

Burnup Chart

7. Buy-in

Buy-in is about persuading management or a team to get on board with an agile transformation.

Agile buy-in oftentimes is on somewhat of a bell curve. Some managers are all-in, while others are not convinced at all. Teams may be reluctant to make the switch because it entails a lot of meetings.

When an organization understands that the agile method results in better products and more satisfied clients, they are more likely to buy-in.

8. Cadence

Cadence refers to the rhythm of the agile workflow. When teams work around a framework and ceremonies, they create a continuous rhythm.

An agile cadence generally is about two weeks. It breaks work down into small, focused batches. Rather than focus on a finish line it cannot see, an agile team selects a small amount of work and then reflects on it.

9. Ceremony

Ceremonies are recurring meetings and processes within the scrum framework. They include sprint planning, sprints, sprint retrospectives, standups, and sprint reviews.

Through faithfully completing each ceremony, a team embodies agile principles and works toward the completion of a project.

Unlike meetings, the purpose of a ceremony isn’t always about coming to a consensus on a topic.

10. Certified ScrumMaster

A Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) has completed training in the scrum framework and is equipped to lead a scrum team.

A ScrumMaster training usually takes 14-16 hours. To become skilled, a scrum master needs a lot of on-the-job training as well.

The CSM is one of several agile certifications. Others include Professional ScrumMaster (PSM), and Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP).

11. Crystal

Crystal is one framework under the umbrella of the agile methodology.

The crystal method emphasizes teamwork, communication, simplicity, reflection, reconstruction, adjustments and improvements. It’s a simpler framework than either kanban or scrum, and generally is used for shorter projects.

It emphasizes that each project requires its own distinct approach and techniques.

Crystal has various designations depending on the group’s size, including Crystal Clear (1-6 people), Crystal Yellow (7-20), Crystal Orange (21-40), and all the way up to Crystal Maroon (80-200).

Epic

E – I

12. Epic

An epic is a collection of small related tasks that complete a single body of work.

Small tasks in agile are called stories. A bundle of related stories form an epic. Epics are organized by theme.

One example of an epic is planning a party. It consists of many stories, such as finding a location, planning a venue, inviting guests, and scheduling entertainment.

The benefit of organizing tasks under one epic is that it creates clear priorities. For a party, you know that it’s necessary to determine a location before mailing out invitations.

13. Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme programming is a framework under the umbrella of the agile methodology. It is built around values of communication, simplicity, feedback and courage.

XP is the most industry-specific method, and is designed almost exclusively for small software teams. It does not have roles like scrum.

Pairing is often utilized in XP. This is where two members work together on the same project. This collaborative endeavor allows team members to learn from each other, and it creates a more fluid workflow, as one member helps the other through stumbling blocks.

14. Feature

A feature is a small amount of related work.

It’s smaller than an epic but larger than a story. Whereas user stories are completed in 1-2 weeks, a feature generally takes 2-3 months.

Features are helpful in long, complex projects for breaking down and grouping related work.

Golden Ratio

15. Fibonacci Numbers

Fibonacci numbers are a simple pattern of rapidly increasing numbers. It begins by adding 1+1, then continues by adding the previous two numbers together: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…..and so on.

Agile teams use Fibonacci numbers to estimate how long an item in the product backlog takes. They call these numbers “story points.”

An estimate at the larger end of the Fibonacci sequence (e.g., 34 or 55) indicates uncertainty as to the length of a story.

16. Front Burner

Front burner means anything from the backlog that the team has decided to work on right now. In kanban, it’s also referred to as the work-in-progress.
In scrum, anything listed in the sprint backlog is a front burner item.

17. Going Agile

Going agile refers to an organization’s transition to the agile methodology. It is also known as an agile transformation.

18. Impediments

Impediments are anything that slows down the flow of work during a sprint. They can include fears about a project, or relationship issues on the team.

One impediment might be that the onboarding process takes over a month. Another could be that a manager interrupted the team during a sprint.

In scrum, the team discusses impediments at the daily standup. At the sprint retrospective, teams identify impediments and their root cause. The scrum master is responsible for removing impediments.

Impediments are similar but slightly different from blockers. A blocker completely interrupts the flow of work, whereas an impediment slows it down.

19. Increment

Increment is one artifact from the scrum framework. It is the product a scrum team creates at the end of the sprint.

The increment is presented to a project manager and the client. Their feedback informs the next sprint, keeping the team on track to achieving its goal.

Inspect and Adapt Cycle

20. Inspect and Adapt Cycle

The inspect and adapt cycle is at the heart of the agile process. It’s even the motto for some scrum teams.

At the end of one work cycle, an agile team inspects its output. If possible, it’s released to the end user for feedback.

Afterwards, based on this inspection, the team adapts its course and plans the next batch of work.

21. Iteration

Agile is about breaking a huge project into small amounts of work.

An iteration is a small batch of work that a team completes over a designated period of time that works towards a larger goal. Each iteration has a specific length, and an end date. At the end of each iteration, the output is inspected, feedback is sought, and the next iteration is planned.

In the scrum framework, iterations are referred to as sprints.

Kanban

K – R

22. Kanban

Kanban is one framework under the umbrella of the agile methodology.

Like all agile teams, kanban teams are self-organizing, highly motivated, and autonomous. However, they do not have designated roles as in the scrum framework.

With kanban, the workflow is ongoing and it limits the amount of projects a team can work on at one time.

A kanban team leans heavily on the kanban board, which allows it to visualize a project, and identify any tasks that are currently in progress.

Kanban Board

23. Kanban Board

The kanban board visually displays a team’s workflow. The board consists of several columns, each representing one stage of work: backlog, work-in-progress, peer review, tested, and blocked.

As tasks progress from start to completion, they move down the kanban board. For a physical board, the team uses paper or sticky notes to indicate a task.

The amount of tasks in each column is limited: once they reach a designated maximum, the team needs to complete them in order to introduce new tasks. This is known as the work-in-process limit.

Here is an example of a kanban board:

24. Lean Startup

Lean Startup is a production approach that seeks to identify customer feedback before excessively investing in a product.

It combines the methodologies of both agile and lean. Agile is about carefully testing and adjusting a product to ensure it’s something the client wants, and lean is about creating a simple manufacturing system.

Lean startup creates and tests for market demand, while agile works to satisfy a client.

25. Mental Agility

Agile is a way of thinking that informs how a team works. Mental agility refers to a team’s ability to adapt and course correct.

When a team works in small sprints, it’s able to fail-fast. This means it identifies something that isn’t working, scraps it, and readjusts.

The scrum master fosters a team’s mental agility by ensuring they’re not too fixated on one path or role.

26. Pairing

Pairing is a practice commonly used in extreme programming. In pairing, two programmers work together on the same piece of work.

One central principle of agile is that teams work at a steady, continuous pace. Pairing is useful as it diffuses skills and knowledge to all team members, allowing one to complete tasks in another’s absence.

Planning Poker

27. Planning Poker

Planning poker is a method of using Fibonacci numbers to estimate the difficulty of a chunk of work. Arriving at a reasonable gauge is necessary in order to determine how much work a team should take on in an iteration.

In planning poker, each team member has a set of cards with Fibonacci numbers (called story points), representing the project’s level of difficulty.

In one round, team members first discuss an item in the product backlog. Each member values the difficulty of the item by selecting a card and placing it face-down. A low value indicates the project is quite simple, while a high value means it is complex.

Then, they reveal the numbers, and discuss any disparities. When there is a lot of disagreement about the level difficulty, the team discusses and places another estimate. They continue with rounds until arriving at a consensus. The project is then assigned a story point value.

It’s important to receive each person’s individual input without any bias from others on the team. While one person may assign a project 2 points, another who’s more experienced with the specific task may assign it 13.

28. Product Backlog

A product backlog is a project’s prioritized to-do list. It breaks a large project into small tasks, also called stories.

In the scrum framework, a product backlog also includes any actionable items that come out of the retrospective.

Backlog items aren’t prioritized to keep all team members busy at all times, but rather they emphasize tasks or stories that will move a project forward.

29. Retrospective

Also known as a “sprint retrospective,” a retrospective is a ceremony in scrum that takes place at the end of a sprint.

During a retrospective, the team meets to discuss anything that held up or stopped the completion of tasks in the sprint. It’s the scrum master’s role to fix any issues.

A good retrospective seeks to unearth the root causes of blockers and impediments.

For example, let’s say a task was blocked due to someone’s absence. The real blocker, then, is that skills aren’t evenly spread to all team members.
Retrospectives aim to create action items to add to the product backlog. In this example, introducing the practice of pairing would help to remove the blocker.

S – Z

30. Scaled Agile Framework

The agile method is about a small autonomous team working collaboratively. However, many organizations cannot accommodate the small-team approach.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAF) seeks to incorporate agile methods into large organizations.

SAF has four key roles (release train engineer, program manager, solutions architect and business owner) who work together to ensure transparency within teams, good communication, and a good product.

The SAF significantly decreases the amount of defects in a company’s product, and increases its output.

Scrum Process

31. Scrum

Scrum is the most popular framework in the agile methodology. It was developed for software teams by Jay Sutherland and Ken Schwaber in 1993, before the Agile Manifesto was even written.

Before scrum, software teams had used the waterfall method of project planning, where the entire project is plotted out at the beginning and overseen by a manager.

Scrum gives teams the autonomy to make decisions themselves. Like all agile, it’s an iterative approach to a project that emphasizes collaboration, reflection, and adjusting.

The scrum framework consists of three roles (scrum master, product owner, development team), five ceremonies (sprint planning, sprints, sprint reviews, retrospectives and standups) and three artifacts (backlog, scrum board, and increment).

Although scrum was designed for software teams, the method is now used in all sorts of industries.

32. Scrum Artifacts

Scrum artifacts are one component of the scrum framework. There are three artifacts: the scrum board, product backlog, and increment.

A product backlog is a prioritized to-do list for the team. A scrum board is a pipeline system for tracking completed work, work in process, and work yet to be done. Increment is what a team produces at the end of a sprint.

33. Scrum Board

A scrum board is one artifact in the scrum framework.

It is a pipeline system for recording work, and includes columns for work to be done from the product backlog, work in process, and completed work.

Scrum boards keep all the work front-of-mind, and help a team clarify which tasks are the most important.

Here is an example of a scrum board:

Scrum Task Board

34. Scrum Master

The scrum master oversees a scrum team and makes sure it follows the scrum framework, which consists of ceremonies, roles and artifacts. It is one of three roles in the scrum framework.

Agile is about autonomous, motivated teams, and so in order to create a high performing team, the scrum master coaches the team, rather than oversees it

The scrum master identifies impediments and blockers during retrospectives and daily standups, and works to remove them. He or she also makes sure the team has all of the tools it needs to complete a sprint.

35. Shuhari

Shuhari is a concept from Japanese martial arts. It’s the idea that when you’re just learning a new skill, you need to do everything by the book. However, when you’ve advanced and the skill becomes more like second nature, it’s possible to be flexible with the rules and transcend them.

With respect to agile, “shuhari” means that when an agile team starts out, it needs to follow the protocol closely. If the team is doing kanban, it’s necessary to use the board correctly and limit work-in-process. For scrum, the team needs to assign roles and participate in all the ceremonies.

This adherence allows a team to understand and embody agile principles of communication, simplicity, reflection, and course correction.

However, once a team gets into a good rhythm, and understands agile intuitively, it can play around with the framework.

Scrum teams, for example, adjust the scrum board to better suit their purposes, and alter or eliminate some ceremonies.

Sprint

36. Sprint

A sprint is used in the scrum framework to refer to one iteration of work.

During a sprint, an agile team completes a small batch of work outlined during sprint planning. Work is selected from the product backlog, determined by what best adds value to the project.

Sprints generally last one or two weeks. The work is laid out on the scrum board, where work in progress, completed work, and backlog items are laid out in separate columns.

37. Sprint Planning

Sprint planning is a ceremony in the scrum framework.

During this ceremony, the team looks at everything in the product backlog and selects work for the upcoming sprint.

Rather than making sure everyone will be hard at work throughout the entire sprint, the team selects work that will really move the needle for a project.

38. Sprint Reviews

The sprint review is one of five ceremonies in the scrum framework.

It’s a meeting conducted at the end of the sprint, where the team looks over what it has accomplished, and also examines the increment produced during the sprint.

The increment is passed on to the end user for feedback.

The sprint review is different from the retrospective, which also takes place at the end of the sprint.

The retrospective is about identifying impediments and looking at how the team worked together during the sprint. The sprint review focuses on the product and the increment developed.

39. Standups or Daily Scrum

A standup is one ceremony in the scrum framework.

It is a quick daily meeting, in which the team assesses how the sprint is going.

They identify progress and any impediments. The daily standup embodies the agile principle that team members communicate daily throughout a project.

40. Story Points

Story points are used to estimate how complicated, and therefore time consuming, a product backlog item is.

It’s usually pretty easy for a team to identify work that needs to be done, but it can be much trickier to figure out how long something takes, particularly with complicated tasks. However, this information is necessary in order to determine how much work a team should take on over one iteration.

Story points are based on the rapidly increasing Fibonacci pattern (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…)

A more complicated task is assigned a higher number, whereas a simple, straightforward task receives a score of 2, 3, or 5.

When an item receives a high score, it indicates uncertainty as to how long the task should take to complete.

Assigning story points is generally a team activity. Each person on the team brings different insight and experience to a project, and so all estimates are pooled and discussed to arrive at a consensus.

Swarming

41. Swarming

Swarming is when an agile team bands together to get a task done. It’s utilized especially in kanban, which has a limit on work-in-progress items, in order to allow new tasks to come into the workflow.

Swarming has several clear benefits. It increases a team’s cooperation skills, and creates a continuous workflow. Swarming also diffuses skills to all the team members, which makes it easier for teams to work continuously.

42. Themes

In agile, a project is broken down into themes, epics, stories and tasks.

Whereas an epic is a single task that takes longer than a week to complete, a theme is a grouping of related tasks.

For example, a theme might be three user stories related to marketing: a newsletter, a blog post and social media content.

An epic would be one task (say, writing an ebook) that takes longer than a sprint to accomplish, so it needs to be broken down into smaller chunks.

A theme may take several months to complete, while a single story is completed in one or two weeks.

43. User Stories

A user story is the smallest unit of work in the agile methodology. It is mapped out with the end user in mind.

The team uses story points, based on Fibonacci numbers, to estimate how long it takes to complete a story.

Stories are arranged and codified into larger groupings, including features, epics, themes and initiatives.

Waterfall

44. Waterfall

Waterfall is a big-picture, top down approach to project management. The leader states what the goal is, then working backward, plots all of the steps to achieve it.

When agile methods started to develop back in the 90s, they sought to fix some fundamental flaws in waterfall

For example, projects using waterfall work to fulfill a contract, without taking the end user into account. Agile methods lean heavily on seeking user feedback throughout a project, and adjusting accordingly.

Waterfall also emphasizes a command and control style of managing a project. Agile, on the other hand, cultivates autonomous and highly motivated teams who are coached by a leader.

45. Work-in-Process Limits

Work-in-progress (WIP) limits is the only constraint in kanban. It restricts the amount of projects that can be ongoing at one time.

Together, the kanban team determines the WIP limit, and posts it on the kanban board. When the team reaches its limit and wants to introduce a new task, they swarm to finish ongoing projects.

WIP limits create a continuous workflow, and helps to get rid of any bottlenecks. It doesn’t allow a team to push work aside due to impediments or blockers.

Conclusion

Does that help improve your agile fluency? Hopefully all the agile terminology makes a little more sense now.

Whatever framework an agile team uses, they all embody the principles of the Agile Manifesto, which include collaboration, reflecting, pivoting, and communication.

In addition to using agile in a professional capacity, a lot of people end up incorporating things like retrospectives and kanban boards into home planning as well.

Teamly’s project management software offers the very best to agile teams. From kanban boards, to voice and text messaging, to time tracking, Teamly is an all-in-one resource for distributed teams. Come check out our services today!

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The 5 Pillars of Project Management – and How You Can Implement Them Today!

Pillars of Project Management

The pillars of project management success go beyond factors such as appropriate work-process systems, collective team knowledge, and strategic decision-making. These are not the only elements that contribute to effective project management.

Project management can be a nuanced process, often requiring a customized and structured workflow to ensure successful, high-quality outcomes for an organization. Understandably, the role of a Project Manager (PM) and the individuals on a team play a vital role in shepherding this entire process from beginning to end.

The Pillars For Project Management Success

The Pillars For Project Management Success

A pillar is defined as a “fundamental precept”, giving way to firm principles and practices. The pillars of any rule or vision statement upheld by an organization always provide a sense of strength, unity, and clear identity. Project management in the workplace is no different. The processes of workflow practices need well-defined pillars to support both the technical and abstract aspects of project management.

Systems and processes are integral to project management, however, in order to achieve success, project management often relies on more intangible factors, more closely resembling soft skills. For example, a new hire with exceptional hard skills in computer programming has the ability to bring a robust amount of information and methodologies to their new team. However, without clear guiding principles about the goals of the assignments, organized and thoughtful processes, room to think creatively, and growing doubts about the team’s capabilities to operate as a cohesive unit, the knowledge potentially stays stagnant. Important milestones fall through the cracks, communication within the team isn’t as fully collaborative, or hiccups in the workflow process are met with less compassion.

The company not only risks losing a valuable employee but also increases the amount of turnover to other organizations that prioritize the need to create and nurture the building blocks of project management.

These pillars can make or break project workflow, no matter the scope or level of talent from the people involved. It’s what holds the project together, not only supporting the team in carrying out the basic objectives of the assignment, but also guiding them in making productive and meaningful contributions.

Here are the five essential pillars that are the foundation of project management.

Vision

Project Management Pillar #1: Vision

A company’s vision for the present and the future is an important aspect of project management. Not only does a vision share what the company would like to do to operate better, but it also gives an undeniable visual about where the company wants to be in a few years. In order to create strong team alignment, creating a company vision that inspires and motivates its employees must be done at the leadership level. This is the first pillar of project management because of its focus on workplace transparency. Without a clear path forward, employees won’t understand where the company is going or how their efforts contribute to the overall goal.

Organizations that prioritize workplace transparency tend to have stronger employee engagement, communication, and positive work culture, according to Glassdoor.

So what does this mean for project management?

When employees are aligned with the company’s vision, their morale is significantly improved, and they’re more likely to sustain high levels of performance than those without this crucial element. With this understanding comes inspired ideas to help make the vision happen, which includes innovative project management creation based on a company’s project needs. According to Indeed, vision statements often serve as a guide when employees encounter various challenges.

It’s also essential to understand that a company’s vision isn’t limited to internal staff. This is something that can be shared with external clients, customers, and prospective employees to help with their understanding of the organization’s purpose.

For example, if a company has a clear vision that it shares on its website, this can act as a type of strategic recruitment strategy. Potential candidates will be drawn to the positive and buzzing workplace culture that a vision can so aptly describe. This also helps organizations stand out by setting themselves apart from their competitors by providing a firm sense of commitment to an employee’s wellbeing and supportive work culture. A vision prioritizes the development of an employee but also focuses on the company’s values and core business objectives.

A vision can attract top talent to the organization, whose own personal goals align with the company’s, which is important for long-term retention. As effective project management does require the team to have a high level of skill in order to function properly, having a vision that attracts these types of performers is vital to success.

Collaboration

Project Management Pillar #2: Collaboration

One of the most important aspects of project management is the idea that everyone has the ability to contribute to the process equally and fairly. Collaboration in the workplace is important for a wide variety of reasons:

  • Leverages the wide range of talent on the team for maximum impact
  • Enables the team to think creatively
  • Brings everyone together ensuring high productivity
  • Achieves the teams’ goals faster
  • Improves overall performance of the company
  • Empowers the team to learn from each other, sharpening existing skills and learning valuable new ones
  • Fosters a sense of belonging
  • Promotes more innovative problem-solving
  • Increases sense of purpose
  • Gets the team on the same page
  • Leads to more strategic and thoughtful decision-making

These are all essential, contributing factors to successful project management, especially when it comes to decision-making, which keeps the project moving and the entire team on track. Leaders and teams must work together to coordinate, execute, and monitor the projects they’re working on. Especially with larger, more complex assignments that need buy-in across several departments, collaboration amongst teams must be one of the stronger skill sets. Throughout the process, the team can work together and be more aware of each other’s unique perspectives, needs, and deadlines.

Collaboration also helps create more inspired ideas when problems arise during the project’s life cycle. The team works together to identify the problem, have a meaningful dialogue, and come up with an agreed-upon solution. Without this level of collaboration, projects cannot be delivered with high-quality outcomes. Projects tend to remain stuck or delayed until a solution can present itself.

Flexibility

Project Management Pillar #3: Flexibility

Flexibility is a vital pillar of project management. As with many projects in the workplace, circumstances can change over time, which could potentially derail timelines and deliverables. Leadership, the PM, and the relevant team members should remain flexible and adapt to the situation when there’s a disruption to the normal process. Here are a few reasons why flexibility is important in project management:

  • Anticipate the unexpected – In project management, there is a systemized workflow process that helps guide the team to the intended goal. This happens to make the vast majority of employees more comfortable as there is familiarity in established processes. However, an effective PM plans the project expecting change, anticipating deviations from the standard practice. Depending on the project needs, the team can hold tightly to the process, with short bursts to reprioritize, rework, or come up with other solutions to the problem, or, as the project moves forward, the team can have meaningful conversations as problems manifest.
  • Put the team first – Flexibility puts the people first. While the idea is to assess the issue at hand, a PM needs to check in and evaluate the workload of the team. This ensures smooth coordination and continued communication as the PM works to keep the project on track. It’s important to understand that drastic shifts in processes can negatively affect employees, especially if there’s an increasing amount of change all at once. Keeping the team together during challenges is crucial to project management success.
  • Foster dedication – Even with regular changes in workflow processes, a dedicated team member will continually “keep up” with any new developments and contribute to innovative problem-solving. The more flexible the team is the more dedication to a project the organization is likely to get even in during challenging times.

Project Management Pillar #4: Accountability

Accountability is another important aspect of project management. An individual is accountable for their contributions and will be the intended receipt of the good (or bad) consequences of their work. They are responsible for their own decisions, actions, and results. This ensures that a PM avoids micromanaging individuals on a team, which can create a variety of interpersonal issues. An effective PM empowers the team to uphold their responsibilities to the project.

Trust

Project Management Pillar #5: Trust

Trust works in a few distinct ways in project management:

  • The team is able to rely on each other
  • Allows team members to focus on their tasks with minimal distractions
  • Encourages continued collaboration
  • Has a positive effect on an employee’s physical and mental well-being in the workplace
  • Supports high productivity
  • Creates transparency
  • Demonstrates respect
  • Focuses on what the team can do to improve, and not linger on mistakes

Trust often comes with time, patience, and experience. The PM and the team usually find their rhythm after a few cycles of working together, but ultimately, it can have reverberating effects on the success of not only the project, but the professional development of the staff as well.

In Conclusion

The way organizations approach project management has transformed over the years. Instead of focusing on the finer details of workflow processes (although these are important), leadership understands that to truly build a process that works, it’s about taking a step back and giving their employees a clear path forward. This is done by providing a company vision that everyone can rally behind and a positive work environment that continues to motivate and support the way everyone works together.

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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fast Tracking. Is It Right For Your Next Project?

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Fast Tracking

As project demands increase, fast-tracking strategies have become a highly desirable addition to project management teams. We’ve all felt the pressure of a project falling behind schedule and scrambling to get it back on track. However, it’s important to know the advantages and disadvantages of fast-tracking in project management before you decide if this strategy is right for you.

What Is Fast-Tracking?

Fast-tracking is a project management technique that aims to complete a project in a shorter amount of time than usually allotted. Ultimately, fast-tracking is simply highly-organized multitasking. Most companies adopt this management technique to help minimize the time a team spends on a project, allowing for more projects to be completed throughout the course of the year, and increasing profits.

As great as that sounds, it’s a difficult technique to master and is better used in certain situations than others. Read on to determine when fast tracking is the best option for you and your situation.

When Is Fast Tracking The Best Option

When Is Fast Tracking The Best Option?

Can you remember a time when a client unexpectedly requested for their project to be done earlier than originally scheduled, leaving your team rushing to meet the new timeframe? This is a perfect example of a time when fast-tracking your project is the best option, and if done correctly, can leave you with a final project that meets the deadline and maintains your high-quality standards.

There are a few other times when fast-tracking can be useful too, including:

  • If you need more people for your project. Combining teams to complete similar tasks, not only gets them done quickly but also doesn’t increase your employee rates, maintaining your bottom line.
  • When your schedule is more demanding than usual. A great example of this would be the holiday months. Demands begin to increase, and projects need to be completed with a faster turnaround time, making fast-tracking an ideal solution.
  • When you’re trying to beat out the competition. In many cases, when it comes to big projects, it’s important to be the first one to bring it to the public (and if not the first, then the very best!), so fast-tracking can give you a strong advantage over the competition.
  • When unexpected issues arise and your project falls behind schedule. Life happens, and when your project sustains a time-altering problem, fast-tracking can be an excellent option to make that time back and get on schedule again.

Now that you have an idea of when you can use fast-tracking, let’s break down the advantages and disadvantages of fast-tracking in project management.

Advantages Of Fast-Tracking In Project Management

Advantages Of Fast-Tracking In Project Management

When done correctly, there can be many advantages of fast-tracking a project. The most beneficial aspects include:

  1. Can Increase Profit
    When you implement a fast-tracking strategy effectively, you’re able to batch similar tasks, completing projects much more quickly. When you’re consistently able to complete projects in less time than previous years, while still maintaining the same quality, you’re able to complete more projects throughout the course of the year and increase profits.
  2. Reduces Your Project Time
    One of the most desirable outcomes of fast-tracking is the significant decrease it can have on your project time. When you fast-track effectively, you’re able to align the individual tasks of your projects in a way that allows you to complete multiple tasks at the same time. While planning this takes an immense amount of project awareness, it provides a unique opportunity to cut your project time.
  3. Provides A Way To ‘Correct’ A Project
    Oftentimes when a project falls behind, it’s directly related to an error that was overlooked, leading to an increase of working hours aimed to fix the problem and get the project back on track. When you’re able to create a well-rounded fast-track plan, you create a positive work environment where you can bounce back from these pitfalls and make up for any lost time so that you can meet the deadline.
  4. Cost-Effective
    When you successfully introduce a fast-tracking strategy, you’re able to increase project output, without requiring more people. When you’re able to increase profits without also having to increase your expenses, the extra projects you’re able to complete become profit.
  5. Increase Your Industry Authority
    A company that is able to produce fast turnaround times is one that is highly desirable in the industry they serve. If you can fast-track your projects successfully, you’ll gain recognition from your clients and valuable word of mouth opportunities.

Fast-tracking can be a beneficial tool in your project management style, however, it does come with some drawbacks that are important to consider before introducing it to your team.

Disadvantages Of Fast-Tracking In Project Management

Disadvantages Of Fast-Tracking In Project Management

While there are some appealing factors to consider, there are also some disadvantages of fast-tracking that can seriously affect your project. Here’s what you need to consider:

  1. Difficult To Implement Effectively
    Fast-tracking is one of the more difficult strategies to implement in the workplace. There are a number of requirements that the management team must have in order to create an organized, and well-informed fast-tracking schedule.
  2. Requires A High Level Of Project Understanding
    Fast-tracking requires a strong managerial staff that has a firm understanding of the projects they are leading, and how they can be organized in a way that batches common tasks together, allowing them to be completed at one time. The ability to create a strict outline that reflects the project goals is a vital skill for your project managers to possess.
  3. High Risk Of Low-Quality Work
    Multitasking has been closely linked to a lower quality of work, among other things. When choosing to implement a fast-tracking project management style, you create an atmosphere that demands strong multitasking skills. If your team is not designed with this specific skill set in mind, it greatly increases the risk of the quality of work suffering due to the increased demands and the expectation that your team can easily switch between tasks.
  4. Increased Stress
    When demands are increased, stress often does as well. Fast-tracking requires your employees to complete more tasks at one time, naturally increasing the amount of effort needed during working hours. If you begin to expect more out of your staff than is reasonable, it will cause them excessive stress, affecting their quality of work, lowering their productivity, and creating an unhealthy work environment – which plays a vital role in your employee morale.
  5. Risk Of Unexpected Costs
    With the risk of increased stress rates and lower quality of work, you’re creating a work environment that is more likely to experience unexpected losses, whether it be from employee burnout, irreparable mistakes, or missed tasks altogether. When a project faces these kinds of challenges, additional costs are a common result.

How To Implement Fast-Tracking Effectively

How To Implement Fast-Tracking Effectively

If you’ve weighed the risks and have decided to introduce fast-tracking to your management team, there are a few steps that are essential for you to find success. These include:

  • Motivate Your Team
  • Communicate Effectively
  • Identify Project Goals In Concrete Terms
  • Create A Strict Plan
  • Establish A Schedule (and sharing it with your entire team)
  • Monitor And Adjust As Necessary
  • Track Problems To Continue Optimizing Your Fast-Tracking Strategy

Conclusion

Adopting a fast-tracking project management system has both enticing advantages and commonly experienced disadvantages. Ultimately, the decision to implement this type of solution is entirely based on your project demands, the strength of your team, and your management style.

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An Effective Approach to Setting Business Development Goals

Setting business development goals

As we approach the end of the year, it’s a natural time to start reflecting on the past 12 months and planning for the future. For businesses and individuals alike, goal setting is an integral part of this process.

But there’s an art to goal setting. You can’t just make wild, ungrounded claims about your future success. When you’re looking to set business development goals, you can’t simply say “I want my startup to be a unicorn in 2 years”. Well, you can say that, but for 99.999% of new companies this “goal” is meaningless.

You want to be ambitious, sure, but your goals need to be achievable. More than that, you need to make sure you’re working towards the most relevant goals—the goals which will take the business where you (and your partners or shareholder) want it to go.

Let’s take a look at a well-rounded approach to setting business development goals which, if done right, can be transformative for your business.

Things to remember before goal setting

Three things to remember before goal setting

Before we dive into applying the SMART method and actually creating your game-changing business development goals, we need to tackle some perceptions and misconceptions about goal setting. These are more subtle points which, in tandem with the SMART methodology, give your company the best possible chance of reaching and exceeding its goals.

#1—Remember your company vision and values

When your business starts going places (and especially when those places are up) it’s easy to get caught up in the moment. Your decision making can suffer, you can chase short-term gains (to the detriment of your long-term success) and essentially lose track of your true objectives.

The easiest way to combat this—and set goals which not only set you up for short-term success, but which also take your company a step closer to your grander vision—is to measure every goal against that vision or your company values.

For example, let’s say you started your marketing company to help the little guys (self-employed, cash-poor startups, minority entrepreneurs) and as you’ve grown your reputation, your skillset has caught the interest of some bigger companies. One offers you a big bucks cheque and you do a project for them. It’s a success, and you spot a lucrative market opportunity for yourself.

Before you embark on that, ask yourself: is this the right path for my business? If it is, great! But perhaps you’ll realize that the track you’re headed down doesn’t align with your long-term desires. This simple trick will help you hone and fine-tune your business over time, so that in the long run you don’t only have a business that’s profitable, but one you’re proud of, too.

#2—Failure is relative and goals aren’t everything

Too often we confuse “not meeting a goal” with “failing in our business”. When reviewing how well you’ve achieved your goals, you must remember it’s rarely a pass-or-fail scenario; it’s more like a success continuum.

If your company set a truly ambitious goal and put a number on it (say, “Hit $100k per month revenue by December, compared to $10k/month current average”) and only just fell short at $95k per month, then that is a massive success. Sure you missed your “target”, but you increased your monthly revenue by 9.5x and are probably still growing rapidly!

And this is the true purpose of goals: not to hit arbitrary numbers, but to facilitate growth and ambition and forward movement within the company.

Of course it’s possible to fail to hit your goal and be failing in business. If you haven’t put any effort into realizing your goals, you won’t reap any of the secondary benefits that come with that effort.

But for most companies that are proactively working towards ambitious goals, success isn’t guaranteed. What you might do is continuously grow, move forward, and succeed in a more general sense without ever reaching your goals! So don’t take “failure” on your goals too seriously—in the proper context, you might be doing exceptionally well.

#3—Invest in short, medium and long-term goals

When most of us talk about goals, we look far into the future. “I want to be a 7-figure business” or “I want to be the industry leader in our category”. These are fine ambitions, but they aren’t concrete goals your business can actually build towards.

So if your ambition is to be a 7-figure business, it’s essential to break down the long, medium and short-term goals that will get you there. The simplest way to approach this is creating long-term goals first, breaking these down into manageable chunks and then breaking those down into even more bite-sized chunks.

There you have it: 3 levels of goals which you and your teams can follow to reach distant, apparently insurmountable heights.

SMART Business Developement Goals

How to create effective business development goals—the SMART system

The SMART approach to goal setting gets a bit of flack, but it’s actually a very astute and reliable way to set ambitious yet achievable goals—goals which are actually relevant to the business. Because this approach requires more work than simply pinning vague ambitions on the wall, it also forces business owners to consider whether some goals are truly necessary.

(Hint: if it’s not worth the effort of spending a few minutes planning, then it’s probably not crucial to the business!)

The SMART system stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time bound

Specific Goals

Specific

Specificity is crucial for creating a clear path and objective for your goal. For example, “Increase profits by 10%” is not particularly specific. Sure there’s a specific figure, but it doesn’t describe how this goal might be reached.

A specific example would be: “Increase profits by at least 10% by relocating to a cheaper warehouse (out of town) and putting more hours into search engine optimization for our website, to drive organic traffic and sales.”

An effective way to add specificity to goals is answering the 5 W’s:

  1. Who is involved in this goal?
  2. What is the desired final outcome?
  3. Where is this goal to be achieved?
  4. When do we want to achieve this goal?
  5. Why is this goal important?

Measurable

“What is measured is improved.” These famous words have been proven true time and again over the years. If you don’t assign some metric for success to your goals, how will you know if you’ve succeeded, or to what degree? How will you assess what did or didn’t work en route to this goal?

Measurability is absolutely essential. In the above example, it’s pretty straightforward: compare next year’s profits to the previous year. This could be broken down into monthly or quarterly analyses to track progress.

Achievable Goals

Achievable

The point with this step is just to ground your ambition. It’s typical for business owners to shoot for the stars with their goals, but if this leads to an endless slog of missed targets, it can be demoralizing for both business owners and the team. Worse, it can force employees to put in massive efforts, increasing their risk of burnout or churn.

So for every goal, we need to consider if it’s realistically achievable by using our best judgement. This is best done by comparing historic efforts. For example, if you made a heavy loss in the previous year, shooting for huge profits is probably unrealistic. However, if you’ve been building for a few years and reaping the rewards, continued stretch growth is a fantastic goal.

Relevant

This step is essentially saying, “Is this goal truly valuable and can it be achieved under current circumstances?”

Let’s take our goal of increasing profits. If your company is currently going through a supply chain crisis, or is struggling to service customer support requests, is growing profits the best goal to be setting your business right now? Or should you be seeking to address other core aspects of the business first?

A few questions you could ask yourself include:

  • Does this goal align with our grander business goals and vision?
  • Is this the right time for this goal?
  • Am I the right person to lead this effort?
  • Are there economic factors which make this less desirable?

Time bound for Goals

Time-bound

A natural part of any goal-setting system is assigning a firm time cap. Goals without deadlines are just vague ideas of what your business can do; putting a hard time limit on your goals is a key driver and motivator to making it happen.

As we highlighted above, it can be useful to break longer-term goals into smaller chunks. For example if you have a 3-year plan, set up bi-annual or quarterly reviews of progress. Not only does this allow you to re-evaluate your goals (which is incredibly important) it can motivate the workforce by seeing their progress to date.

We all know what it’s like to have goals which aren’t time-bound—they just don’t work.

Conclusion

Goal setting for business development is unique to every company. Your current situation, your values and your ambitions will never fully align with what others have done. That’s why this post focuses very little on sharing specific goals from other companies: for education, it’s the process of creating highly effective goals that’s most important, not the goals themselves.

We have peppered small examples throughout to illustrate points, but the truly fun part of goal setting is examining your business and figuring out where you want to take it. Having this vision is fundamental to goal setting: without knowing where you want to go—even in general terms—how can you possibly set relevant and effective goals?

It’s important to review your goals periodically. Business development is an iterative process: your company’s identity, your personal vision and external factors always evolve over time.

So use this guide to get started on uncovering your key business development goals and objectives. And further down the line, use it again to check if your current path is still the right one for your business.

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How to Choose Firm but Ambitious Goals for Your Business

Choosing firm goals for your business

Most of us know that it’s focusing on the process that brings long-term success, not fixating on achieving specific goals. If your goal is to hit $100,000 monthly revenue and then you do it…what now? Your company’s whole identity was built towards this milestone. Worse, every month you don’t make $100,000 can feel like failure.

By focusing on the process which is most likely to lead to $100k months you can keep going indefinitely—whether you hit $100k or $500k.

But goals are still fundamental to business success. The key is recognizing that there are different types of goals and some are more important than others. In this article we’re going to look at setting firm, valuable business goals and defining them in such a way as to make them more achievable and impactful.

Create your broad goals

Create your broad goals

If you’re an entrepreneur that’s just left their stable day-job, or you’ve got a small-but-steady operation you’re looking to keep on-track, then it can pay dividends to not overcomplicate goal setting.

We’re going to share a strategy for creating bigger, bolder and more specific goals (see next section: “SMART goal setting”) but it’s completely acceptable to start with less concrete goals while you’re still getting established. Until you reach that stage, taking such a granular strategic approach to goals may even hinder progress rather than enable it.

Step 1—Consider your personal ambitions and responsibilities

A major reason why young businesses fail is because their founders didn’t put enough thought into making their work sustainable. Working 80-hour weeks to get your product off the ground is admirable, but if you’re ruining your sleep, eating takeout every day, your exercise regime has fallen by the wayside and you barely see your kids anymore…you can see how it becomes unsustainable.

Business success is awesome, but it’s only one aspect of your life. Think hard about the hobbies, habits, friends, or activities you definitely don’t want to give up; the ones that help sustain your healthy, balanced life and therefore sustain your success in business.

At the same time, consider your responsibilities. If you’re a mum of 2 and want to be super present during your kids’ childhoods, how you build your business will need to work around this. Other factors to consider might be:

  • If you’re in education, how many hours a week do you need to commit?
    Are you still working another job?
  • When do you want to have vacations? Are there times during the year you need to have less work?
  • How many hours can you actually commit to every week (including all those lost hours between tasks, commuting, making tea, and banging your head against the wall)?
  • Do you have hobbies you want to maintain?
  • What are the non-negotiables when it comes to time with your kids, your pets, your spouse, or your friends?

Step 2—Understand the meaning of your business

This is a relatively small point but an important one. When you’re caught up in the minutiae of running your business, it’s very easy for your internal compass to go haywire. You can start going down paths that don’t really help you fulfil the vision you had for the company in the first place. It’s important to make clear what that vision is, or what your central motivation is, so you can stay true to it over time.

There are no limits on what this might be and each person’s answer will be different. Your purpose might be “making enough money to provide for my family”. It might be “I want to be a millionaire” or “I want to help people” or because you believe in the righteousness of what you’re doing. Whatever it is, just note this down; if you ever get lost down the road, use this to reorient yourself.

And now to goal setting!

Set Long, Medium and Short-term goals

Step 3—Set Long, Medium and Short-term goals in that order!

Say you’ve launched a legal advisory firm because you truly believe in the power of the law to protect and help vulnerable people. That’s a wonderful meaning or “why” for your business—but “helping people” isn’t a strategic goal.

You need to have a long, hard think about what success in your business would actually look like. Ignore “making $X per month” for now. You want to start with a long-term goal (because shorter-term goals are all about achieving the longer term ones) and consider what your business would look like if it was succeeding and derive goals from there. Here are a few examples:

  • Marketing business—The business is successful when my clients are signing 6+ month retainers, every team member is being paid fairly + not overworked, we have no debt, and we’re being approached regularly by new prospects.
  • Legal consultancy—The business is successful when we’ve developed a reputation for honesty and transparency in the industry and when we’re winning 3+ cases every month.
  • Tech company—The business is successful when 90% of our customers leave 5* reviews, when journalists come to us for PR stories, and we’re making net profit every month.

Notice that these aren’t precise goals just yet. They’re more like visions of how the future will look if we follow a certain path. Now is the hard part: coming up with the goals required to get you there. What you need to do is visualize the steps required to make these visions a reality.

For the marketing example, the road to 6-month retainers might involve:

  • Creating sellable “packages” at a fixed price, so customers know what they’re getting upfront
  • Curating a brilliant client experience so customers want to stay
  • Building a reporting system so you can show clients exactly what their money is doing every month

These are long-term goals. You break these down in shorter goals and then break those down even further. One popular system is the 3 year, 3 month, and 3 week goals—by steadily achieving your 3-week goals, the 3-month goals and eventually 3-year goals are slowly accomplished.

Temper your goals with realism

Step 4—Temper your goals with realism

If you’ve thought carefully about your goals and aligned them with your business’s values and your personal responsibilities, you might not need this stage. But in our experience, most young companies set overly ambitious goals. Goals that are just not possible over a 3-week or 3-month span.

Remember you’re going to review your goals regularly. It’s much better to start with something achievable and, if you’re consistently hitting your goals, aim higher if necessary. But if your goals are keeping you on-track for the future you want, don’t heap extra pressure on yourself unnecessarily; just keep on plugging away!

Enhance your goals with the SMART system

The process we’ve just gone through allows you to create goals which are true to your business. However, they are still relatively broad. We use the SMART system to refine and validate our goals. It’s an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound—the 5 standards against which we sharpen our goals.

SMART Goals

Specific

The more specific our goals, the more likely we are to follow-through and deliver on them. The simplest way to make goals specific is to answer the 5 W’s for each goal:

  1. Who is involved in this goal?
  2. What is the desired final outcome?
  3. Where is this goal to be achieved?
  4. When do we want to achieve this goal?
  5. Why is this goal important?

Measurable

How will you measure the success of your achievements? Even if it’s not 100% reliable, it’s important to create a metric of success for each goal. While sometimes this is straightforward (e.g. reaching a global revenue target) you may have to get creative in other cases.

“What is measured is improved.” Words to live by!

Achievable

We have touched on this already, but your goals must be achievable. So if you have goals which are particularly ambitious, make sure you consider:

  • Do I have the time, resources and people to reach this outcome?
      • If not, what needs to change?

Having powerful and ambitious goals is fantastic, but if the corresponding workload leads to burnout or frustration within the team, it might be better to pair back the goals slightly and make the road towards those goals sustainable.

Relevant

This is probably the hardest guideline for some business owners to come to grips with. Is this goal truly relevant for the business? Is this the best way to use your and your team’s time and resources? Is this the right time to pursue this goal?

Sometimes we create fantastic ideas but the company just isn’t ready to take them on. Or perhaps the industry itself isn’t in the right state to accommodate your goals. More challengingly, business owners need to accept that sometimes they aren’t the right person to lead a specific goal drive.

Take a holistic view of your goals and put them in their full context before taking action.

Time-bound

Every goal needs a deadline. Because your company will run through a continuous evolution of new goals, you need to put a firm time cap on each one. Otherwise you run the risk of never quite following through and therefore stalling on forward progress.

Time is one of the areas where companies are most likely to be overly-ambitious. Try to consider the realistic capacity of your workforce, the effect of external stakeholders, the current economic environment—anything which might significantly impact your ability to reach the goal. Then assign an ambitious but genuinely achievable deadline.

Remember as well that some goals are more mission critical than others. You can afford to set generous, slow deadlines on those less important goals. Setting ambitious targets across the board will require exceptional management of all people and resources.

Make sure your follow through

Make sure your follow through

If you’ve managed to commit and put the effort into creating goals which align with your personal life and ambitions, are S.M.A.R.T and staggered across the short, medium and long term, then you’ve set your business up extremely well.

Unfortunately, it’s the execution which often lets companies down. With that in mind, we’ve put together 3 quick points that might help you follow through and deliver on reaching these fantastic goals.

Regularly review your goals

This is especially important for longer-term ambitions. What most businesses find is that when they set a plan 3 years into the distance, they rarely ever get there. This isn’t because they “fail” but rather because the nature of the business and its longer-term ambition changes.

And this is fantastic. It means your business is growing and evolving, and hopefully chasing these long-term goals contributes to that change—even if the initial end results themselves don’t come to pass.

So every 6 months, check in on your long-term goals and see if they still represent the right future for your business. You can also use this time to review progress on your other, shorter-term goals: have you been hitting them consistently? Are you seeing the desired results from reaching these goals?

This review period is about keeping you on track, but also keeping your teams motivated by seeing the fruits of their labor pay off.

Celebrate achievements and milestones

Celebrate achievements and milestones

This sounds like a tiny factor but it couldn’t be more important. Your staff aren’t machines and neither are you. When you hit any of your goals, acknowledge it. Sure you aren’t going to throw a party for every successful 3-week goal, but you can enjoy it. And for bigger goals, it’s important to celebrate a bit more—it helps everyone in the team to let their stress ease away and believe it was a worthwhile effort.

Some companies will introduce rewards or treats, but simple acknowledgement of good work goes a long way for most employees.

Use a project scheduling tool to up your success rate

Project and task scheduling tools are designed purely to increase your odds of consistently meeting your goals. The ability to see every goal, each team member’s responsibilities and progress, as well as the ability to access all files associated with the work makes building towards goals so much easier.

Teamly is built to help you accomplish projects faster and more efficiently, giving you a clear advantage over the competition by turning every SMART goal into a happily ticked box.

Conclusion

There is definitely an art to setting firm business goals which are ambitious, relevant, feasible and genuinely impactful. By following the process laid out in this article, your business should be able to convert its vibrant energy and ambition into bite-sized, actionable chunks that elevate you to ever-higher levels of success.

To give your business the best possible chance of success, consider signing up for early bird access to Teamly—you won’t believe just how easily you’ll clear your targets!