Elizabeth Harrin's Blog, page 14

How to use LinkedIn to promote your project management skills

Do you only look at LinkedIn when you are in the market for a new job? I’d hazard a guess and say that’s what most people use it for. However, if you’re on LinkedIn (and you are, aren’t you?), it can do a lot more for you than that.

LinkedIn is a great professional network where you can connect with past and current colleagues. You can add a lot more professional detail about your experience and career history than social sites like Facebook or X (I still call it Twitter).

It’s perfect for building out a professional profile and solidifying your reputation and credibility as a project manager, whether you are currently looking for a new role or not.

Highlight your skills

First, check that your profile includes your recent work history. LinkedIn isn’t a set it and forget it network. As you deliver new projects, complete new training courses or gain new certifications, you should be going back to LinkedIn to add them to your profile.

Platforms like Coursera or LinkedIn Learning make this easy. When you finish learning, you’ve got the option to share your Credly badge.

The benefit of doing that in real time is that when it comes to updating your CV, you’ve got a handy list of things to include! Keeping your career history in LinkedIn can pay off when it comes to applying for new jobs, especially if you are like me and haven’t looked at your CV for a long time!

Think about common interview questions and how you can evidence that you have the skills that demonstrate you can do the job – these are the skills you should be highlighting in your profile.

Highlight your projects

As well as your current and past employers, highlight a few projects that you carried out in each role and the key skills that you learned along the way. My guide to adding projects to LinkedIn will show you how to make the most of showcasing what you’ve achieved.

I have no empirical evidence for this, but it feels sensible to me that people are more likely to contact you with opportunities if your profile is up-to-date and reads well.

Review your profile

You can add a lot of detail to your LinkedIn profile, and if you haven’t logged in for a while, all the different sections to complete can feel a bit overwhelming. Use the wizard to step you through the sections but don’t feel obliged to provide details where you would prefer not to have these public. Skip the steps that don’t seem relevant to you.

Here’s what I would include as a minimum:

An indication of location

Obviously, don’t include your address. And if you live in a small village, you might want to skip that too.

Including your county or the closest major city gives employers the chance to consider whether they’d be prepared to pay relocation fees for you to move (or they might see that you’re in their area and be more inclined to reach out to you).

It may also help employers manage expectations about remote and hybrid roles, as I talk to a lot of candidates who are interested in remote work and then get a job and find out it’s not as remote as it was made out to be.

Your industry

If the company names aren’t nationally known, having a clue as to the industry you are in will help other people get a sense of the kind of projects you have experience in. Many people consider project management to be a transferable skill (me included), but in my experience, employers are still keen to see if you’ve got a background in their industry.

Your current position

This is your professional profile. You need to include what you are working on right now (or, if you are currently job-seeking, what else you are doing with your time).

Your previous positions (at least two)

Even if you choose not to list all your jobs back to that paper round you had at school, you should give a bit of indication as to what you’ve done with your career. If you haven’t had two previous positions, that’s fine, but if you have, then include a line or three.

For all your roles, be sure to specify:

Overall objective of project/main purpose of roleSize of team you worked with and if you managed them directlyBudget you were responsible forDuration of the projectBenefits/value to the organization, especially if you can highlight something you were responsible for delivering personally.

It’s a balance between including enough to tell the story and having the reader scroll down through pages of text. Strike the balance!

Your training and skills

List university-level education and relevant certificates. I think it’s also worth including the project management software that you’ve got experience using and the other tools relevant to your job that an employer might be interested in knowing about.

Think about the keywords that employers use to search in your industry, and try to make sure your profile includes some/all of those – as long as you can truly justify them. Don’t say you have expertise in a particular area just because you know people are searching for it. This will backfire if you can’t actually do the job. They will find out at the preliminary interview and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

A photo

Finally, make sure you use a nice photo. ‘Nice’ means:

Headshot onlyTaken in a professional location i.e. you can’t see the beach behind youYou’re smiling or at least looking welcomingYou’re wearing work-appropriate clothes (even though most of them won’t be in shot we can still tell)Good quality picture size: LinkedIn will reduce the size of the picture to show on your profile but if someone clicks the picture it appears bigger.The social side of LinkedIn

LinkedIn offers more than simply a place to store your CV. You can also join groups – great for supporting you through professional training or for networking online with peers. You can publish articles, which is another good way to showcase your skills and create a credible profile.

None of this matters if you aren’t connected to anyone. Start sending out some connection requests, adding a personal note where you can to remind the person how you know them.

I used to decline requests if I had not at least met the person at an event or had some sort of dealings with them, but I’m a lot less strict about building industry connections now. Set your own boundaries about who you want to connect with.

You can choose to follow someone if you don’t want to connect with them – they won’t necessarily know that you have started to follow them unless they browse to your profile and see it.

Get recommendations

Some of the best project managers I know have no or hardly any recommendations, so these are certainly not a pre-requisite for getting a job. But as the feature is there, why not use it? It’s another way to fill out your profile.

You can also recommend others for particular skills. If you don’t want to go as far as writing a full recommendation or reference for the person, you can simply click to rate their knowledge in a specialist area, which tags their profile with key words like ‘planning’ or ‘change management’.

You can ask for direct recommendations or hope that because you’ve endorsed someone that they will do the same for you: your choice.

LinkedIn is a free and easy way to ensure that you have an online profile, even if you don’t have a personal website. It’s considered more professional than Facebook, and if someone searches for your name online you want the first thing they see to be a complete and strong profile of you, which showcases your abilities as a project manager.

Why not take a look at your LinkedIn profile today and see what you could do to improve it? And while you’re there, feel free to connect with me.

How to Answer Project Management Interview Questions

Learn how to ace your project management interview and gain the confidence you need.

You’ll learn my 3-step approach to Prepare, Research, and Practice before you meet the interviewer.

Contains over 35 relevant, situational questionsStreamline your interview prepLearn how to answer tough questionsGet it now

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This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

How to Fix 5 Project Management Skills Gaps

I bet your project sponsor expects you to dive into the detail and understand why a line of code isn’t working, and strategically advise on business benefits as a result of your project… and everything in between.

As a project manager, you are expected to have all-round skills encompassing the technical fields of project management like planning and scheduling, through to the interpersonal skills like communicating up and influencing others.

When you look through the lists of competencies for a project manager, it’s hard not to be daunted by the huge range of skills that we are supposed to have. And I don’t have them all – I’m aware of that.

Unfortunately I’m not able to say, “I’m struggling with Excel right now, I really don’t have these budgeting skills, so we won’t bother to have a budget tracker on this project.”

If you don’t have the skill (or don’t enjoy a particular element of managing your project), you either need to learn or make sure the team includes someone who can pick up the slack.

Below are 5 of the areas where I know people struggle with skills, and a couple of tips about how you can improve in those areas.

These also work for coaching your team, so if you are definitely not interested in learning all those spreadsheet formulae, help someone else get their skills up to scratch so they can best support you!

Skill #1: Managing tasks

Task management involves making sure that the work that is delegated to any individual team member is appropriate and doesn’t overload them. It involves resource levelling and ensuring that you track time.

It also involves making sure that people know what their priorities should be. Even the best, most organized people on your team will need a steer as to what they should be focusing on – and probably a reminder about upcoming milestones.

Boost your skills: Timesheets will help you track time more effectively. They might not be a popular choice but once you have made the switch you’ll find the data incredibly useful.

Skill #2: Managing risks

Risk management is a core skill for a project manager, and one that I would hesitate to ‘outsource’ to a team member. So much of risk management is tied up in being able to see the big picture, and as a project manager you are best placed to do that.

However, risk management overall is a team sport: anyone can identify a risk and you should spread risk ownership amongst the team so your name isn’t down against everything.

Learn how to help your team manage risk so you can split the work between you.

Boost your skills: Make sure everyone on the team knows how to manage risks and what the process is. Everyone should have the confidence to bring new risks to the table.

Increase your own skills in this area by ensuring you know what your boundaries are – what kind of risk mitigation activities you can authorize and what needs to be run past someone else.

Skill #3: Managing scope

Understanding the change management process and being able to navigate your way through the changes as they hit the project – that’s a great skill to have. For some project managers, this comes naturally; for others, it’s too tempting to say ‘yes’ to everything!

Of course, you can’t say no to everything either – the skill comes from being able to balance the competing needs of stakeholders and the sanity of your team, the budget, the schedule, and everything else.

If you don’t have the skills to deal with change you could end up delivering something that is not fit for purpose or never finishing the project at all.

Boost your skills: Start by understanding how to manage a change as laid out by your Project Management Office. It’s important to know what qualifies as a change and what triggers the change process – not every schedule change, for example, is going to need to go through an approval process (thankfully, or you’d be there all day).

Check that you know who needs to approve changes. For some, like technical changes – or business changes that have a knock on implication for technical changes – you might have several approval steps to get through before you can go ahead and update your project plans.

Skill #4: Scheduling

Scheduling takes task management to the next level. It’s juggling dependencies. It’s crashing. It’s ladder and hot air balloon scheduling to see everything on a page.

It’s knowing your project management software inside out and having it do most of the heavy lifting for you.

If you don’t have skills in scheduling, you are going to find it hard to get your project set up effectively and to track the work as you go through.

If you work in a company where there is someone who can take the scheduling work off you, then by all means use them. But don’t think this negates your own need to understand how your project schedule fits together.

As the project manager, you are ultimately responsible for the time frames, and you need to know your schedule thoroughly.

Boost your skills: First, get to know your project management software. Learn how it schedules, what the automated settings are and how to override them.

Next, make sure you understand the flow of work: what drives what and how tasks are linked. Your team knows all this stuff, so draw on their knowledge. Then schedule around people, not tasks.

Finally, make sure that when you are scheduling you are doing so with all the data – correct and accurate data. Again, lean on the team to put together estimates that are reliable: working with the correct numbers makes everything easier and helps you avoid common scheduling mistakes!

Skill #5: Managing the budget

A project budget might be the first time a new project manager has had responsibility for handling the company’s money, and I know that project expense management isn’t the easiest of things to get to grips with. Different companies have different approaches to this, so you might have no budget responsibility and yet be expected to deliver the project on target, or have to account for large amounts of money with virtually no finance training.

Budget management is definitely a skill to develop because it is useful in future roles too – say, if you move into a role with a P&L responsibility. In my view, this isn’t an area of the project to try to delegate to someone else unless you have a dedicated financial analyst seconded to your project team.

Boost your skills: Software can help here too, as long as you know how to use it. Take a crash course in spreadsheets if you don’t know your SUM from your COUNTIF.

Don’t be afraid to take shortcuts if your company has a budget template for your project (or it’s built into the software you use). As long as you understand and can explain the figures, you don’t have to crunch them yourself if you trust the reports from your PMO or tools.

Remember, your company likely has a whole team of people who do budgeting and financial management for a living, so if you are struggling, ask for help. Your project sponsor can connect you with someone in the Finance team who will be able to explain why project accounting should be done in the way that is mandated.

Your next steps

If you follow these simple suggestions, you’ll be able to plug the gaps in your project management skill set, or be able to coach and mentor a colleague through improving their own skills.

If you’d like someone to help you put together a plan to build your confidence in these skills (or any others), then get in touch with me to book a mentoring power hour – we can soon get you on the right path or skilled up in what you need to know!

Need a mentor?

Book a power hour with me. Gain some clarity about your career or get support for a project in a one on one session.

Book a power hour

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This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

Questions to ask a project management mentor

Have you got a project management mentor? Whether you’re excited to meet them for the first time, or have had a few calls/sessions already, you are probably wondering if you are using their time effectively and asking the right questions.

I certainly worried about that when I got my first mentor. Now I mentor other people, I can tell you that all you want is some conversation starters that are relevant to you and your career.

Below, I identify some common categories of question I get asked, along with the ones I wish I was asked! Use these as a starting point in your meetings with your mentor and see where the conversation takes you.

Still looking for a mentor?

Bookmark this post to come back to when you have found a mentor, as you can use the questions below to kickstart your conversations. Or book a power hour with me and get started on your mentoring journey straight away!

You probably started your mentoring relationship because there was something specific you wanted to learn about or a skill you wanted to develop. Maybe you were allocated a mentor as you recently joined a company and it’s their policy to give you one.

Maybe you were asked to identify a project manager as a mentor as part of an apprenticeship scheme – that’s the reason I have a couple of mentees at work.

You’ve got your sessions in the diary and you want to make the best use of their time. So what should you be asking them?

Here are some suggestions for questions to ask your mentor.

At the first meeting

The first mentoring session is all about getting to know each other. Here are some good questions to ask a mentor in the first meeting, but feel free to ask your own as well!

Tell me about your background and experience.How did you get into project management?When did you join [your company]?What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Also ask some questions about the logistics of the relationship, like these:

How often do you think we should meet? (Have in mind the answer that you want too.)I’d prefer to meet in person/virtually – does that work for you?These are my areas of focus, do you think you can help with these?How should we review progress?

The first meeting is likely to be all about getting to know each other, creating rapport and setting the intention going forward. You’ll have more detailed discussions about areas of focus and topics that you want to get help on in future sessions.

At regular meetings

You’ll find a regular cadence and probably settle into a regular agenda or routine with the check in sessions. Here are some sample questions you can use to keep the conversation moving.

Can I tell you what’s happened since we last spoke?The topics I have to cover for this session are (more on ideas for these later)What would you do?Have you ever come across that kind of situation before?What advice would you have for me?

Ideally, you’ll come along to each mentoring session with a list of questions so you make good use of the time.

Questions to ask about career development

Is career development one of the topics you want to learn more about? Here are some questions you can ask your mentor about the next steps in your career path.

I’m thinking of taking a project management certification. Which of these do you think would be the best fit for me?Which certifications do you have and what was your experience of getting them?What do you think I need to work on to get a promotion?What’s it like running big projects/a PMO/working in X field?How much experience did you have before you went for your current role?

You can also use the mentoring session to run through how you would pitch yourself for a promotion or to practice what you would say to your line manager.

If your goal is to discuss career path options, ask your mentor to introduce you to some people in different fields so you can talk to them about their career journey and their daily routines – that might help you narrow down your vision for your career trajectory.

Questions to ask about project management methods and techniques

Pick a few areas where you feel you could develop your skills and focus on those. Preferably, choose areas where you are less confident and know you need to build experience and confidence in order to progress.

I’d like to learn more about X, where do you think I should start?Having read the policy/process document/standard operating procedure on Y, I have a few questions. Can we go through the list?Do you have any book recommendations on X topic?Can you show me an example of when you’ve done Y so I can compare it to what I’m doing?What might my blind spots be in this process?What are your tips for managing multiple projects?

Try to ask specific questions. The vaguer you are, the lower the quality of the response and the less practical advice you’ll get.

Ask your mentor for actionable advice, for example, if they could share examples of project management documents that have landed well with stakeholders so you can use them for inspiration.

Questions to ask about navigating the organization

One of the big challenges for new entrants to a team or organization is where to go for help and learning who does what. Office politics plays a big part in being an effective manager, and luckily for your, your experienced mentor has been there, done that and knows how to get things done.

Here are some questions to ask to speed up your ability to navigate your company’s internal politics and structures.

Who is the best person to talk to for X?Where can I find the organizational/hierarchy charts for Y?I’m having trouble getting a response from X. What have you found is the best way to contact them?Who are the key influencers for Y?How can I get time with X team when they don’t reply to my emails?Which other stakeholders do you think I should be considering for this project?

Ask whether they have any tips for networking, or whether they can introduce you to their contacts so you can build your own professional relationships more quickly.

Understanding the workplace culture and the dynamics of soft power within the organization can hugely increase your influence, so use your mentor for the insider information!

Questions to ask about time management and productivity

We all want to use time more efficiently and work smarter, and the chances are that your mentor already has some tips that work well within the organization and in the role.

Use these questions to find out some smart shortcuts for your work.

Can you give me some examples of productivity here?Are there any shortcuts for the X system?Where can I find the user guides/crib sheets for the project management software (or any software) so I can use it more effectively?What time management or productivity training does the organization offer (if the answer is none, take my productivity for project managers course).

Hopefully, your mentor is demonstrating a good work/life balance and part of time management is getting enough time for yourself. Ask about how they manage to juggle their professional life with being present at home!

Project management mentoring topics

Think about your career objectives and pick a couple of topics that you’d like to use as starting points for conversations at your next mentor meeting.

I know it’s hard to think about what you want to do, when the list of project management mentoring topics is unfeasibly large. I mean, you could ask your mentor about pretty much anything. The PMBOK® Guide now seems to reference so many skills and competencies for project managers and the job is so broad.

If you want some starting points of topics to cover with your career mentor, here is where I’d begin.

Risk managementScope management, especially about the change control process and avoiding scope creepStakeholder engagement and the best ways to have difficult conversationsProject communication and reporting expectations across the organizationQuality managementLeadership skillsCareer transitions and general career advice

Incidentally, all these topics are covered on RebelsGuideToPM.com, so if you don’t get time to discuss them with your mentor, have a read about the key things to know on this website.

Whether you are part of a formal mentorship program, or you’ve reached out to someone informally to start discussing your career goals, a successful mentoring relationship is based on asking (and getting answers to) good questions.

Print out these lists so you’ve got them handy when you’re on your next call with your mentor!

Need a mentor?

Book a power hour with me. Gain some clarity about your career or get support for a project in a one on one session.

Book a power hour

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

How to create a project budget

What is a project budget?

A project budget is a financial document that lays out what you think you’ll spend on a project. It covers all the (approved) expenses required to deliver the project.

In other words, it’s the way you answer the question: “How much is this project going to cost?”

The project budget might be phased over multiple quarters or years. It might include capital expenditure and operating expenditure. It’s the summary of how much you have been allocated to get the work done.

What does creating a project budget involve?

Creating a project budget involves:

being able to identify all the items that are going to cost money, including staff costsbuilding a complete picture ofwhat you need to spendgetting approval for that amount.

I have left items out of several project budgets and I can tell you it’s pretty embarrassing having to ask your project sponsor to approve spending from the reserves because you messed up the budget. So it’s worth spending some time on making sure your budget is comprehensive.

In thisarticle we’ll look at how to segment costs, how to find out the cost of things,and then how to structure your budget.

This guide ismost helpful for developing project budgets for projects that are approved orclose to being approved, for example as input to a businesscase.

If you areplanning a budget for a project proposal i.e. pitching to someone else for themto secure your services to deliver a piece of work, then read this articleabout preparinga budget for a proposal.

What is included in a project budget?

There are several ways of categorizing project cost for your project budget:

Direct costsIndirect costsCapital costs (capex)Operating costs (opex)Project deliverable costsProject management costs

And your organization may have other standard ways of thinking about cost categories.

Let’s look ateach of those in turn. They do have overlaps but that’s OK. It gives youanother opportunity to check that you haven’t missed anything out.

Direct/Indirect Costs

The first wayto think about your project costs is to consider what’s a direct cost andwhat’s an indirect cost. I find this helps me establish what’s in the projectbudget and what isn’t. So, let’s take direct costs first.

Direct costs

Direct costs are going to form the bulk of your project budget. They are the things that you have to buy or pay for in order to move the project along. Developing some new software? You’ll need hardware to run it on and software licenses. Designing a new product? You’ll need to buy manufacturing equipment and raw materials.

These are what you would normally think of as project costs and tend to be quite easy to identify. Talk to your team and brainstorm all the items that you need to procure using your work breakdown structure as a prompt.

Indirect costs

Indirect costs are the costs involved with keeping the project team running. They are the costs of doing business and are not normally included in project budgets.

For example, salaries, national insurance costs and tax contributions for the people who are working on the project. These are simply the cost of having resources and if they are employed staff you wouldn’t expect to account for these (some companies do cross-charge internal people costs on a flat fixed rate per employee type – check if you aren’t sure).

Indirect costs include the cost of heating, lighting, tea bagsfor the office, refuse collection and so on. Again, you wouldn’t normallyinclude these costs in your budget unless your project is about opening a newoffice.

Don’t routinely put these costs in your project budget – ifyou have any doubts or you think they (or some of them) should go in, checkwith your finance team.

Capex/Opex Costs

Another way to categorize expenditure is into capital and operating expenses (often shortened to capex and opex). Let’s look at those next.

Capital costs

Capital costs are what are incurred when you buy stuff.Spending capital gives you assets for the company. This could be a newfork-lift truck or a patent application, but you get something tangible at theend of the day.

Capital costs are also involved when your current project includes upgrading an existing asset or repairing something that is broken to extend its life. That covers everything from adding a few new features to some software to major repair works at an oil refinery.

Capital costs represent an investment in the organization, and an investment that you will benefit from over several years, if not longer.

Operating costs

Operating costs are to do with running the project and the team, a bit like the indirect costs category.

They are accounted for differently to capex as they hit the profit and loss accounts. Capital can be managed as a different type of expense on the balance sheet but opex hits your bottom line.

Operating costs on projects include labor costs and training. (Sometimes you can capitalize staff costs if they are directly involved with bringing an asset into service — check your local accounting practice.)

Travel expenses and catered lunches are also opex, along with any routine maintenance, licencing and support fees that aren’t to do with new things your project is making or buying.

Project communications often fall into opex too, so budgetsomething for those. However, you can doproject comms on a very small budget (or none at all).

These are the components that go into making up a project budget. Diagram adapted from PMBOK – Sixth Edition

Operating costs don’t give you assets and they don’trepresent a long-term investment in assets. I have to say that sometimes it canseem like semantics: surely a training course is a long-term investment in me?

I’ve always explained it by saying that I don’t belong tothe company: I’m not on the books as an asset as I am free to go and workelsewhere. So while the training course is a long-term investment in me, itonly pays off if I stay.

Sometimes – and this is where it pays to check your own company’s rules – opex costs incurred in a project setting can be capitalized because they are related to bringing an asset into service. It gets complicated quite quickly – check if you aren’t sure or you’ll find yourself short of cash if these things aren’t factored in.

Deliverable/Management Costs

A further way to split costs for the purposes of creatingyour budget is into project deliverable costs and project management costs.Let’s take project deliverable costs first.

Project deliverable costs

Project deliverable costs are – you guessed it – the costsinvolved in creating a project deliverable. Take your work breakdown structureor your product breakdown structure and map out the costs involved in eachchunk of work that relates to a deliverable.

The costs involved in delivering your project requirements can be relatively small, like printing charges at the local print shop for a training manual for 30 people. Or, of course, they can be gigantic, like the steel bill for the London Olympic stadiums.

Some of your deliverables may be manageable for free – not everything costs money to produce.

The total project deliverable costs would stay the sameregardless of who took on management of the project or whether it is done by anin-house team or a contractor.

Project management costs

The project management costs for a project relate to the costs of running the project. That includes all the people and admin stuff like setting up the project management office (if it’s needed), any temporary staff or salaries for people on secondments, new licenses for new users on the project management software or wiki or whatever.

These costswould differ depending on who is doing the project management. If it is anin-house team it’s going to be a different proposition to outsourcing it all toa third party (who would typically be more expensive).

The Project budgeting process: How to structure your project budget

Top down budgeting is where the sponsor gives you the total amount available and you work out how you are going to split that.

Bottom up budgeting is where you work out the detailed cost of each item and the total of everything is the budget you ask for.

In reality, experience shows what happens is likely halfway between the two. You’ll work out what you need, and then someone will say, “But we only wanted to spend $x,” and you’ll have to take that top down approach into consideration and cut the budget in a different way to meet the expectation.

Effective project budgeting isn’t hard — here’s a simple process to create your budget. You might have to go through the whole cycle several times on complex projects as the numbers get refined.

Step 1: Plan how to document the budget

When you feel like you’ve got a comprehensive view of everything (and I mean everything) that your project needs to pay for, then you have to work out a way to represent that on paper (or electronically) so that you can track it accurately.

You may have written a project cost management plan as part of your overall project plan, so that will have the details of how you will approach managing the money.

Alternatively, your PMO may have guidance and templates for project managers required to plan, forecast and track spending.

Personally I like to use my own project budget template spreadsheet but many companies mandate the use of the project management office’s template, or a software application to do it for you. In many ways this can be easier because you don’t have to create anything from scratch.

Whatever you use, the important thing is that it is meaningful for you and that you know how to use it. If someone else has designed a tracking spreadsheet or template (for example, if you download the one I use), spend some time playing around with it so you know how the formulae work and how to input data.

Often I find that when someone else has done it you don’t always see how things link together until you’ve spent a bit of time with it.

Step 2: Populate the template

Then, populate your numbers with your cost estimates. Group your project expenditure into whatever categories make the most sense to you and total up the numbers to give you your grand project budget.

Sense check it to make sure you haven’t made any silly formulae errors or missed out a cell when totaling the numbers. For example, putting someone’s hourly rates as their day rate (not saying that’s ever happened to me, obvs).

Get someone else to read through it and check it for you if you don’t feel confident.

Accurate estimates give you an accurate budget. You can also look at previous projects to get some insight into how much items will cost to inform the budget for the entire project.

Step 3: Add contingency

Add contingency if you need to (you should work this out based on the risk profile of the project, as riskier projects will need more contingency). This is to cover unexpected costs. Then total it up again.

The contingency fund is (hopefully) available to you later if you should need it. I have used contingency reserves on my projects in the past, so if you can lobby to include it in the overall budget allocation, then you should!

Need help creating your budget? Grab my Excel template for project budgetsStep 4: Add tax

Add taxes – many vendors will give you quotes without tax but as you actually do need to pay tax it is better to work your budget out on a comprehensive and tax-inclusive basis.

Check that tax is included in your detailed estimates. Then total the whole budget up again.

This is thenumber that you need to present to your sponsor, along with any notes andassumptions.

Step 5: Get budget approval

The figure forthe project budget that you are now presenting for approval may be more thanthey were expecting. It may be within their anticipated range.

You may beasked to trim it down or put some more funding in. Ideally, it won’t take toomany iterations before you have a number you believe in and that your sponsorwill approve.

Feel free tochallenge, especially if they are asking you to do more work for less money! Ifthey want the work done, they have to pay for it.

Step 6: Track spending

When your budget is approved, you can start spending! Keep a record of everything that you buy so that you can track actual costs against your original budget.

Look out for cost overruns, scope creep, unexpected expenses and budget deviations from forecast. The earlier you can spot these, the easier it is to control project cost and get formal approval for any changes required if you need additional budget.

Your next steps

Creating a project budget isn’t that different from household budgeting except the numbers are larger (unless you live on a superyacht and are doing a small web project). Identifying everything upfront is the key and if you can do that, it’s plain sailing from then on.

Want to keep reading? Check out Project Budgeting: An Interview with Sol Benady for some practical tips about how to manage your budget once you’ve started the project.

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

Your Strategy Planning Meeting Agenda (with Template)

Have you been asked to pull together a strategy planning meeting agenda? And you’re wondering what other people do in their strategic planning sessions… I’ve been there!

In this article, I’ll explain what a strategic planning meeting can cover and share a sample agenda you can customize for your strategy sessions.

Strategy planning doesn’t just happen. You can’t put people in a room and expect there to be a 3-year plan at the end of it. The conversations need a structure to help keep the pace and ensure the meeting runs smoothly. And that’s where the agenda comes in, as part of your pre-meeting prep.

What should a strategic planning meeting include?

A strategic planning meeting should include:

A review of organizational objectivesAn assessment of how you are doing against those objectivesDecisions around what needs to be sped up, slowed down, started or stopped in order to better align activity with the objectives.

If you think about the point of having a strategy discussion, it’s really to either define the strategy or to decide if you are on track with delivering the strategy. What you need to include in the meeting has to tie back to those points.

In other words, what do you want to get out of your strategic planning process? Is it a new strategic plan? An update to the last one because something drastic has changed? A review with some ‘light editing’ to ensure decisions are being taken that keep you on track to meet your goals?

What goes into your meeting (and therefore, your agenda) will very much depend on where you are in the strategy planning cycle.

When do strategic meetings happen?

There’s no fixed cadence for strategy conversations. Some businesses use quarterly meetings. Some might do a lot of planning during the existing structure of board meetings. As long as sufficient time is put aside for strategic thinking, you can set whatever frequency of meeting you like.

I would recommend quarterly review sessions, with a longer goal-setting session once a year, but do whatever works for you. If you are putting together your first strategy or doing a complete overhaul, you’ll need to spend a lot more time on it to get the strategic process set up and the relevant data collected.

Planning a successful virtual strategy meeting

Strategy meetings tend to be quite long. You might put a full day or even two aside for your planning, perhaps another full day the following week for the follow up.

For that reason, it’s often better to do them in-person instead of remote, but do what works best for you and the team.

Personally I would prefer to meet in person as in my experience you get better engagement with the process.

If you have to hold the workshop remotely, with people dialling in, make sure you schedule enough screen breaks. I put a break in at least after every 90 minutes — people just can’t focus for that long.

You can also use breakout rooms to set people up to work in small groups (in person or remotely using your collaboration software) so they can interact more easily.

Sample strategy planning meeting agenda template

Every effective meeting needs an agenda, and the great thing about strategic sessions is that you can tailor the agenda to cover the topics that would be the most valuable to wherever you are in the planning cycle. The strategic planning agenda below assumes you are meeting in-person, and is suitable for a strategic review session.

9.30am: Welcome

Use this time for introductions. Do an ice breaker exercise if your attendees won’t think it is cheesy (mine would).

I start by sharing the meeting objectives and making it clear this is a strategic meeting so people don’t get carried away with the detail. Discuss ways of working e.g. who is capturing what actions, what you’ll do if there is a stalemate for a decision, what decision-making tools you are using.

You might want to introduce ground rules for the session such as

No taking calls in the roomTake space, make spaceShare your experience

etc. I think my delegates would find this a little patronizing as they have all worked together for many years, but I can also see that there would be circumstances in which it is appropriate to refresh expectations.

If you think they would value having some guardrails for acceptable behavior during the conversations, then by all means add time for that into the agenda at this point.

10am: Big picture strategy

Present the overall roadmap, for example, a timeline for the 5 year plan. Make sure everyone is clear on where the organization is going and what big chunks make that up. For example, perhaps you have a couple of different portfolios that support the strategy.

You can use this time to talk about the current situation, the company’s strategy and how your department fits into that. This section should answer the question: where are we now?

Get a whole bundle of templates for meetings10.30am: Coffee break

Give people time for a bathroom break and to get something to drink. Bonus points if you provide the coffee!

10.45am: Progress review

Have each executive or leader in the room share their area’s progress against their area of the strategic plan. They can bring in team members to present specific topics if that would help, and if their expertise is needed as part of the debate.

These presentations don’t necessarily need to be formal, but they should cover what objectives the department is working to, how they link to the big picture strategy and whether they are on track. Talk about whether milestones are on track to be hit. Present the budget figures related to the area and the confidence levels around meeting those.

This section of the agenda might be long, depending on how many leaders you have to get round, so adjust the rest of the agenda to fit your timings. I’d suggest everyone gets 30 minutes but it depends on what you think they have to share and how much discussion there will be about each area. If possible, timebox the updates so you keep the meeting moving.

Alternative session: Where do we want to be?

If you haven’t got strategic progress to report, use this time to:

Brainstorm where you want to beAgree where you are goingCreate a vision for the next 3 yearsDocument the vision and mission.12.45pm: Lunch break

Schedule in some time to eat and return calls. I think people get back to the meeting more quickly if you provide lunch in the room.

1.30pm: Key issues

It’s worth parking the discussion of any major issues that affect multiple areas until after everyone has had a chance to present their updates, because then it’s easier to see the bigger picture and what might be affected.

Use this time to review anything that dropped out of the morning’s conversations. There might be new opportunities, challenges, resource constraints, market changes and more.

This section of your day should answer the question: what might stop us from getting where we want to go? Think about the values, skills, culture and risks that might block your progress.

2.30pm: Revise plans

After you’ve discussed the challenges or opportunities that present themselves, go back to the plans and see how that information affects what you are committing to do for the next period.

Agree changes as required. This part of your agenda answers the question: what do we need to do? If you do need to do anything differently in order to get back on track or head off in the right direction, this is where you should be discussing and agreeing.

3.30pm: Action planning

I like action planning! Strategy meetings should be all about decision-making, so you should ring-fence some time to talk about how to turn those decisions into action items. List out what needs to be done and allocate owners and timescales to each.

One thing that should definitely be on the action list is how you are going to communicate the decisions made today to everyone else in the team. Add them to the decision log. Make sure someone is responsible for creating and circulating meeting minutes.

This is an important part of the strategy meeting and it answers the question: how will we do it?

4.30pm: Any Other Business

Use this time for the ‘one last thing’ that people want to bring up. If you’ve had a parking lot up on the wall, check that all the topics have follow up actions planned so the conversations can continue outside of the room.

5pm: Wrap up and close

Finally, wrap up the meeting, draw it to a close and if you are going to meet again, put the date in the diary. Then go down the pub!

Tailoring the strategy agenda

As you’ve probably realized, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy meeting agenda that will suit every need. If you are starting from scratch and are using the time to write your strategy, you’ll need to put time aside for brainstorming new ideas, a presentation of market research analysis or feedback from customer focus groups.

If you are reviewing the projects that make up the strategy, you might bring each project manager in to present their project, before discussing as a team what initiatives need to be brought into the portfolio to ensure the strategic goals can be met.

The important thing is to always go back to the why: why are you meeting and what do you want to get out of the time? You can’t go wrong if you start there.

5 Considerations for a strategy planning workshop

So you’re ready to draw up that meeting agenda. Here’s what to consider before you get going.

1. Set the objective

I like to write the objective for any meeting at the top of the agenda. It helps focus people’s minds and keeps the conversation on track. Think about what you are meeting for and what the leadership teams are expecting to get out of it. Here are some examples:

To define the 5-year growth plan for the organizationTo establish the projects we want to focus on to meet our strategic goals for the next 12 monthsTo review the new products we intend to bring to market in the next 3 yearsTo set the IT agenda for the next 24 months

You can hold strategic planning workshops for departments, teams or for the business overall. You can plan for the long term or adopt a rolling wave planning approach to plan ongoing. So which is it for you?

2. Let people know what is going to happen

Set expectations for the meeting. Let people know what contributions are expected from them. What do they need to prep in advance? Ask them for their agenda items – you might not include them as ‘real’ agenda items but it would help to know what talking points they intend to bring up.

Share any papers, timelines, business cases, strategy documents etc that make useful background reading. The more ready people are to contribute, the more you will get done during the meeting.

3. Prepare for conflict

As the meeting facilitator, you’ll have a good idea of the topics that will come up. And the potential flashpoints. For example, there are always conversations about budget. Doing anything strategic seems to cost a lot, and investing in one area means another area doesn’t get the investment.

Try to spot any sources of potential disputes in advance so you have pre-meeting conversations to manage expectations and ensure everyone comes to the session with an open mind (and the data to support their case). Healthy debates are to be encouraged!

Think about how to resolve conflict as a team if you can’t get to consensus. There are several group decision-making techniques you could try. In my experience, it’s often the most senior person in the room who makes the final call – strategy is not always a team game. It might not feel fair, but there are often political, economic, commercial and environmental reasons for decisions that might not always be clear to everyone in the room.

Whatever you think the outcome might be, have a few phrases to help facilitate the debate if it seems attendees are getting stuck. For example:

“Ultimately, it’s Fiona’s decision. Fiona, what do you want us to do?”

“Let’s continue this conversation for another 10 minutes and if we aren’t able to reach a decision at that point, I suggest that Henry and Priya book some time to review and come back to us with a recommendation next week.”

“IT are the guardians of that process. Do you agree to that approach?”

4. Prepare to go off script

I’ve been in strat planning meetings where we started with an agenda and then went totally off script… and the output was all the better for it. It’s great to have an agenda, and the template above gives you a starting point, but if it feels like the right thing to do is to delve into a particular area, then do it.

Strategy is too important to shortcut. If it feels like the meeting is taking longer, just say: “This feels like an important topic. Is everyone OK with staying with it for a little longer?” or “That isn’t something we were going to cover today but it sounds like it’s important that we get into it. Does everyone agree?”

Talk about what needs to be talked about. Strategy work takes time. The agenda is there as a guide but sometimes you just need to get it all out on the table.

5. Define success

What would a successful meeting look like? Sometimes it’s going to be OK to just talk and debate until you get to the heart of your strategy. Other times you might want to go all in on a brainstorming session and success will look like 20 new ideas.

It might be that you want to gain agreement on three new projects or prepare an update to go to the next board meeting. Think about what would constitute a successful outcome and try to guide people towards that.

Your next stepsAgree the goals of your strategy meetingWrite the agendaSocialize some of the ideasAdequately prepare for the session so you feel ready to facilitate it

In this article you learned what to include in your strategy planning meeting agenda and what considerations go into planning a successful strategy workshop. Don’t forget to grab a free action log template to record all the good stuff that comes out of your meeting. I hope it goes really well for you!

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This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

4 Easy tips for effective virtual meetings

This is a guest post by Diana Ecker.

Today, we take virtual meetings for granted, but the possibilities they bring free up the world of work. You bring together people who are working from home, on the road for travel, or in offices around the world with just a few clicks.

It makes it possible to work with clients, contractors, and teams from anywhere at all… even though it feels like we spend way too much time in virtual meetings!

Even when you’re hosting virtual team meetings on a daily basis, there’s often still room to optimize. In this article, I’ll share 4 quick and easy tips — each one requires just a minute or two, or even less.

The simple tips below take hardly any time to do, and each one can reduce common sources of aggravation. That helps you lead more effective, efficient virtual meetings.

1. Banish background noise

You want to hear your clients and colleagues (at least most of the time!). But with sensitive microphones, incidental noises — a dog barking in the background, traffic outside, other people talking — can distract everyone on the meeting.

One of the most common offenders seems innocuous at first: typing!

The sound of someone hitting the keys hard can get picked up by a microphone and drive everyone else on the call mad. (I’ve seen it happen more than a few times.)

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: Most video conferencing software includes an easy way for people to mute themselves or for the host to mute them. Even using headphones is a good way to minimize the tapping.

When you are leading a virtual team, you can proactively address this at the beginning of a meeting, welcoming participants to make use of the mute function and explaining how to use it.

If you are using meeting transcription software, it’s even more important to make sure there isn’t background noise.

Instituting this as a part of your meeting culture can prevent a lot of unnecessary irritation and help participants stay focused on the meeting itself.

A headset is a good way to minimize background noise. I use a Logitech headset similar to this one.2. Prevent an accidental reveal

Lots of project meetings require screensharing of a presentation, document or app so the group can work together. If there’s any chance that you’ll be sharing your screen during the meeting, this tip is for you.

Screen sharing is an invaluable tool for making sure everyone is on the same page — it’s ideal for walking everyone through a spreadsheet or presentation slides.

However, even with excellent screen sharing capabilities, it’s easy to accidentally share the wrong window on your computer. Before you know it, you’re broadcasting a family photo, a confidential document, or a rough draft that isn’t ready to share.

As you’re getting setting up for your next meeting, take just a moment to close out of any windows that you might not wish to accidentally display. Or use one of the default settings in Microsoft Teams which is to share a particular window, not your whole screen.

When you go to share your screen, you won’t have to worry that the wrong thing might come up.

3. See and be seen

The face-to-face aspect of video conferencing is what makes it so immediate and engaging. You can see expressions (and even micro-expressions, if you’re fast enough!).

The flip side of this is that you’re responsible for making sure that your face is clearly visible and well-lit on the screen as well.

If you’re in the shadows — which most commonly happens when you sit with a bright light or window behind you — you can see other people’s expressions, but they can’t see yours.

This issue isn’t trivial. In fact, it can create an ongoing source of tension in a virtual meeting.

If you’re on a laptop, it’s easy to move so you have a wall or other non-lit surface behind you.

If you’re speaking from a desktop computer, see if you can rotate it or reduce the lighting behind you. It’s well worth the effort.

Being able to be seen can improve trust in virtual teams.

(Get more expert tips on lighting and the visual aspect of web conferencing: Tips for Better Video Conferencing.)

Do not try to do video conferencing by holding your iPad like this! Prop it up somewhere otherwise your arms will really ache.4. Don’t let participants languish

If you’re the meeting host and you’re having a busy day, it’s easy to run late… and forget about the participants on the call. When you pop on 5, 10, or 15 minutes late, it’s common to say, “Sorry, folks — let’s get started!”

However, everyone who has been waiting and watching a spinning wheel, a loading icon, or whatever your video conferencing software displays is now feeling frustrated.

Unless you’ve got an unusually happy-go-lucky group on the call, you now have to take on that frustration in addition to the original goals of the meeting.

Take a minute to be mindful of your participants’ emotional experience (and its potential impact on your meeting objectives).

The experience of participants on a virtual meeting can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the meeting itself.

If you’re running late, that means sending a quick message before the meeting starts to let them know — and that you’ll ping them with a quick instant message or text message once you’ve launched the meeting.

Small tips, big payoff

Taking just a bit of time to manage that experience — from reducing background noise to making sure that no one sits and waits (and waits, and waits) — can pay off for you and for everyone in the meeting.

Further reading

These books are recommended reading on managing in virtual teams

Trust in Virtual TeamsLeading Effective Virtual Teams

About the author: Diana Ecker is the Content Marketing Manager for Redbooth, which has offices in Silicon Valley and Barcelona as well as contractors around the world, so she’s no stranger to virtual meetings!

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

9 Tips For Mentoring a Project Manager

Have you been asked to mentor another project manager?

It might sound a bit daunting, but I’ve been doing it for over 15 years, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a great opportunity (for both of you). And it is possible to be a good project management mentor, even if you don’t have any previous mentoring experience.

Being asked to mentor someone means that your experience has been recognized as a project management professional (not necessarily a certificate holder, but someone who knows how to do the job well).

Whether the request comes about as a result of an informal discussion or a formal corporate scheme, you should take the commitment to be a mentor seriously.

It’s also a good career opportunity for you – working with a more junior project manager can give you a different insight into project management topics and they are likely to have different experiences to share with you as well.

In this article, you’ll learn how to approach mentoring a project manager and some practical tips to help you be a fantastic mentor to your new mentee (yes, that’s a word!)

Who are you mentoring?

Experienced and mid-career professionals are often asked to mentor junior project managers or entry-level professionals.

Perhaps you’ve been asked to mentor an apprentice, or someone new to the PMO or team. Perhaps you’ve been asked to mentor a middle-grade manager with a view to helping them achieve a promotion.

Why do they want a mentor?

Project managers want a mentor for lots of professional development reasons. I mentor project managers at all stages of their careers and here are some common reasons why people book a power hour with me:

Career planning, CV/resume review, preparing for a promotion or reviewing career goalsJust got a new job and want to make a good impression in the first monthNavigating the difficult, messy people stuff of stakeholder engagement, communication and leadership skillsWanting to not be alone as the only person in their department who does project management.

That last point about wanting a second opinion or a sounding board while being the only person in the team who does a project management role might not apply to you if you are mentoring someone within your company.

However, you might find that as a project manager in the PMO, you are mentoring others across the business who are doing projects but who do not work in the PMO – they can feel the same about the role being isolating.

Mentoring is not coaching

Mentoring is not coaching, but to be honest, I’m taking a mentoring certification at the moment and we are learning many of the same models and theories that are covered in the coaching books I’ve read.

One of the top recommended books on my course is The Mentoring Manual by Julie Starr, and it’s got hardly any specific theory in at all.

My takeaway from this is while coaching is a specific, accredited skill, mentors can still benefit from knowing a bit of theory. However, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter because mentoring is more about sharing your project management experience and asking questions to help the mentor develop.

I’ll give you a (fictional) example.

Mentee: I’m struggling with how to apply project quality management because no one seems to want to invest any time in it.

Coach might say: Tell me more about that.*

Mentor might say: OK, tell me what you’ve tried so far and if you like I’ll tell you what I’ve done that’s worked in the past… Now shall we put a few ideas down about what you’re going to do in the meeting next week and next time we meet you can fill me in on how it went?

*I’m not a coach, but coaching principles are that the coach does not provide solutions, instead, helping the coachee to come up with a plan and route forward themselves.

One of the big worries that many new mentors have is that they don’t know if they are worthy of taking on the role.

If you have even a little bit more practical experience than the person you are mentoring, you’ve got opinions, guidance and advice that you can share.

So, now that you are preparing to mentor a colleague, what should you bear in mind? Here are 9 tips for making sure you can be a good project management mentor.

1. Agree the commitment

What, exactly, are you both signing up for? Discuss what you both can commit to as you may find that your prospective mentee wants a lot more than you can offer.

You should both be happy with the level of commitment required. This could be anything from a monthly telephone conversation to a weekly face-to-face meeting so it’s important that you agree something that is going to work for you both.

You may have to build some flexibility into this. For example, if one of you is managing a project that is going through a particularly busy time or that involves a lot of travel then you might not be able to meet up in your regular slot.

Most mentoring relationships can accommodate this but it’s worth talking about it before it happens.

A formal mentoring program might recommend meeting for an hour a month, or, if the person is a new starter, an hour a week or more. The mentoring role can be quite a commitment.

Even if your arrangement is informal it is worth documenting what you have agreed so that you have some kind of ‘contract’ in place and you both have a clear idea about what is expected.

2. Be available

Once you’ve agreed to mentor a colleague, make sure that you can be available for them and not just in the pre-agreed mentoring sessions that you have arranged. It’s possible that they will have issues that they want to discuss with you at times outside of those formal meetings and it will benefit you both if you can make some time in your schedule to talk to them when they need it.

Equally, if you hear of an opportunity or something that affects the project that they are working on, don’t wait until your next scheduled discussion. Give them a call and chat it through.

3. Offer advice

Mentoring isn’t just about listening to their problems and as we saw above it’s not coaching. If they ask for advice, give it.

Your mentoring activities could also include them work shadowing you to see how you facilitate a meeting, for example.

You have a lot of project management knowledge to share and your experience is one of the reasons why this person chose you as their mentor. Of course, just because you give advice don’t expect them to take it!

They can think through their own decision-making process and may choose to do something else and that’s fine – don’t take it personally!

4. Be confidential

The relationship between a mentor and a mentee should be confidential, so that you both have confidence that what you say in your meetings goes no further. This is important because you may be talking about office politics or the working relationship between your colleague and someone else on their project team.

You both need to know that you can speak honestly and openly and that what is said won’t get reported back.

Think about how and where you are going to meet to maintain confidentiality. You’ll need to be in a private room (whether you are meeting virtually or in-person) to make sure no one overhears your conversation, especially if sensitive issues are on the agenda.

Make sure that your agreement to be confidential is part of the arrangement you put in place at the very beginning of your mentoring relationship.

5. Provide access to your network

One of the other reasons why your colleague chose you is likely to be for access to your network. If they are looking for a new job or are keen to get ahead and build their reputation, then they will appreciate being included in your network and the opportunities you can create for them.

You don’t have to put them forward all the time but remember that part of being a mentor is championing their interests. Networking is important. If you hear of a job opportunity or a new project that you think they might be interested in, then suggest them to the hiring manager.

You will need to have a conversation with your mentee about what they are looking for in their future career so that you can look out for the right kinds of opportunities.

6. Build their confidence

Many people turn to mentoring to get more confidence in a particular area, and I’ve certainly found that with the people I mentor.

Often, it’s soft skills, interpersonal skills, power skills… you know what I mean. Or stakeholder engagement and navigating office politics.

However, I’ve also mentored people who wanted help with dashboards and project reporting, understanding risk management and other more technical skills.

Often what we do on mentoring calls is reviewing project management documents so they can feel confident they are putting out good quality project artifacts and plans.

7. Listen

The big challenge with mentoring is to rush straight in with, “Let me tell you what I’d do…” and not really listening to the problem they are facing.

Ask clarifying questions so you understand the challenge they are talking about, for example:

“What happened next?”“What were you thinking in the moment?”“Can I clarify if I’ve understood?” (and then paraphrase what you have heard)“What do you want to happen?”

Active listening – where you focus, acknowledge and pay attention instead of letting your mind wander – is a key competency for mentors.

8. Be honest

Let’s say your mentee has made a dubious choice. They will only develop if they can reflect on why that was the wrong path and what alternative choices might have been available at the time. And they can only do that if you are honest with them.

They also need to be honest with you – if they’re telling you that it’s all fine, then you’d have to question why they wanted a mentor in the first place.

9. Consider mentoring a two-way relationship

Look at the mentoring relationship as a partnership and remember that you can learn as much as they can from your discussions!

It’s OK to ask your mentee a question, or to say, “I’ve never thought about it that way before, let’s work it out together.”

They won’t expect you to know everything or to have done everything, so it’s fine to be honest about your experiences and say when something is new for you too. Yes, you are in a role model-type position, but you aren’t on a pedestal.

Your next steps

Mentoring is a great way to boost your career and gain new skills as well as supporting junior colleagues. And it’s a way to retain talent in the organization, so the company benefits too.

Why not put the word out that you’re open to mentoring colleagues?

Need a mentor?

Book a power hour with me. Gain some clarity about your career or get support for a project in a one on one session.

Book a power hour

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This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

15 Task Management Tips for Teams (Stay on track!)

Projects are made up of tasks. Lots of them. Staying on top of your tasks as a team is so important if you want to hit your project deadlines.

But keeping the whole team on track can be a challenge. I know, I’ve been there! As a project manager with over 20 years doing the job, it can be a struggle to make sure your own approach to time management is efficient, let alone feeling responsible for the task management of a whole team.

In this article you’ll learn how to manage tasks efficiently and how to improve your own task management skills and those of your team. Let’s keep everyone on track!

What is task management?

First, we should make sure we’re talking about the same thing.

Task management is the process of identifying, recording, doing and closing a task.

Tasks go through this basic life cycle:

Identify the taskAllocate the task to someone to be doneDo the taskFinish the task, which could involve completing the work as planned or could result in a different status such as cancelled or failed (in which case you’ll need a strategy for trying again or trying something new). Task management vs project managementTask management is not the same as project management.

Task management refers to managing an individual task. You could do the task. So could anyone on your team. It’s one thing. Granted, they are probably managing 100 tasks right now, but each is an individual task. Task management looks at tasks as individual units of a bigger whole.

Project management is about getting the team to the end goal, with a finished, integrated end result as a deliverable.

For example, my project is to clean my office. The end result is a lovely sparkly office. The tasks include dusting, throwing out the rubbish, vacuuming and asking someone else to get out the giant spider that lives on the window.

In other words:

The project has many parts.Tasks are the work required to deliver the overall goal.Project management is how you ensure all the tasks happen in a cohesive way to get to the end goal efficiently, and with the least encounters with spiders possible.

On the project, you’ll be doing the overall project management, and probably some doing of individual tasks too, using your task management skills. But managing your personal tasks and managing the tasks across the team are two different things.

Task management for teams is a skill that you are all going to have to get good at if you want your project to succeed. Here are 15 task management tips for effectively doing your work.

15 Tips to improve your task management skills1. Use a task or action log

How do you manage tasks at work? For a while I used my brain as a task management app. I just remembered things.

As I had to remember more, and got older, that task management strategy stopped working!

Equally, if you are working in a team, you might be able to get away with spreadsheets and emails when it’s just a couple of you. When your team hits double figures, companies like Twinkl have found they need an app like Toggl Track to keep track of all the stuff.

You need a way of recording your tasks. You can use a notebook, Outlook or a Google doc for your personal workload, but task management for teams is different. You need a way of managing tasks across multiple people and ensuring that everyone has access to the list. You can’t do that without software.

Get a task management app or use an Excel action log for a simpler version while you evaluate the products out there and find one that will suit your team.

What is the best task management app?
There is no easy answer to that. Everyone works in different ways and each team will have different needs. You might need to manage 10,000 tasks and I only need to manage 10 at a time. Look for apps that will help you stay on top of your work, whatever that work might be, and track your time effectively. I recommend Crozdesk to help you find one that fits your team’s needs as they’ll create a free shortlist for you.2. Prioritize tasks

You can’t do everything at the same time. Even if you have a big project team. You need a task management strategy for prioritizing the work.

Most project task management tools have a way to prioritize tasks and flag the important ones. You can do this with color, with categories or a priority status. It doesn’t matter how it happens, as long as the people doing the work understand where their focus should be first.

Common priority levels are:

Urgent (must do today)Important (must do at some point but there’s no pressing deadline)For my manager (put these ones to the top of the list!)High priority, medium priority, low priority — you get to decide what those definitions mean.

Periodically, check the priorities and clear out tasks that are no longer top priority, if any still remain open.

3. Have a system to manage task allocation on the project

Tasks need to be done. Someone has to do them. Task allocation in project management links the person to the job, and often to the time they are going to need to do it.

You can allocate work to people in a number of ways. For example:

There is a big list of tasks and individuals choose what they want to work on next. Some Agile teams are set up this way, with team members having the flexibility to allocate tasks to themselves.You add the task to your task management software and allocate it an owner at the point of typing it in. That task then appears in their project to do list.You chat in a team meeting and people volunteer for work, or are volunteered for a task.

There are probably other ways as well. It doesn’t ultimately matter how you go about scheduling tasks, or even if you have several different approaches depending the task and who may (or may not) be available. As long as you got some way of linking tasks to people and making sure they know what they have to do, you’re good.

A huge part of task management in the workplace, especially for employees and team leaders, is to make sure that you’ve got the right person to do the job. That spider I mentioned in my office earlier? Yeah, that task is not going to be me.

4. Categorize tasks

If you pick a task management app from the App Store, chances are it will organize your tasks in one big list.

That’s fine if you don’t have too many tasks. But when you get over 50 tasks, that uncategorized way of recording activities starts to become difficult to manage. It’s also difficult to manage larger tasks that have sub-tasks.

You need a task management method — a way of categorizing tasks logically so that you can group and filter them, and ideally the option to group tasks together.

One way of doing that is to bundle billable and non-billable hours, but any categorization method that works for you will help you keep track of the work. For example:

Daily tasks vs monthly tasksCritical tasks that have to be done urgentlyChallenging tasks that need to be broken down into smaller segments before you can tackle themProject milestones, so you know when they are coming up and can plan backwards for the tasks that need to be done in advanceTime limits: tasks that have to be completed within a certain time. 5. Make the workload transparent

There are lots of tasks. Make sure everyone can see them all, even if they aren’t responsible for them. You need visibility of what the team is doing to understand your own part in it.

Being able to see the work your colleagues are doing gives you context for your own actions as the project manager overall. It also helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed because priorities are clear.

Avoid multitasking. And don’t expect your team to either. Watch out for task allocations and don’t overload someone to the point that they are trying to manage too many items at once. 6. Make time tracking easy

Your time is valuable. Tracking your time is important to manage efficiency. When you’ve got data that helps you understand what people are doing, you can make sure the workload is distributed fairly.

Time tracking needs to be easy, otherwise people won’t do it. Choose an app like Toggl Track that has real-time timers, a desktop app and integrations with other tools. It even has the option to add in manual time entries and allocate time from your calendar, if you aren’t a fan of real-time tracking.

7. Understand task delivery dates

Not all tasks are big things that are going to end up on your project schedule. Many things that need to be done on projects are simple tasks as a result of a discussion in a meeting.

However, whether it’s a big or small task, it has to be done by a certain point. Because if it doesn’t need to be done, why are you doing it?

Allocate delivery dates — task completion dates — to work as you put it into your task management tool.

Note: If you are setting deadlines for tasks, make sure they are agreed with the person responsible for doing the work.

Make the dates transparent to everyone too. Call out people who don’t complete their tasks on time.

8. Understand ‘done’

What does ‘done’ look like?

You can’t mark a task as complete unless you know what ‘complete’ means.

When you create a task, think about how you will define when it is complete. Describe the task in a way that makes it easy to understand when it will be done. Make it transparent and understood. Ensure the person doing the work knows what the expected end state is.

If you don’t do this, you’ll have team members ticking off tasks that aren’t actually complete. For example, they may deliver a piece of the project, but not complete the handover documentation or create a training plan to go alongside it.

9. Have a way to communicate progress and problems

Whether you communicate through your task management app’s features, face to face, on the phone or some other way, you need to keep talking.

Tasks hit trouble. Sometimes you won’t be able to move work on without a chat.

You’re doing team task management. Ultimately, the success or failure of your project depends on your ability to work together. Make it easy for people to talk to each other, and to you, so that the work keeps going.

10. Think visually

Most task management apps give you lists. You can group lists, or color code them, but ultimately they are words on a page, in a list.

If you have people on the team who prefer to take in information in other formats — or even if you just want to try a different way of visualizing your workload — think about how else you could display the tasks.

For example, try a classic Kanban board where you move tasks from one column to another.

I think there’s a limitation with visual-based task management tools and that’s how much you can fit on the page. If it works for your team, great. If it’s not perfect, you can always use it for high level visualizations and keep the detail behind the scenes.

11. Have a way to reallocate tasks

Someone goes on holiday. You did a great project holiday handover, so you know what they are leaving behind. But how are you going to reallocate their work?

In some cases, it won’t be necessary. There won’t be anyone else who can do the work. Or there won’t be a need to complete the task faster. But in some cases you will have to reallocate the task to someone else if your original task owner is no longer available.

Think through how you are going to do this. Is it as easy as changing a name in your task management app? Or do you need to meet the new person, facilitate a handover and support them to do the work required?

12. Tidy the task list

Every so often — let’s say once a month — tidy up your task list.

There will be activities on there that are no longer required. Tasks that were completed but not ticked off as complete. Tasks that are really part of other tasks. Tasks that are obvious duplicates.

Clear out all of these so the team can focus on what’s really important. Encourage them to do housekeeping as well.

13. Make it easy to find files

I am actually not a great fan of linking files to tasks in software because the documents I use often change. I want people to have the right version, not one I uploaded to the app last week. If they seek out the right version on the shared drive, they’ll definitely have the latest copy.

However, there is one exception. If I am sharing something for someone to do that is already finalized, I will attach the document. For example, I’ll attach the final copy for a marketing leaflet to the task that says ‘produce marketing leaflet’ and then allocate it to the marketing manager on the team.

Then I know they have the exact version I want them to use for the task.

Depending on what you’re linking to, add files. For example, if you are adding a flow diagram for a process that needs to be created,

Where it makes sense to do so, add files into your task management software so your colleagues have the information they need to complete the work. Where files may change regularly or be updated, think twice about whether it’s useful to share the current version with them via the tool.

14. Use task reminders and notifications

Set up task reminders and notifications to help you all get your tasks done. This is especially helpful if you are creating tasks that don’t need to be completed for some time but are already on your list now.

I sometimes find that I’m looking at a task so often it becomes part of the background. As it’s not due yet, I’ll see it — and yet not really see it — and then suddenly it becomes urgent. Task reminders can help prompt you when to start work, or give you a countdown to a task’s due date.

Use your task management tools to set up task reminders for you, or if you don’t have that feature, or want a back up option, create reminders in your calendar too.

Notifications work by alerting you when there’s a change on a task, such as someone updating it, adding a comment etc.

15. Create a culture where it’s OK to ask for help

So you can’t do your project task? You should be able to ask for help. Whether you don’t have time, or the skills, or the connections to get the work done, help is out there, and many of your colleagues will get a sense of satisfaction from helping.

You just have to ask for it.

However, if your team mates are horrible people and there’s a blame culture for anyone who even looks like they might not know what they are doing, then you aren’t going to ask for help.

As a project leader, your job is to make a comfortable culture where asking for help is supported, encouraged, and even expected.

Just make sure that if someone asks, the rest of the team has a positive attitude about pitching in to help.

Learning time management skills is an important part of being able to operate efficiently in a team, and your preferences and the tools you use will change over time.

Thanks to our sponsor, Toggl Track, for making it possible to bring you this article on task management tips. Toggl Track gives you simple time tracking, powerful reports and team management features.

Access the Resource Library here and I’ll message you back a link where you can download the templates. Plus you’ll gain access to an Action Log that you can begin to use immediately.

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

10 Simple Ways to Prepare a Handover at work (with email templates)

Once upon a time I used to try to plan my projects around dates when I knew I was going to be in the office. My colleagues joked that I planned the birth date of my first child around a major transformation project go live date (I didn’t). It turned out that we had to move that go live by three months, so I was on maternity leave with a new born when they eventually went live.

As experienced project managers know, when things change on a project, all your carefully planned deadlines switch around too.

In this article, we’ll look at how to plan and execute a handover to a colleague. Looking for specifics on how to write a handover email to your manager? I have a full article on that too, with templates, so be sure to check it out!

If your project is closing, read my guide to how to handover a project at closure instead.

Reasons to handover your work

At some point in your career, you are going to have to handover your project to someone else. That could happen for a number of reasons:

Maternity leavePaternity leavePlanned medical leaveSomeone moving to backfill a role elsewhere in the organizationVacation time, annual leave or booked holidaysUnpaid leave of absenceEmployee resignation or a departing employee (perhaps you) means work allocations have shifted around and you have to do a knowledge transfer to someone picking up your project permanently.

As you can see, those reasons split between a temporary handover (when someone else takes responsibility for your work for a short time) and a permanent handover (when you are leaving the project behind).

The process is pretty much the same.

If you are leaving for good and handing over your work during your notice period, then you’ll want to be more inclusive and comprehensive. For temporary leave, you can focus mainly on passing over tasks that need to be completed during the time you are unavailable.

Vacation handovers

The most common reason for briefing someone else on your work is that you have a holiday planned. A vacation handover helps you both. It means you have to think about what might happen and plan for it. It helps your colleagues deal with stuff while you are away.

A holiday handover tends to cover only the tasks that you need someone else to do on your behalf. That could include the following items:

Briefing senior managers on the completion of a taskSending out a report (bonus points for you if you can pre-write some of it before you go)Being the point of contact in an emergencyBeing the point of contact for a supplier in case they need somethingSupervising the day-to-day activities of the project team and being a point of escalation if team leaders need somethingBeing the approval point for key processes so that changes etc don’t get stuck in the workflow while you are away.

Mostly, projects can cope without you for a fortnight. It’s good to brief someone on what to do, but if they aren’t able to step up due to their own workload, it’s not the end of the world. Try to keep your expectations manageable.

The 10 tips below will help you put together a smooth transition plan, regardless of how long you are going to be away (or if you are ever coming back).

10 Handover tips

Here are 10 simple ways to leave your work behind and not worry about what’s going on back at base.

1. Use your email signature to notify of upcoming leave

I’ve seen more and more people using their email signature as a way to alert people to upcoming out of the office time. I think it’s a good idea. It reads a bit like this:

Email signature, contact details, etc
Advance notice: I’ll be out of the office from Tuesday 14 July until Friday 24 July.

The text is normally in red or bolded (or both) so it stands out.

I have no idea how effective this is and whether it just means you get a ton of emails on the day before you are due to leave, but it seems like a sensible thing to do in an environment where you have a lot of messages and people need to know where you are.

2. Plan your handover to a colleague

This might sound obvious but the first step is that you need to plan to handover your work and create ‘handover notes’. I do this in a notebook because I’m a pen and paper thinker. (Read more about how I organise a notebook.)

Ideally, if you are going to be out of the office for only a short period of time, you should handover all your current projects to one colleague. Look at the resource plan for the team and consider who that might be.

Your handoveree (that’s not really a word, I know) doesn’t need to know everything about the project. They simply need to be briefed on the necessary information:

Main deliverables during this time, if anyMain risks or issues that are currently on the table and might need watching (take them through your RAID log)Main stakeholders and the project sponsor’s contact details so if anything urgent does come up they know who to talk toWhere they can find information about the projectMajor decisions that should be taken during this time, if any, and what your recommendation would be and/or criteria for making that decision.

You may have other things to add to that list depending on your project and situation.

If you are preparing handover information as part of the recruitment process – to give to a new starter because your own responsibilities have changed or you are leaving – then you will want to include a comprehensive handover report.

That should cover all the important information, a list of key files, key processes, key contacts for each of the different teams involved, specific activities that are in progress or outstanding, current issues and how much time they should expect to be spending on keeping the work moving forward.

Tip: Long before you go, make sure your team has people in it capable of delegating to while you are away. This book has some tips to help support your team and manage your own workload.

3. Meet your colleague to handover

Set up a meeting with the person who will be picking up your work. I find that it helps to create a document with all the key points. They can then use this as a reference and update it with anything that changes. If you are coming back, they can give it to you. If you’re gone for good, they can adapt your notes into something that’s relevant for their job description.

They will also be prepared (hopefully) to receive the handover, and they’ll have questions for you. They might even be using my list of what to do when you take over a project — perhaps you should read that too so you can check out the kinds of things they’ll be looking for!

For temporary handovers, make sure you are clear on what the priorities are (or should be) so they only have to focus on the really important stuff. Remember they have their own job to do too!

If you have an automated approvals process or a project management workflow, such as the change management process, make sure they get access to that so that work doesn’t stop because you aren’t there.

For tips on how to talk to someone aboutpicking up your work, read my guideto delegating tasks.

4. Remind your manager and/or project sponsor

You should remind your manager and project sponsor) that you are going away or leaving. They might have approved your time off or know it’s coming, but they might not remember exactly when it is happening.

Give them lots of notice and introduce them to the new person who will be their temporary/permanent contact.

If you are on holiday and it’s that sort of project, let them know how they can contact you during your vacation, if you are prepared to take their calls.

Remember: you don’t have to take calls or check your emails on holiday. You don’t have to be available, even if they ask.

5. Tell your clients/other stakeholders

It’s a courtesy to let customers, suppliers or key project stakeholders that you won’t be available during your vacation time. I think it’s better to let them know on the phone or at a regular meeting, but it’s always useful to remind them in an email.

In my experience, they won’t remember, and having a reminder in writing gives them something to refer back to.

Use the sample text below as an email template for letting clients know that you will be out of the office for a period of time.

Holiday handover email template to use with clients

Hello [name]
I thought I’d remind you that I’m out of the office from [date] to [date]. I can assure that I’ve handed off the important topics to [colleague] who is available to help you during this time. You can reach him/her on [contact details] if you need to get in touch while I’m away.
If it’s not urgent, feel free to email me and I’ll respond to your message on my return.
Kind regards
[your name]

If you want, you can include a statement about the latest progress, what next steps are, what they can be doing while you are off, or something like that.

Personalize as much as you can, especially if you are out of the office for more than a week.

Giving a last-minute-before-you-leaveupdate is going to reduce the emails you get on your return because they(hopefully) won’t be chasing for routine statusreports.

6. Set your out of office autoresponder message

Set up an out of office email response message letting people know that you are away from your desk. You can automate it to go to internal recipients and then set a different one for external senders as well, if you’d like to tailor your responses.

Here’s an example of a bad out of officemessage:

I’mon annual leave until Friday. I’ll pick up your email on my return.

This doesn’t give the recipient any useful information because they cannot be sure which Friday you are talking about. Have you accidentally left your out of office message on from a previous absence?

And if they have an urgent query, they’ve now drawn a blank as you’ve given them no alternative contacts.

Microsoft Office/Teams/Outlook makes it easy to set autoresponders and out of office messages, and I’ve noticed that it prompts me to do so if I type something that looks like ‘I’ll be out of the office next week’ in an email to someone. There’s no excuse!

Autoresponder email template

This is a better email template:

I’m on annual leave until Friday 24 July. I won’t be accessing my email during this time. If your question is urgent, please contact:
Project Alpha: John Smith (telephone number xxx, email xxx@zzz.com)
Queries about invoices: Accounts Payable team (call xxx and choose option 3)
Other queries: Emma Jones (telephone number xxx, email xxx@zzz.com)
I’ll respond on my return.

List the contacts for each of your projects or major areas of responsibility if you have them (if you don’t, just stick your deputy on the list).

Check with each person that you name that they are happy to cover for you while you are away.

These are likely to be the people that are in your project workbook’s Contacts tab.

Think about whether you want this list of internal contacts to go to external senders. The amount of spam emails I get, I wouldn’t want my colleagues’ names to end up on sales people’s mailing lists. So consider having a different message for external senders.

It’s tricky responding to queries when someone you have never heard of before calls you up with a question about a project you know nothing about (that has happened to me).

If in doubt, put your manager as your out of office contact as he or she should be able to direct enquirers to the right person on your behalf.

Teams Tip: Your out of office Outlook email will show up in your Teams status alert, so colleagues using Teams will see that you are absent.

7. Update your voicemail message

Remember to update your voicemail messageas well.

If you are out of the office for a day or so then it probably isn’t worth it unless you get a lot of calls a day. If you are away for a week then it’s polite to let callers know that you won’t be returning their calls for a while.

If you’re going to be out for a while, or perhaps you are leaving the business completely, you might want to consider redirecting your phone. I tend not to do this but it could work for you.

8. Tie up loose ends

Don’t leave your colleagues with admin tofinish off. The point of a handover is not to get someone else to do your boringwork.

Spend a bit of time sorting out your inbox,delivering on your promises and tidying up your workload so you aren’t leaving(or coming back to) a massive mess.

Write a to do list of things that areessential for when you come back, so you don’t spend your first day back in theoffice wondering what on earth you were working on before you left.

9. Plan for a handover back when you return

The last thing to do is to schedule time in your diary for your return so that you can pick the project up from the person who was looking after it for you. Don’t assume nothing has happened. You never know what they might have dealt with or done while you were away.

If you are leaving for good, draw confidence from the fact you prepared the best handover documents possible for the incoming employee. By all means stay in contact with your ex-colleagues, but don’t lose sleep over the work you left behind.

Also:

Turn off your autoresponder email if you haven’t set it to auto-expire when you get backUpdate your voicemail to your standard messageBook time with your team members so you can catch up on their work progress.

Personally I’m not particularly good at switching off on holiday so I would have checked all my emails anyway and kept up to date in a passive way through that.

But I don’t advocate that: I think holiday time should be for holidays and when you come back you’ll normally have a huge pile of messages to go through.

Make sure that you talk to your coverperson as soon as you can so that you get the context for any of those messagesthat relate to the project.

10. Go on holiday and don’t look back!

Honestly.

If you are taking a vacation, don’t think about work. You’ll be more refreshed. Things are in good hands. And even if they aren’t, I promise you can sort it all out when you get back. The world will not end.

And if you are staying back while others are off, here are 7 ways to stay motivated and productive at work during the holidays.

If you want to think about work people, do it in the context of buying holiday treats for the team and bring back some local sweets or something. It’s always nice to thank the people that helped you while you were off.

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management

How to Use a Project Decision Log

As a project manager with lots of years of experience, I can tell you that the decision log has saved me on several occasions!

Who can remember the key decisions made a few months ago? Sometimes you might recall what was decided by not why, or who made the call. The decision log is the single source of the truth that has all the info you need.

What is a decision log?

A decision log template in project management is the document you use to fill in all the decisions made relating to your project.

Decisions are taken in all kinds of settings: project team meetings, on email, when you bump into someone in the corridor… From experience I know that it’s a) hard to remember what decision you took, and b) difficult to find information hidden in meeting minutes to remind yourself of why that decision was taken.

It’s also human nature to think more about the things that stop you from making decisions than decisions you’ve actually made.

The decision log forms part of your project comms records. It keeps a trail of what conversations happened, so it’s partly follow up from comms activity and partly a specific comms record in its own right.

This document sorts out a whole lot of project communication problems, especially about critical decisions. Once you’ve started using it you won’t look back, promise!

What goes into a decision log?

Project decision-making doesn’t have to be complex, although sometimes you do end up having multiple discussions.

Whether you’re working with autocratic decision making, or incremental decision making, or some other technique, then record the outcome in the log.

A decision log should include information related to what decisions were made. Typically you’d want to record:

The date

Note down the decision was made. This is normally going to be the date of the meeting where the decision took place because most decisions get made in meetings.

The people who agreed to the decision

Write down the names of the people who were part of the decision-making team.

That’s going to be you, your project sponsor, and any other subject matter experts who participated in the agreement. This is helpful in case they “forget” later on that they were in the room and party to the discussion.

A note on framing: Framing is an aspect of decision making that is worth bearing in mind when you’re making the decision. Might be worth recording any constraints, context or extra information that shaped how the decision was made.

The actual decision

Yes, you should write down the decision that was made! This is the important bit.

A project decision log is to fill in only decisions made relevant to the project work, so if the conversation means you end up making a choice about something that isn’t technically project-related, then it should get recorded somewhere else.

Having said that, the decision template is yours to use. I wouldn’t use it for recording non-project decisions and project agreements in one file, but you can use it how you wish!

Supporting information

I also include a note about where I can find supporting decision documentation. For example, meeting minutes, or the transcript file of a meeting that covers why we took the decision that we did.

Your supporting information could be slides, a proposal document, a reference to the risk log or issue log, or change analysis, or anything else that backs up why you agreed on that particular thing at that particular time.

And, of course, you can include anything else that you like that helps you record and remember (and communicate to people who have forgotten), so add extra columns or notes as you see fit.

The one I use (which you can get here) is an Excel spreadsheet, so you can make changes to align it to the rest of your project documentation, or copy and paste the table to make a Word decision log template of your own if you prefer to have things in a .docx format.

How to use the decision log

When the decision-making process is complete, record the outcome in the log. I also give my decisions a reference number so we can refer to them more easily in the future.

The key thing about a log of decisions is not that you write in it… it’s that you call it up later when the decision is being questioned.

The usefulness of the template is felt when there is an issue or a challenge. Then you can call up the decision log and remind everyone why you’ve taken that course of action.

This is particularly helpful when you have stakeholders who aren’t good at remembering that they said something, or why they said something.

You can, of course, reverse a decision. Once it’s documented, you can still change your mind. However, let’s do that in a controlled and measured way, thinking about why the agreement was made in the first place and what you now need to do differently if the agreement is being changed.

Then you simply update the decision log — keep a note of the original decision, and record the new one along with the reasons why the project changed direction.

Minor decisions vs major decisions

What level of decision gets recorded? I would only record major decisions that affect the direction of the project.

A decision about what day you’re going to have a workshop isn’t substantive enough to get a mention in the log.

Record decisions like:

Approval for budget and resourcesChanges to scope etcStrategic direction and solutions.Download a decision log template in Excel

The decision log template is included in my project workbook, which is a comprehensive day-to-day set of tracking files for your project. It also includes an action log, risk log, issue log, change log, stakeholder contacts list, basic Gantt chart, and more.

Read next: How to make better decisions, as well as the process guide for better decision-making.

It would also be great for recording decisions for charity and community projects.

Whether you’re making decisions as a group or trying to remember decisions you took alone, this is a great decision-making tool.

Remember, templates are just that: add sections, delete sections – do what you want with it!

This article first appeared at Rebel's Guide to Project Management