Communication Archives - My Project Management Lessons

Document all Changes, Variations, and Agreements

Documentation displayed on a laptop computer. Document all changes - My Project Management Lessons

Projects are complicated. Lots of agreements and changes are constantly made, these should be managed properly.
Document all changes, variations and agreements on your projects. You should put everything in writing.

Single decision maker in client communication

Keep good control of client communication. Ensure all important communications are between the project manager and the client project manager, especially for cost, schedule and scope decisions.

Group or people in a meeting - Costs of project meetings

Project meetings can take a lot of time and cost a lot of money. A simple way to encourage meeting efficiency is to display the hourly cost of the meeting for all attendees to see. It is a simple way to keep attendees focused on getting things done and ending the meeting sooner.

Don't do every project. Learn to say no.

You should not do every project you are offered. You need to carefully consider each opportunity and assess whether or not it is the right fit for you and your team. Doing every project eventually leads to project failure. Learn to say no! If you don’t, project failure awaits.

Project Contacts - phone with hand showing people's heads

Get to know useful project contacts within your client and supplier organisations. This will save you lots of time and will improve the efficiency of your projects and reduce the difficulty in getting the information or decisions you need.

Urgent requests are not always good. Be specific in your requests. Instead of using the word “urgent”, state the required due date and time, along with what is required. This will lead to better and more timely responses to your requests.

hand showing favouritism between two people

Don’t treat your project team with favouritism. Be fair and even with all your project team.
Use job performance related metrics rather than personal preferences when allocating roles, tasks and rewards

Project Status Reports - Invisible man in suit at desk, not getting promoted

Good, regular project status reports are a very important way to ensure you and your projects are noticed. If you regularly make project status reports for all your projects, you will get noticed and be more likely to keep your job and get promoted.

Project roles - Project manager with unclear project role - My Project Management Lessons

Projects often fail because the project team members are not clear on their roles and responsibilities. Make sure your project team members know what they are supposed to do with defined roles, clear role descriptions and briefs of what they should be doing.