I help project professionals get more done with less stress. Having been a project manager for over 20 years, I share tried-and-tested tips that work in the real world, every Tuesday. Join our community of over 15,000 project professionals (and accidental project managers too!).
What's the point of a gate review?
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Hello Reader, What's the point of a gate review? It's easy to let one blur into just another status meeting on the calendar. A gate review is a control point: a go or no-go decision on whether the project should continue. It's a formal governance step, not a progress update. At a normal status meeting, you're reporting how things are going. At a gate review, the reviewers should be working from agreed criteria and evidence, and actually deciding whether the project carries on, pauses or stops. Your job is to provide the evidence for them to decide. Here's the test I use: if nothing (and no one) could realistically cause the project to stop, pause or change course, it isn't much of a gate. You might as well have a normal steering group meeting and be done. So, a real gate review shouldn't be seen as a rubber stamping exercise. You should feel a bit nervous going into it because it's there to hold you and the project team to account. And, if it's the right thing to do, to give you the go ahead for the next tranche of funding or whatever. I've written a full breakdown of how gate reviews work, who should attend, what the criteria should cover, and what tends to go wrong when PMOs get it wrong: Gate reviews: what to do and why you need them. Have a lovely week! Elizabeth Did you miss these?
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Calling all Rebel Project Managers!
I help project professionals get more done with less stress. Having been a project manager for over 20 years, I share tried-and-tested tips that work in the real world, every Tuesday. Join our community of over 15,000 project professionals (and accidental project managers too!).
Hello Reader, There are problems you can solve with a framework, a course, or a meeting. And then there are the problems where you have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land, you just need someone to think it through with you. Not because you don't know anything about it, but because you've got too much context and you're too close to it to think clearly. You know what the textbook says. You know what you'd probably advise someone else to do. But when it's your project, your stakeholder,...
Hello Reader, Stuck for ideas? Try this technique for generating a lot of ideas, in a structured way. Lotus Blossom brainstorming works whether you are planning requirements, risk responses, solutions to a problem, and in the video below you can see me work through an example where a team needs to plan out their project communications strategy. A Lotus Blossom template works well for project management because it forces you to expand an idea systematically instead of stopping at the obvious....
Hello Reader, Project communication can look perfectly healthy on the surface. The status reports go out. Meetings happen. Stakeholders get updates. The comms plan exists somewhere. But are people actually getting the information they need, at the right time, in a way that helps them understand, decide and act? I’ve created a Project Communications Health Check to help you find out, and I've tested it on one of my projects! Which made me realise I should write down that comms plan that's in...