Andrew Fleming ICA AML Dip

Projects are frequently impacted by changes, sometimes external and sometimes internal. As the project lead you must understand what any potential impact means to the project and its delivery timeline, and be able to clearly articulate this to your key stakeholders using simple, clear, concise language. Communication is critical, as is building a partnership with the Product Owner and the stakeholders. This is particular important in Agile projects where you are aiming to deliver incremental changes on a continual basis. If you implement an effective communication strategy from the start, your project owner and stakeholders will be fully aware of the challenges to the project and are more likely to be supportive of any changes required.

Be authentic, speak from the heart, be original and overall have a passion for your subject. To many presentations regurgitate the same material over and over again. They are often dry both in content and delivery, and this in turn puts the audience off. If you are not enthusiastic, engaged and passionate about what you are speaking about, do not expect your audience to be.

For me it is important that you do less talking and do more listening. Speak to the staff, learn from their point of view where the issues lie, encourage them to speak up without fear of censure and build trust. Risk management requires that you understand where the threats lie, both internal and external, that you clarify where the business is, or is potentially, vulnerable and what the consequences are if you do not address that particularly risk. You won't get a clear picture unless you learn to actively listen, and rushing to make changes is never a good idea. Once you understand your risk, you can prioritise the actions you need to implement systematically.

When setting SMART goals they must be clear, concise, understandable, as well as measurable, and achievable. As an additional consideration you may also want to set stretch targets for higher achievers, which in turn, can be linked to higher bonus payments. The key points are that we want to incentivise our employees, and motivate them. We do not want to set targets that are difficult to achieve if not impossible.