Can't Get Project Status Updates?

This blog was inspired by this post on Reddit, and is an expansion on the comment I wrote in response.

How clearly do you understand the status of each of your projects?

The real status—not just the status your software is telling you.

There are plenty of robust project management software programs boasting easy-to-understand dashboards that show the status of all your projects at a glance. But no matter how fancy—or simple—your project management system is, you still rely on your project team members to share the status of their work in order for you as the project leader to understand the project status overall.

Your team needs to update the software, or update you, or update you so you can update the software…otherwise no fancy dashboard or status report will be worth anything.

With increasing automation and AI options, it’s tempting to rely on these tools to follow up with your team when they aren’t sharing information, to save you from the follow-up grind. These may help a bit. But ultimately it’s qualities about you as the project leader, and qualities about the system you’re asking your team to use, that will have the greatest impact on your team’s willingness to keep you or a system up-to-date.

Let’s dig into those qualities, so you can identify the most impactful changes to consider.

1. Build relationships with your team.

This may or may not be obvious, but if you have your head in the technical aspects of a software program or another type of project management system, you may be overlooking relationships with your team as a factor in your system’s success.

A person is most likely to communicate openly with, and help, someone who first cares about them as a person, or at least clearly has their interests top-of-mind. Do you show a little bit of interest in how your team members are doing personally? Do you ask about their current pain points in their job, and what you might be able to do to help them out? Do you take occasional opportunities to have fun with them?

A project manager who cares and stays connected is much more likely to receive the information they need to do their job well.

2. Build a people-first system.

Maybe you care about your team, but is the system that manages project information set up with the users of that system in mind?

Sometimes project leaders—or maybe even company senior leaders—try to force teams into a piece of software because “it’s the one we have.” One person was a huge fan of a specific software program and got it approved and paid for, and now everybody else feels stuck with it.

But it’s never a good idea to start with a piece of software and then ask how the team will use it. Instead, start with an evaluation of what your company needs from a system, and what users who interact with that system need. If I was starting over with a new team tomorrow, I would spend a lot of time trying to understand company needs and user needs, and cobble together a project management system out of documents and spreadsheets in order to test and verify those needs, before I’d recommend investing in purpose-fit software.

What are the jobs of your team members actually like? What time investment in project updates is realistic for them, and how can they share those updates with the least friction or frustration? Some empathetic questions about what’s not working for them in the current system will give you great clues to what a more effective system could look like.

3. Lead with the value of their participation.

As I alluded to in the previous section, you need to know why a project management information system is important, or what value it adds to your company, in order to build or advocate for an effective one.

But your team needs to understand this value as well. People are much less likely to resist tasks (like communicating status updates) when they understand the value of doing them.

Ideally, sharing a status update provides some value directly to the team member sharing the update. If they share the update on time and in the requested way, will it reduce their overall time on communication and allow them to get back to their specialized work? Can they take pride in the fact that their accomplishments will be on display to the rest of the team or company inside of the system or software?

Alternatively, if you can’t identify any ways that sharing updates benefits the sharer, can you help the sharer see how their updates benefit other team members? I’ve seen significant improvements in how much coworkers use a piece of software they don’t like when they understand the whole information ecosystem and how a task that’s annoying to them makes somebody else’s job easier.

It’s important that you as the project leader focus on communicating both types of value to your team members clearly and regularly.

4. Then consider automation and AI tools.

Once you’ve taken the above three steps—and are hopefully seeing big improvements in communication about the status of items on your projects—then you’re at a great point to consider where any automation and AI tools can further streamline things or help you with follow-up. Just remember to keep items 1-3 primary, and make sure your automation and AI tools don’t get in the way of a human-centered focus.

Building understanding and trust with your team is the true key to getting the project status information you need.