Applying Project Management in The Real World

Capstone: Applying Project Management in the Real World [Project Management]
Initiating a Project
You will learn to analyze project documents and supporting materials to identify project
requirements, evaluate stakeholders, and problem-solve. You’ll complete a project charter and
use it as a tool to align project scope and goals among stakeholders. You will also add specificity
to project goals to make them SMART and apply effective negotiation skills with stakeholders to
prioritize project goals.
Learning Objectives:
● Explain the Project Management certificate program structure and course
functionality.
● Analyze materials to identify project requirements, evaluate stakeholders, and
problem-solve.
● Complete a project charter, filling out key information including a project
summary, goals, scope, benefits, and costs.
● Add specificity to project goals to make them SMART.
● Use the project charter as a tool to align project scope and goals among project
stakeholders.
● Apply effective negotiation skills with stakeholders to prioritize project goals.
Getting Started with the Course:

➢ Introduction to Course 6
○ Welcome to Applying Project Management in the Real World. If you've joined us
for this program's previous courses, then you've developed a solid foundation of
project management knowledge and skills. Those courses covered how a project
progresses through the initiation, planning, execution, and closing stages. They
also taught how to manage projects using different methodologies and
approaches, like Agile and Scrum. If you haven't completed the previous courses,
we recommend checking them out before starting this course to ensure that
you're ready to work through all of the upcoming activities. As you progress
through this course, you'll create project documents based on an imagined
scenario. You'll learn details through conversations, emails, and other materials,
just as you would in a real-world scenario. By the end of this course, you'll have
developed a portfolio of project management documents that will demonstrate
your ability to manage stakeholders and teams, organize plans, and communicate
project details. All of this can be valuable when applying for jobs or working on
projects in your current line of work.
○ If you have strong project management skills, you often don't need to be a
subject matter expert in a given domain to work in that field.
○ Now let's get right into the scenario that will apply to all of the activities in this
course. In this imagined scenario, a small restaurant chain called Sauce and Spoon
wants to meet their annual growth and expansion goals. As one way to meet
these goals, they have decided to launch a pilot project to test out the impact of
installing new tabletop menu tablets. The new menu tablets will allow the
restaurant to serve more guests in less time and will provide valuable data that
will help Sauce and Spoon meet its business goals. The company just hired Peta as
their first in-house project manager to oversee the tablet rollout at two of the
restaurant chain's five locations. Throughout the course, you'll observe Peta as
she guides her team through planning and executing the project deliverables.
Although she has five years of project management experience, Peta hasn't
managed a restaurant project before. You'll get to follow the project through its
life cycle as Peta learns about the restaurant industry, determines the goals of the
project, negotiates with stakeholders, and much more. Along the way, you'll
record details of the project to use in course activities. You'll also evaluate Peta's
project management skills as she works to complete this project in scope, on
time, and within budget. You'll learn what works and what doesn't, and how to
problem solve your way through a project.
○ As you progress through the course, we'll review and practice key project
management concepts, which include analyzing materials to identify project
requirements, solve problems, and manage stakeholders, applying important
negotiation techniques and influencing skills, listening with empathy when
working with a team, and practicing your stakeholder communication skills. We'll
explore these concepts in more depth, and we’ll learn how each concept applies
to the Sauce and Spoon project. Each activity will contain guiding questions to
help you create common project documents that you can speak to in a job
interview and utilize throughout your career. As you work through these activities,
you may want to take notes on some of the information you learn.
➢ Course 6 Capstone Overview
○ Hello! Welcome to the capstone course in the Google Project Management
Certificate, where you will practice applying the project management knowledge
and skills you have learned so far.
By the end of this course, you will have developed a portfolio of project management artifacts
that will demonstrate the skills you have learned throughout the entire program, such as your
ability to manage stakeholders and teams, organize plans, and communicate project details.
These artifacts can exhibit your career readiness when applying for jobs in the field. To further
prepare you to interview for project management jobs, you will reflect on past projects, develop
an “elevator pitch,” and anticipate common interview questions. Current Google project
managers will continue to instruct and provide you with the strategies, tools, and resources to
meet your goals.
If you haven’t taken Courses 1–5 yet, we highly recommend doing so in the order in which they
are presented, as they provide the foundation necessary to complete the activities in this course.
As you progress through this course, you will “observe” a project manager in a real-world
scenario and complete dozens of hands-on activities, such as:
● analyzing project documents to identify project requirements and evaluate stakeholders
● completing a project charter and using it as a tool to align project scope and goals
among stakeholders
● identifying tasks and milestones and documenting and prioritizing them in a project plan
● defining quality management standards and exploring how to effectively share qualitative
data
● demonstrating your project’s impact through effective reporting
Creating a Project Charter:

➢ Project Charters: Purpose and Components
○ In this next set of lessons, you'll apply strategic thinking and effective business
writing to initiate a project. You'll analyze project documents and supporting
materials to identify project requirements, evaluate stakeholders, and problem
solve. You'll use a project charter as a tool to align project scope and goals among
stakeholders. And you'll apply effective negotiation skills with stakeholders to
prioritize project goals. In this lesson, I'll review the purpose and main
components of a project charter, so you can get started creating one for the
Sauce and Spoon tablet rollout. After this lesson, you'll review supporting
materials that will enable you to observe Peta as she initiates the project. Then
you'll apply strategic thinking to create a project charter based on what you
observed. Strategic thinking involves analyzing documentation and talking with
stakeholders to inform decisions based on the information available to you. Let's
review the purpose and main components of a project charter. A project charter
is a formal document that clearly defines the project and outlines the
necessary details to reach the project's goals. The project manager creates the
charter during the initiation phase, which is the first phase of the project life cycle.
The project charter helps you organize vital project information, create a
framework for the work that needs to be done, and communicate those details
to the necessary people. It's also useful as a reference throughout the project's
life cycle, since it can help stakeholders realign on the project scope, goals, and
costs. The project charter contains key information about a project, like the
summary, goals, and deliverables. The goal of the summary is to provide an
overview of the project and to outline the goals you hope to accomplish. Summaries
should be brief—just a few sentences at most, and to the point. After the
summary comes project goals and deliverables. Project goals refer to the desired
results of the project, and deliverables refer to specific tasks and tangible outcomes
that enable the team to meet project goals. In general, project goals address the
overall result that stakeholders are aiming to achieve. They are determined by
input from stakeholders and the project manager. For example, part of Sauce and
Spoon's annual growth and expansion goals is launching the tablet roll out
project, and one deliverable of the project is the successful installation of working
tablets at two restaurant locations. The last part of a project charter that we will
cover here is scope. Remember that scope refers to the boundaries of a project.
Along with the scope, the charter contains information about work that's out-of-
scope. Details that don't contribute to the project's goals are considered out of
scope. Scope was covered in a previous course, and we will expand on it in more
detail in an upcoming lesson.
○ Let's recap what we just covered. A project charter is a formal document that
clearly defines the project and outlines the necessary details to reach the
project's goals. The primary components of a project charter are the summary,
goals, deliverables, and scope. A charter can include other sections as well, such
as budget and cost and success metrics. In the upcoming activity, you'll identify
and document the project name, summary, goals, and deliverables of the Sauce
and Spoon tablet pilot in a project charter.
➢ Activity: Draft a Project Charter
➢ Project Charters: Stakeholder Alignment
○ So far, you should have added the project name, the project summary, and some
goals and deliverables to your project charter. In this lesson, we'll discuss how to
use the charter as a tool to get the project stakeholders in alignment about the
project's scope and goals. Then in the upcoming activity, you'll review supporting
materials containing information about the Sauce and Spoon tablet rollout. You'll
also observe how Peta guides a conversation among disagreeing stakeholders to
get alignment on the project charter details. Then you'll identify key aspects of
the conversation that will help you revise and clarify details in the charter you
drafted in the last activity.
○ Any time you're communicating the details of your project, you need to think
about your audience and what information is important to them. When adding
details to a project charter, ask yourself the following questions about your
audience, and if it's helpful, try answering these questions in your notes. Who are
your stakeholders? In this case, your audience includes all of your key stakeholders.
What details are most important to them? Are there project details that they might
disagree with? Once you've identified what you believe are important details,
review your charter and ensure all of those details are included. From there, you'll
be able to present the charter to your stakeholders and confirm that everyone
agrees with the project information. Think of the project charter this way—in
addition to serving as a formal document that defines the project, a project
charter is also an alignment tool. Here, alignment refers to reaching agreement
between two or more parties. A common cause of project failure is misalignment
among stakeholders about the details of the project. Misalignment can also
happen between you and your stakeholders when you have differing visions for
the project. That's why it's so important to align with your stakeholders before
the work begins. Stakeholders generally aren't involved in the day-to-day tasks of
project execution, so it's crucial to take time during the initiation phase to create
a project charter that clearly lays out the details of a project. This helps ensure
that the team is working toward the outcomes expected by all of the stakeholders
and not just some of them. Usually, the initiation phase is the most ideal time to
make changes to the project. As the project progresses into the planning and
execution phases, substantive changes might require undoing work that's already
been completed. So in this early phase of the project life cycle, you shouldn't be
afraid to make adjustments. Here's an example of how you might experience
misalignment. Let's say you're discussing the main goals of the Sauce and Spoon
project. One stakeholder has a vision of being able to fully automate the ordering
experience with the tablets over time. Another stakeholder has a different goal.
Rather than fully automating ordering, they want the tablet rollout project to
improve order accuracy. To help resolve this situation, a project manager might
facilitate a discussion between the two stakeholders to try and reach an
agreement to confirm alignment on the project's goals. When you present a
project charter to your stakeholders, it's important to collect feedback and
identify where there are misalignments. Then you can make changes to address
those misalignments. If you and your stakeholders take the time early on to
clearly define the project, then you're much more likely to deliver the outcomes
your stakeholders expect at the end of the project. As a project manager, it is
important to record the feedback you receive and document any
misalignments and their resolutions. This allows you and your project team to
reference those decisions later on. One way to document misalignments and
resolutions is to create an appendix with a time stamp for new or updated
information. An appendix is a section of additional content at the end of a document. A
time stamp includes the date, and sometimes the time, of when the new content was
created or added to the document.
○ Let's review some of the main ideas we've discussed.
■ Any time you communicate the details of a project, you need to think
about your audience and what information is important to them. In the
case of a project charter, your audience is made up of your stakeholders.
■ A common cause of project failure is misalignment among stakeholders
about the project details. It's important to take the time during the
initiation phase to create a project charter that clearly lays out the key
details of a project and to align with your stakeholders before the work
begins.
■ And finally, document any misalignments and their resolutions in your
notes and the project charter to reference later on.
In the next activity, you'll review supporting materials highlighting how Peta works with
stakeholders to reach alignment on the project charter's details. Then you'll edit your project
charter summary, goals, and deliverables based on the additional information you learn. This
activity will demonstrate your ability to select key details from conversations that are relevant to
a well-written project charter. You'll also have the opportunity to observe and learn as Peta
guides the conversation toward an agreement.
➢ Activity: Revise Your Project Charter
○ Activity Overview: In this activity, you will update your project charter draft for
Sauce & Spoon’s tabletop menu tablets project based on new information. You
will also identify misalignments among stakeholders on certain aspects of the
project.
○ Scenario: After drafting the project charter, Peta emails and meets with a few project
stakeholders to clarify some of the project details. In addition to providing more
information, these discussions reveal some misalignments between two of the project’s
stakeholders. Misalignment occurs when stakeholders are not in agreement
about the details of the project. It can happen between the project manager and
any stakeholder at any stage of the project, and is a common cause of project
failure.
○ Step-by-Step Instructions:
■ Step 1: Access Your Draft: As you complete these instructions, you will
update the following sections of your project charter:
● Project summary
● Goals
● Deliverables
■ You will add new content to the following section of your project charter:
● Appendix
■ Step 2: Access the Supporting Materials: The following supporting
materials will help you complete this activity. Keep them open as you
proceed to the next steps. Each link will open a new Coursera tab.
● Email Exchange: Project Goals
● Email Exchange: Sales Goal Details
● Meeting: Decrease Guest Wait Time
● Note: To access supporting materials introduced in earlier
activities, you can find them in the Resources section.
■ Step 3: Review the Supporting Materials: Review the two email
exchanges and the video chat transcript. Take notes on information that
will help you update the following sections of your project charter:
● Project summary
● Goals
● Deliverables
● Appendix
● You are encouraged to also make note of any other relevant
project information. You may add this information to your notes or
the project charter.
■ Step 4: Update the Project Goals: The project charter is a living document
and it is your job as the project manager to keep the document up-to-date
with the most important information for key stakeholders.
● Review the project goals you drafted in your project charter. Make
changes to your project goals based on the new information
provided in the supporting materials. Then identify any additional
goals and add them to the character. You should have a total of 6-
10 goals.
● Use these Guiding Questions when updating your project goals:
○ What do the various team members want to see from the
project? Seek keywords in conversations such as goals,
desires, outcomes, expectations, hopes, metrics, and
wants.
○ Which of the goals from your list are most important to the
senior stakeholders who sponsored the project? Make note
of these goals.
○ How will you know when the project is done? Consider the
ideal end result of the project and work backwards from
there.
■ Step 5: Update Project Deliverables: Next, review the project deliverables.
Update the list of deliverables based on the supporting materials and the
updated project goals. If you have more than nine deliverables, refine your
list to contain 5-9 you think are the most critical for reaching project
goals.
● Use the following Guiding Questions when making updates to
your project deliverables:
○ What physical or digital items will the project produce?
○ Where in the conversation do the stakeholders discuss
outcomes?
○ What are some keywords in the conversation that will tell
you about project deliverables? Consider words like output,
outcomes, delivery, tasks, and responsibility.
■ Step 6: Identify and Document Misalignments: As a project manager, it’s
important to record the feedback you receive and document any
misalignments and their resolutions. This allows you and your project team
to reference those decisions later on. One way to document
misalignments and resolutions is to create an appendix for new or
updated information. An appendix is a section of additional content at the
end of a document. After reviewing the supporting materials, add any
misalignments to the appendix of the project charter. Then, add the
decision that was made following the misalignment. If the misalignment
was resolved, how so? Are there more discussions that need to occur
regarding the misalignment? Is more information needed in order to reach
an agreement? Including the decision will help your team stay on track if
conflicts arise and aid in decision making. The supporting materials will
contain at least one misalignment.
● Use the following Guiding Questions when making updates to
your charter’s appendix:
○ Who are the stakeholders?
○ When do project stakeholders disagree on a particular
topic?
○ Who is the “decision-maker”?

○ How is the misalignment clarified?
○ What is the final decision regarding the misalignment?
■ Step 7: Save Your Work
○ What to Include in Your Response:
■ You've added to and updated the goals in the project charter based on
new information gathered in the supporting materials, and have a total of
6-10 goals.
■ You’ve added to and updated the deliverables in the project charter based
on new information gathered in the supporting materials, and have a total
of 5-9 deliverables.
■ You’ve noted misalignments in the appendix of the project charter, and
have 1-2 misalignments.
■ You’ve noted the decisions made to address at least one misalignment in
the appendix of the project charter.
1. What decision is the subject of stakeholder misalignment within the Sauce & Spoon
tablet project?
a. Reallocate payroll to hire more kitchen staff
2. How does a project charter act as an alignment tool?
a. Lays out project details to ensure the team is working toward the outcome all
stakeholders expect.
b. Addresses misalignments and documents when and how stakeholders resolve them.
3. How do Peta and her team resolve the issue of reallocating payroll to the kitchen staff?
a. They discuss several ideas, but do not resolve the issue.
➢ Project Charters: Drafting SMART Goals
○ By now you've drafted the project summary, goals, and deliverables in the project
charter, and you've identified details in the project charter where stakeholders
need to be in alignment. In this lesson, we'll review SMART goals and discuss how
to add specificity to your project goals. We will also learn some tips for
researching industry success metrics which are helpful in adding specificity to
your goals and deliverables. Being able to write specific, measurable goals is an
important part of project management and a great way to demonstrate your project
management skills to potential employers. Then, in the following activity, you'll
review supporting materials and update the goals and deliverables you've drafted
in the project charter to make them SMART.
○ During the initiation phase, some of the project goals might be broad because not
all of the project details have been determined. While it's okay to have broader
goals, it's helpful to add specificity where possible. That's because clarifying
project goals early on can help you avoid misalignment and gain a clearer
understanding of the project's scope, budget, and timeline. Remember, project
goals are the desired outcomes of the project. Outlining clear and specific goals is
an important step in creating an effective project charter and crucial to launching
a successful project, so you'll need to be able to accurately identify whether or
not a goal has been met. When your goals are clear, you'll be able to determine
your project deliverables. Project deliverables are specific tasks or outcomes
that contribute to the completion of a goal. In your career as a project manager,
you will likely encounter stakeholders who only vaguely describe the outcomes
they want for a given project. For example, a stakeholder might tell you that
they'd like more customers to use a certain service or they'd like to sell more units
of a particular product. These are fine goals, but they're not very specific. You
don't know how many more customers, what kind of customers, or how many
units that you'll need in order to meet goals. As a project manager, it's your role
to ensure that the project goals are well-defined so that you and your team have a
clear roadmap. This not only allows you to focus, but also eliminates wasted time
and miscommunication going forward. You can create clearly-outlined goals with
the help of the SMART method we discussed earlier in this program. The SMART
method helps turn your project goals into SMART goals. Remember, this means
your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. These
qualities can help you measure your success more accurately and allow you to
make more precise adjustments along the way.
○ Let's review some best practices for ensuring your project goals are also SMART
goals. To make a goal more specific, make sure that it provides answers to
questions like "What am I aiming to accomplish?" and "What are the
requirements and constraints of this goal?" Here's a tip to add specificity to
goals. Look for words in your goals that might be subjective or based on an
opinion, such as bigger, better, or faster. Once you've identified subjective
words, connect with your stakeholders to agree on a definition of what it actually
means to make something bigger or better or faster. What does bigger or better
entail in practice? Faster by how much, specifically? The SMART method helps you
make your goals more specific by making them measurable. For example, if your
stakeholder wants to increase company profits, ask, "By how much?" Do they
want to increase profits by five percent? By 30 percent? Adding numbers and
figures to your goal makes it a lot easier to know when you've achieved it. If
you're having trouble making a goal measurable, research how others in your
industry quantify success. This is called benchmarking, which refers to evaluating
success against the standard. For example, there are lots of ways to measure
success in the restaurant industry. You might search online for information using
queries like "How do restaurants measure success?" or "How do you evaluate
employee training sessions?" You'll likely find a number of results. Some common
metrics include table turnover rate, or the average length of time that a guest
spends at their table; prime cost, which is the labor cost plus the total cost of
goods like food and drink; and average check amount, which is the average
amount of money guests spend on a given meal. Most industries—from the
hospitality industry to the entertainment industry to the construction industry—
will have their own metrics for success. That includes the tech industry too.
Metrics are a big part of how success is measured at Google. SMART goals are
also attainable, which means that the goal is challenging but not impossible to
reach. Ask yourself and the team, "Can it be done?" Do you have the time,
resources, and people available to complete the goal on time and within budget?
If not, you'll need to make some changes to your goals. And all project goals
should be relevant. Ask yourself, "Does it make sense for us as a company or as a
project team to pursue this goal?" One best practice for determining the
relevance of your project goals is to notice how closely your project goals align
with the wider goals of your company or organization. At Google, they use a tool
for organization-wide goal setting called objectives and key results, or OKRs.
Other organizations might use a different term for their own goal setting. OKRs
combine a goal and a metric to determine a measurable outcome. For example,
one of Sauce and Spoon's broader objectives is to make fresh, quick food for the
working families in its community. So a relevant goal for the Sauce and Spoon
tablet rollout might be to decrease customer checkout time by 10 percent, on
average, in the first six weeks after implementation. This project goal helps the
restaurant chain reach its larger goal: to provide quick meals for guests. The last
part of the SMART framework is to make your goal time-bound. You'll want to
add a deadline to your goal so that you know when it's supposed to be
completed.
○ SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If
your goals are SMART, you can feel confident about including them in your
project charter. In the upcoming activity, you'll collect information from the
supporting materials that will help you turn the goals you drafted into SMART
goals. You'll also identify any additional goals and add them to the project charter.
➢ Activity: Update your Project Charter Goals
○ Peta has finished discussing the details of the project with the team. The next step is to
review documentation to clarify some of the project’s goals.
○ Step by Step Instructions
■ Step 1: Access Your Draft: As you complete these instructions, you will
update the following sections of your project charter:
● Goals
● Deliverables
■ Step 2: Analyze project goals for SMART criteria: Analyze the goals and
deliverables you drafted to ensure they meet all the SMART criteria. If they
do not meet all criteria, highlight, bold, or underline the parts of each goal
that need additional detail and take note of the missing information.
● As a reminder, for a goal to be SMART, it must be:
○ Specific
○ Measureable
○ Attainable
○ Relevant
○ Time-bound
■ Step 3: Rewrite project goals to be SMART: Based on your analysis from
Step 2, choose 3-5 goals and rewrite them to make them SMART. Review
the supporting materials from previous activities to find the additional
details you need to make your goals SMART.
● As a reminder, here’s how to rewrite a goal to make it SMART:
○ Example goal: “Increase gift card sales by the end of year
(EOY).”
○ Updated SMART goal: “Increase gift cards sales by 15% by
the end of the year (EOY) by offering a 25% discount to
returning customers.”
● Use the following Guiding Tips and Questions if you need more
help rewriting your goals. Keep in mind the more detail you add to
the project goals, the more clarity they will bring to the team
throughout the project:
○ Is the goal specific? Does it detail what needs to be done?
○ Is the goal measurable? Can it be quantified?
○ Is the goal attainable? Can your team accomplish it?
○ Is the goal relevant? Does it currently benefit the company?
○ Is the goal time-bound? Does your team have an idea of
when it will be completed?
● Note: In some cases, you may not be able to find every detail you
need to write an entire SMART goal, so you can use a placeholder
such as “TBD” (“to be determined”). For example, “Customers will
check out TBD times faster than before the project started.” Even
if you don’t know the specifics of your goals, writing them in

SMART language will force your team to return to them later and
define all of the missing specifics.
■ Save Your Work.
■ 5 Revised SMART goals.
● Rewrite project goals to be Specific.
● Rewrite project goals to be Measurable.
● Rewrite project goals to be Attainable.
● Rewrite project goals to be Relevant.
● Rewrite project goals to be Time-Bound.
1. What is an example of a measurable goal?
a. Reduce food waste by 25% by the end of Q2
2. What is an example of a time-bound goal?
a. Implement menu tablets by the start of Q2
b. Increase appetizer sales by the end of Q2
3. One of the project goals is to decrease average table turn time. What version of this goal
meets all of the SMART criteria?
a. Decrease average table turn time by approximately 30 minutes by the end of the second
quarter (Q2), resulting in decreased customer wait time.
4. One of the project goals is to increase the average check total for each table. What
version of this goal meets all the SMART criteria?
a. Increase average check total to $75 by the end of Q2 by selling more appetizers and
beverages, resulting in increased profits.
➢ Project Charters: Defining Scope, Benefits, and Costs
○ Now that you've updated the project charter and edited some of the project goals
to make them SMART, it's time to discuss scope, benefits, and cost. Coming up,
we'll explore what to think about when adding these items to your project
charter. After this lesson, you'll review new supporting materials and use what
you've learned to identify benefits and costs, which you'll add to your charter.
○ When thinking about what kind of information to include in a project charter, it's
always good to consider the primary audience who will be reading it. Since the
goal of creating a project charter is to communicate with your stakeholders,
they're your primary audience. If you know that one of the benefits of your
project would be of particular interest to a key stakeholder, you'll want to
make sure to emphasize this benefit in your project charter. The stakeholders
reading your charter might not see more detailed project plans in other
documents later on, so it's important to get consensus on the critical elements
now while the project details are still being finalized. You've already identified, and
hopefully resolved, any misalignments about the project vision and goals. Next,
you need to get aligned with your stakeholders on scope, benefits, and cost.
We talked about scope earlier, but as a quick refresher, scope refers to the
boundaries of the project; for example, the number of restaurants taking part in
the pilot. Details that don't contribute to the project's goals are considered
out-of-scope.
○ To determine what's in- and out-of-scope, think about what's needed to achieve
the project goal. Keep the following questions in mind: Which project details are
your stakeholders aligned on that would be considered in-scope? Do your
stakeholders disagree on any elements? Are there any details you should
designate as out-of-scope for this particular project? As you think about these
questions, take notes on what you find and refer to them as you complete the
scope section of your project charter in the upcoming activity.
○ After you've figured out the scope of your project, you'll need to focus on project
benefits and costs. Benefits are the expected gains of a project. These can be
direct, monetary gains, or indirect benefits, like an improvement in customer
engagement or satisfaction. Costs refer to the money spent on project tasks
and the prices of things like time, resources, and labor. Costs can be evaluated
and managed using a project budget. A budget is an estimate of the amount of
money allocated to complete the project. In the next activity, you'll need to
review the supporting materials and take notes on details that can help you
identify the benefits and costs of the tablet rollout. You'll use that information to
add two lists to your project charter: a list of benefits and a list of costs. Usually
you can find the benefits the project will bring in the business case or project
proposal. For example, your list of benefits for the tablet rollout might include its
potential to speed up service and increase sales by an estimated percent. Here's
another benefit. The tablets will provide the restaurant with clear data points on
customer ordering and an integrated point-of-sale system to help guide decision-
making in the future. A list of benefits can help you identify potential project
goals you might have missed. A list of costs will include items the organization will
have to pay for in order to get the job done, like the price of labor or materials.
Listing out costs helps your stakeholders weigh the benefits against the amount
of money required to realize those benefits. You can build a list of costs by
working with stakeholders to get estimates on labor, materials, and any other
factors that might cost the business money during the project. Earlier, you
learned that the benefits of a project should outweigh the costs. This is almost
always the case when a project is initiated or proposed. When you add these
details to the charter, it helps visualize them in one place and makes the costs and
benefits crystal clear to the stakeholders. This section is used a lot as an aid to
help make sure stakeholders agree that it's worth the money to pursue the
project.
○ Let's recap. Scope refers to the boundaries of the project. Benefits refer to the
expected gains of the project. And costs refer to the money spent on project
tasks, plus the prices of things like time, resources, and labor.
➢ TYK: Project Charter Components
1. What is the purpose of a project charter?
a. Acts as a useful reference throughout the project
b. Defines the project and outlines necessary details
2. What three questions should you ask yourself when adding details to a project charter?
a. Who are the stakeholders?
b. Are there project details that the stakeholders might disagree with?
c. What details are most important to the stakeholders?
3. How can you use your project charter as a tool to align with stakeholders in the initiation
phase?
a. Present that project charter to stakeholders to confirm that everyone agrees with the
project information.
4. ___ are the expected gains of a project. These can be direct or indirect.
a. Benefits
5. What step for making project charter goals measurable involves researching how others
in your industry quantify success?
a. Benchmarking
➢ Afsheen: Initiating a Project Effectively
○ The common problem that I see when you're in the initial phase of establishing a project
is getting alignment between the key stakeholders. Also, securing the right people to take
on the project to incentivize your really talented project managers to want to join the
project. I find that attraction is much more effective than promotion. I want talent to
come towards the project versus just assigning the project work. That takes a lot of
work. It's worth it because you're laying a good foundation for a successful project, and
ultimately, the best velocity you could expect. During the initiation phase, when I'm trying
to refine the success criteria, I ask a lot of questions. There's probably a list of 20 of
them. A couple examples could be understanding the environment. What are some of the
pitfalls or risks in the ecosystem? I will also try to do survey interviews, people in the
environment, asking them, "What do you see as a problem?" Also, I ask a series of
quantitative questions where applicable to understand what am I dealing with in terms
of measurables? "There are a lot of reasons why projects may fail. In my opinion, it
comes down to: one, really poor project definition: two, disorganization, the project lead
is not establishing a framework to manage the project: and three, there's too many
people." Often, you have this effect where everyone will want to work on the project and
then you don't have accountability. Not every stakeholder is going to come at the
problem with the same perspective. So I step back and understand, who are my key
stakeholders? Let's just say for example there's two sponsors, the key stakeholders, and
they're apples and oranges. That's a problem. In that case, I'm going to have to meet with
them a lot, understand broker compromise, and really work through that initial project
formation problem.
➢ Activity: Complete Your Project Charter
○ In this activity, you will review supporting materials and add the project scope,
costs, and benefits to your project charter. You will also identify an aspect of the
project as being out-of-scope and add it to the charter.
○ Keep in mind that project charters can differ significantly from project to project
and company to company. However, most charters include some variation of the
components described in this activity. No matter what form they take, charters
lay out project goals, highlight benefits, and help keep stakeholders aligned.
○ At the end of this activity, you should have a completed project charter.
○ Scenario: Now that Peta has clarified and updated the project goals, she checks in with
Deanna, Carter, Gilly, and Alex to discuss their concerns about the project’s scope.
■ Step 1: Access your draft: You will update the following sections of your
project charter:
● Scope and exclusion
● Benefits & Costs
● Appendix
■ Step 2: Access the support materials: The following materials will help
you complete this activity. Keep them open as you proceed with the next
steps. Each link will open a new Coursera tab.
● Meeting: Scope Details
● Tablet Implementation Cost
Note: To review supporting materials introduced in earlier activities, you can find them in the Resources
section.
■ Step 3: Determine the Scope of the Project: Review the meeting
transcript to determine aspects of the project that are in scope or out-of-
scope. Make note of any confusion or disagreement among the team
regarding what should be included - or not included - in this project.
● Add any items that are part of this project to the In-Scope section.
Any items that should be excluded from the project to the Out-of-
Scope section of your charter draft.
■ Step 4: Identify the benefits and costs of the project. Review the cost
sheet and add project costs to the Benefits and Costs section of your
project charter draft. Then, review existing project documentation for
more details that you can add to the Benefits & Costs section.
● Consider the following Guding Questions whend determining the
benefits and costs of this project:
○ What is the biggest problem you are trying to solve?
○ What defines “success” or “completion” to you?
○ What are the biggest risks for this project?
○ What are the resources and timeline needed?
○ What are the outcomes?
○ What is the indirect or long-term impact?
○ Who is the audience or beneficiary?
■ Step 5: Identify Misalignments. Review the meeting transcript to identify
misalignments among stakeholders. You should have a total of 4-6
misalignments documented in your charter.
● Add these to the Appendix of your project charter. Be sure to
record whether they were resolved, and what the resolutions were.
If they were not resolved, note any next steps for resolving them.
■ Step 6: Save your work.
➢ Activity: Complete Your Project Charter (Review Your Peers)
Negotiating Effectively with Stakeholders:
➢ Completing a Stakeholder Analysis
○ By now, you filled in most of your project charter: the summary, goals and
deliverables, scope, benefits, and costs. You've also learned more about the
project and your stakeholders, who are the core audience of the charter. In this
lesson, you'll learn how to prepare for some of the negotiations you'll have with
stakeholders about your projects. We'll spend some time exploring stakeholders'
individual interests, involvement, and contributions to the project. Then we'll
figure out how to use stakeholder influence to benefit the project and how to
effectively work with stakeholders. Almost every part of a project requires input
and agreement from multiple stakeholders. Of course, not all stakeholders will
value the same input or agree on the same things. That's why a successful project
manager needs to be a skilled negotiator too. After this lesson, you'll review
supporting materials about the Sauce and Spoon project stakeholders to write a
persuasive email demonstrating your negotiation skills.
○ As we discussed earlier in the program, some common project aspects that are
negotiated during the course of a project include scope, costs, and benefits,
timeline, success criteria, roles and responsibilities, and resources. This is
another reason getting aligned with stakeholders early on is helpful. Good
alignment can help prevent some of these types of negotiations down the road.
Early in the project, it's important to agree on the scope. Take note of how Peta
focuses on securing stakeholder buy-in for that. It's good to remember that a lot
of the skills she'll apply here will be useful to negotiating other elements
throughout the project's life cycle, whether that's the budget, timeline, or product
requirements.
○ You'll prepare for this and future negotiations by creating a stakeholder analysis.
A stakeholder analysis is a visual representation of all of the stakeholders. It helps you
understand who your stakeholders are, what their priorities are, and how they
prefer to communicate. It can help you determine how strongly you need to
prioritize a particular stakeholder's needs or goals on the project. Stakeholders
have a vested interest in the project success. Understanding your stakeholders
helps you figure out the right people to include in important conversations and
how to prioritize the different needs of the different stakeholders. This is key to
getting the support you need throughout the project. As part of your analysis, try
to answer as many questions as you can about each stakeholder. Then as you
review your list, identify which stakeholders directly influence the project and
the level of interest each one has. A stakeholder's influence is related to how
much power they have and how much their actions affect the project outcome. Interest
refers to how much the stakeholders' needs will be affected by project operations and
outcomes. For example, if a stakeholder has high interest and high influence, it
might be very important that you keep them informed and make sure their goals
for the project are top priority. If they have low interest and low influence, then
you might be able to deprioritize one of their personal preferences for the project.
Mapping these out on a power-interest grid will give you even more clarity about
whom to prioritize and how best to approach negotiations with each stakeholder.
You'll find a stakeholder analysis template in the power interest grid and the
supporting materials of the upcoming activity. Once you have a good idea of who
your stakeholders are and what role they play in the project's success, you can
use this information to support your project negotiations. One of the most
important negotiations will deal with defining and maintaining project scope.
Stakeholders might push to add more into the scope, and it's your job as the
project manager to negotiate what's realistic within the given budget and
timeline expectations.
○ Some common project negotiations you're likely to have with stakeholders
include aspects of the charter, like costs and benefits and success criteria, as
well as other project aspects like roles and responsibilities and project
resources. You can prepare for these negotiations by conducting a stakeholder
analysis using a power-interest grid.
➢ Stakeholder Management: Tips and Takeaways
○ Stakeholder management is the process of maintaining good relationships with
the people who have the most influence on your work. Efficiently managing
stakeholders is an integral part of every project because it encourages good
communication, teamwork, trust among members, and so much more. Without
effective stakeholder management, a project is less likely to be successful. Read
on for some tips and best practices for effective stakeholder management.
■ Stakeholder management during project initiation
● Identify all the stakeholders at the beginning of your project or
initiative. Get everyone involved as early as possible to set clear
expectations, responsibilities, and boundaries. Identifying your
stakeholders early on gives them ample time to voice any concerns
they may have about the project or their role within it. If they feel a
sense of ownership from the beginning, your stakeholders may be
more likely to embrace their roles, give appropriate input, and help
remove barriers to allow the project to move forward.
● Keep the project vision clear. The project vision describes the
need the project is fulfilling. It is important to have a clear, specific
project vision because, as we have learned, stakeholders may apply
pressure to increase the requirements, shorten the timeline, or cut
resources. Ensuring that stakeholders have agreed upon the vision
—and, more specifically, what "done" looks like—provides clarity for
everyone involved with the project. Including highly-influential
stakeholders in the strategic planning processes will make sure
that all team members are aligned with project vision.
● Equip your stakeholders with user-friendly resources at all times.
This could mean creating a one-pager (a one-page document that
provides an overview of your project) or weekly status report with
the latest information and links to the main project artifacts. It may
also mean ensuring everyone has access to necessary
documentation.
■ Stakeholder management throughout the project life cycle

● As you work your way through the project life cycle, you will have
to maintain good relationships with all of your stakeholders to
ensure they are satisfied and contributing to the team. The
following strategies can help you get to know your stakeholders’
interests, concerns, and communication preferences and enlist
their help throughout your project’s life cycle:
● Find out what stakeholders care about and why. Ask your stakeholders: What are your
most important priorities and goals? What role would you like to play in this project? How
will this project support you and your most important priorities?
● Adjust your communication frequency and approach based on stakeholder roles and
preferences. Tell your stakeholders: Here’s how I plan to keep you informed—does that
work for you?
● Enlist the help of senior stakeholders when necessary. Ask your stakeholders: Who else
do you recommend I reach out to regarding this project?
● Once stakeholders have a vested interest, bring project problems to them. Ask your
stakeholders: How would you handle this situation? What solutions come to mind?
Key takeaway
Stakeholders can be your biggest allies as a project manager. Practicing your stakeholder
management skills can help you enlist your stakeholders' support and keep them engaged
throughout your project.
➢ Activity: Complete a Stakeholder Analysis
○ In this activity, you will practice assessing and prioritizing stakeholders. As a
project manager, understanding your stakeholders helps you figure out the
right people to include in important conversations and how to prioritize the
needs of different stakeholders. This is key to getting the support you need
throughout the project.
○ You will learn more about the project’s potential stakeholders by reviewing
supporting materials. Based on what you learn, you will compile a stakeholder
analysis evaluating each stakeholder’s level of power and interest. Then you will
add those stakeholders to a power-interest grid, so you know how to prioritize
them.
○ Scenario: Now that Peta has completed the Sauce & Spoon project charter draft, she
needs to evaluate the project’s stakeholders so she has a better idea of how to interact
with each one as the project progresses. Each stakeholder has their own unique interests
and involvement with the project, so it’s important to determine the best ways to
manage them, approach negotiations, and keep them informed of the project’s progress.
■ Step 1: Access the Template

■ Step 2: Access the Supporting Materials:
● Sauce & Spoon Organizational Chart
● Email: Checking In
■ Step 3: Review the Supporting Materials: As you review the supporting
materials, take some notes, keeping in mind the following Guiding
Questions:
● How much power does each stakeholder have? A stakeholder’s
power is related to how much influence they have and how much
their actions affect the project outcome.
● How much interest does each stakeholder have? Interest refers
to how much the stakeholder’s needs will be affected by the
project’s operations and outcomes.
● You are encouraged to also make note of any other relevant
project information. You may add this information to your notes or
the project charter.
■ Step 4: Complete the Stakeholder Analysis: In the template, add content
to the first slide based on what you’ve learned from the supporting
materials, including:
○ Stakeholder: What is their name?
○ Role: What is their role?
○ Power (H/M/L): Is their power over the project high,
medium, or low?
○ Interest (H/M/L): Is there interest in the project high,
medium, or low?
● For example, a stakeholder who has a lot of power over the project
could have a number of other responsibilities as well. In that case,
they may not have as much direct interest, since their attention is
split among many different projects. They would be considered
high power and low interest.
● On the other hand, a stakeholder who will be directly impacted by
the decisions of the project (for example, their budget or staffing
allocations could change), but who doesn’t have any authority to
influence the decisions would be considered low power and high
interest.
● If you’re not sure about a stakeholder’s level, or if their power or
interest falls somewhere in the middle, you can assign them a
medium rating.
■ Step 5: Complete the power-interest grid. Take your assessment from
the stakeholder analysis, and add content to the power-interest grid,
according to each level of power and interest you assigned them (high,
medium, or lower). Assign each stakeholder to a box. If you rated a
stakeholder’s power or interest as a medium, place them between the grid
boxes.
● Someone’s position on the grid shows you the actions you have to
take with them:
○ Higher power, higher interest: These people are your
highest priority. You must manage them closely and make
every effort to fully engage with them.
○ Higher power, lower interest: These people require a high
level of effort to keep satisfied, as far as the success of the
project is concerned, but do not want to be overburdened
with project communications.
○ Lower power, higher interest: Show consideration to
these people by keping them adequately informed. Talk to
them to ensure that no major issues are arising. These
people can often be very helpful with the details of your
project.
○ Lower power, lower interest: Monitor these people, but do
not overload them with excessive communication. These
people require minimal effort.
● Once the grid is complete, you will have a better sense of how to
manage and communicate with each stakeholder: keep satisfied,
manage closely, monitor, or show consideration.
■ Step 6: Save your work.
○ What to Include in your response:
■ Stakeholder names
■ Stakeholder roles
■ An assessment of each stakeholder’s power
■ An assessment of each stakeholder’s interest
■ A power-interest grid containing each stakeholder, mapped out according
to their power and interest assessment
➢ Finding Mutually Beneficial Solutions
○ In the last activity, you completed the stakeholder analysis and mapped out
which stakeholders have the most power, influence, and interest in the project's
outcome. Having a better understanding of the people who will be evaluating the
success of your project makes it so much easier to strategize the best ways to
communicate with them and get the support you need. So coming up, we'll learn
more about how to successfully navigate a negotiation with stakeholders. As a
project manager, you've got a lot of helpful tools at your disposal, but even the
most skilled negotiators have to put their skills to the test in order to meet
project goals and gain stakeholder satisfaction. There will be times when you need
to negotiate a sensitive aspect of the project's goals or scope, or there could be a
disagreement among stakeholders, or you might disagree with something that
stakeholders want. You'll need to use negotiating techniques to move a
disagreement from stalemate to solution. After this lesson, you'll identify shared
benefits for your stakeholders that you'll eventually use to write a negotiation
email.
○ When it comes to project management, persuasion and negotiation are
constructive tools you can use to enhance communication, clarify wants and
needs, and achieve workable solutions for everyone involved. Being skilled at
persuasion and negotiation will also boost your level of influence. It's important
that you view the people you're negotiating with as your colleagues and peers,
not as opponents. That's why you do a stakeholder analysis—so you can get to
know your stakeholders as people, with their own jobs and responsibilities, and as
partners who want the project to succeed. When you experience conflict or
disagreement among your stakeholders, it's in your best interest to address those
challenges, build consensus among the stakeholder groups, and de-escalate
conflict. One way to do this is to find solutions that are mutually beneficial.
Mutual benefit is when all parties involved gain some kind of benefit or
advantage. For example, let's say there's a disagreement over how many people
to hire for a project. You'd like to hire five, but a stakeholder wants to limit the
head count to three. A solution that would offer mutual benefit might be to install
automated software to pick up some of the work. Or another solution might be to
adjust the timeline or expectations so that five people aren't needed in order to
reach the project goal. The stakeholder gets to have their desired smaller team
size, and you're able to complete tasks with fewer people.
○ The goal here is to reach a solution that maximizes benefits, minimizes losses, and
is fair for all. Brainstorm all possible options that meet this criteria. Then, during
your negotiations, you'll be able to present multiple alternatives and choose one
that benefits everyone to some degree. Now, as much as you want to satisfy your
stakeholders, it's just as important to think about what tradeoffs you're willing to
make. To do this successfully, you need a clear understanding of project priorities.
You have to know what's most important when it comes to scope, timeline, and
budget. For example, if there's a specific deadline that has to be met, then you'll
need to negotiate any changes to the scope that might cause the project to go
past that deadline. If the product needs to look or function a certain way, then the
requirements are a top priority, and you could negotiate aspects of the budget or
timeline in order to adhere to the scope. A common tool used for determining
priorities is the triple constraint model, or the iron triangle, which we covered in
an earlier course. The triple constraint will help you decide if a project request is
acceptable and what impact it'll have.
○ Persuasion and negotiation are constructive tools you can use to enhance
communication, clarify wants and needs, and achieve workable solutions for
everyone involved. The goal is to reach a mutual benefit, which is when all parties
involved gain some kind of benefit or advantage.
➢ Negotiating Scope with Stakeholders:
○ Even after you’ve established the project’s scope, some stakeholders may want to
discuss adjusting it. They may feel that the project’s current scope will require too
much work with too few resources, that the timeline isn’t realistic given the
scope, or that the project requires additional tasks and objectives. When your
stakeholders ask to revisit a project’s scope, you should meet with them so they
can raise their concerns. Knowing how to effectively facilitate scope negotiations
will allow you to reach solutions that are suitable for everyone.
○ Tips for navigating scope with stakeholders
■ Understand motivations. Before your discussion, consider each
stakeholder's motivations for wanting to adjust the project’s scope. Some
of those motivations are budgetary (such as wanting to reduce the
project’s costs), some are interpersonal (such as wanting more time to
complete tasks), and some are related to personal career goals (such as
maintaining their current position or striving for a promotion).
Understanding your stakeholders’ motivations can help you work together
to find a compromise.
■ Set the scene. Start the discussion with a reflection on why you are
meeting. Remind your stakeholders why you are engaged in this project,
and assure them that you all share a common goal.
■ Listen first. Hear what your stakeholders have to say before you present
your views. This will demonstrate your desire to understand the other
party’s perspective. Acknowledging their point of view may make it easier
for them to accept your suggestions or solutions when their ideas or
opinions differ from yours.
■ Ask questions to define goals. Be thorough and ask as many questions as
you feel necessary to understand what the stakeholder wants. This might
include getting them to define their customer or business goals. Strive for
getting specific, measurable details from your stakeholders, so that later,
you’ll be able to determine whether you’ve successfully met their goals.
Eliciting language that is measurable (rather than subjective or unclear)
will help you define goals. An example of a specific, measurable goal could
be: “We want to cut the amount of time it takes customers to sign up for
our newsletter by at least 30 percent.”
■ Explain the “why” before the “what.” When attempting to persuade
stakeholders—or anyone, for that matter—to see things your way, explain
the reasons for your request before describing what you want. For
instance, start by explaining the value that could be added to your
company or project by defining scope in a certain way. If stakeholders
understand where you’re coming from first, they’re more likely to grant
your request when you ask for it.
■ Do not oversell. Sometimes it’s best to state your case and give others
some time to respond. After you have presented your reasons, position,
and request, withdraw slightly to give your audience time to process what
you have said. Think of your silence, in this situation, as a sign of respect
for your stakeholders; it shows them you want to hear from them. And, if
they are quiet for a while, it means that you have stimulated thought.
■ Be creative. Working to find alternative solutions can quickly turn a heavy
negotiation into an inspiring team effort. To find real solutions to
negotiation stalemates, think creatively about all the aspects of the
project. You may find that there is more than one solution to differing
opinions.
■ Do not make it personal. Always focus on what is good for the project. If
personal considerations enter into the discussion, reframe the
conversation by bringing up objective facts.
■ Seek a win-win outcome. Finally, consider what it will take for the other
side to be satisfied. Then, try to identify a way to ensure you are satisfied
as well. There will be times when one party may have to compromise more
than the other, but a mutually beneficial agreement (an agreement that
benefits all parties involved) should always be the goal. The next reading
will cover strategies for achieving mutually beneficial agreements with
stakeholders.
➢ Achieving a Win-Win Outcome
○ In the last reading, you learned about effective ways to negotiate a project’s
scope with stakeholders. The goal when negotiating with stakeholders should
always be achieving a win-win outcome, or a mutually beneficial agreement. This
is an agreement that benefits all parties involved. Mutually beneficial agreements
aren’t only for internal stakeholders, though. They are an important part of the
process for negotiating with vendors, contractors, suppliers, and more.
○ Best practices for reaching a mutually beneficial agreement
■ Share information. Sometimes in negotiations, one or both parties might
think they need to withhold information in order to not give too much
away. This isn’t very effective, though. It is best to strive for open lines of
communication, where each party shares their worries and preferences.
For instance, if your team’s last supplier provided you with low quality
products, you might voice this as a concern so your expectations around
quality are clear.
■ Ask questions and listen actively to responses. Just like you shared your
concerns and expectations, you can ask the other party questions to
clarify what their concerns and expectations are. That way, both parties
will have shared all the necessary information to achieve a mutually
beneficial agreement.
■ Propose multiple options whenever possible. In negotiations, presenting
only one option or solution can set you up for failure because the other
person might think your first offer is the only one. If the other party rejects
all of your proposals, ask them to communicate which one they like best,
as that may point you in the direction of finding a solution that works for
everyone.
➢ Stanton: Managing Scope Changes with Stakeholders
○ Hi. I'm Stanton, and I'm a Program Manager at YouTube. A Program Manager at
YouTube basically works on a lot of different projects but puts them all together into a
program that can help people understand what's going on at any given time—whether
that's development or product requirements or testing—all that needs to come together
for a project to work well. A scope change can happen at any time, and I've found that
often happens when you don't want it to happen—usually right before a launch. This is a
project that I was working on at a startup before I came to YouTube. We were
implementing a new app that had to do with body weight percentages. Managing
stakeholders is really important as a program manager because the stakeholders might
not always know what's going on. In this case, with our CEO, he was really focused on
getting us to launch, thinking about all the PR and the marketing and everything that he
was going to announce once everything went live. He saw that specific thing with the
graphs and really wanted it changed. This is something that happens a lot. You can get a
requirements' change at the very last minute. You kind of find some ways to make sure
that your client or stakeholders are still happy with what you can produce. In this case,
what we ended up doing is we went back to our developers, we got an estimate for how
long they thought making that change would actually take, and that actually brought us
way beyond the timelines that we had in mind. So we came up with a few different
proposals, and what ended up happening was because the launch date was set, there
was no way we'd be able to make all the changes that he wanted in time for launch. So
instead, we negotiated and said, "Hey, we'll have it this way at launch, but based on the
estimates that we received, we'll be able to get this done in another two weeks, and we'll
just do another release after that. It shouldn't be a big deal. It will just be a change after
the initial launch." When you're dealing with stakeholders, there's always going to be
some things that they want to get done more than other things. When you're managing
scope, especially if something last-minute comes along, you can kind of try to stack rank
it within that priority level. The one thing I would also add and caution about too is, you
can't get anything for free, so if you do have a change in scope, you need to make sure to
go back and look at that priority and see what actually gets pushed out because of the
new thing getting brought in. They come to you because you're a project manager or a
program manager. You understand all the things that are happening on the ground, and
I think that's the power that you have in this role.
➢ Applying Influence in Negotiations
○ So far, you've identified mutual benefits and their impacts to scope, timeline, and
budget. In this lesson, you'll learn how to apply influence and constructive power
to stakeholder negotiations. Then, you'll use this knowledge to identify
stakeholders who'd be helpful in supporting your position in upcoming
negotiations. We talked earlier about how the ability to influence is such a key
element of effective project management. You might remember an earlier lesson
where we covered four steps to effective influencing. Dr. Jay Conger lists these
four steps to effectively influence: establish credibility, frame for common
ground, provide evidence and connect emotionally. One way to apply all four of
these steps is to form a coalition. A coalition is a temporary alliance or
partnering of individuals or groups in order to achieve a common purpose or to
engage in a joint activity. When two or more people advocate together for an
idea, they're able to exert more influence than if they attempted to act alone.
Forming a coalition with the right group of people is a powerful and effective
negotiation technique. For example, think about some of the key stakeholders
you identified earlier from the Sauce and Spoon project. Which ones could you
form a coalition with to help you negotiate one of the out-of-scope items that was
requested? Creating a coalition boosts your credibility by involving others who
support your goal. The people in your coalition can help you find common ground
and provide evidence. Plus, you can connect emotionally by including someone
who either has a positive relationship with the stakeholder or understands the
stakeholder and the goal well enough to make a connection. An effective coalition
includes people with the right mix of influence or power and interest. In other
words, identify people who can help you achieve your goal through their vested
interest and expertise on the subject of your project. You'll also want to balance
your coalition with people who have a high level of power in your organization to
help influence and get things done. A stakeholder analysis is a useful tool to help
guide coalition-building. Once you've decided who's a good fit for your coalition,
reach out to them and ask for their support. A good way to do this is through a
well-crafted email, but you could also ask in person or with a phone call,
whichever method you think is most appropriate. When you make your request,
clearly state the issue you're attempting to resolve, explain which aspect of the
project is being negotiated. Then, ask if they might consider supporting your
position or solution and state what that is. And of course, refer to that person's
sources of power or interest you identified. For example, if you're negotiating the
timing of the project, you might say something like, "The timing of the launch will
affect business hours, and your experience managing restaurant projects year-
round could be helpful in explaining why this factor needs to be reconsidered."
This will let them know that you value them, why it impacts them, and why you
think they can be of specific help to you.
○ Let's recap the main ideas. The ability to influence is a big part of project
management. There are four steps to effective influencing, as identified by Dr. Jay
Conger: establish credibility, frame for common ground, provide evidence, and
connect emotionally. One way to gain influence is to form a coalition. A coalition
is a temporary alliance or partnering of groups in order to achieve a common
purpose or to engage in a joint activity. An effective coalition includes people with
the right mix of power and interest. You will want to play to those strengths when
forming a coalition and influencing members of the coalition. Now, you've
prepared for future negotiations.
➢ Activity: Draft an Influential Email
○ In this activity, you will apply your knowledge of power and influence to write an
email to selected stakeholders asking them to be part of your coalition during
project negotiations. Remember, a coalition is a temporary alliance or partnering
of individuals or groups in order to achieve a common purpose or to engage in a
joint activity.
○ Scenario: Omar, the owner of Sauce & Spoon, has requested that Peta expand the
tablet rollout to include all dining sections, not just the bar. Deanna expects Peta to do
what she can to accommodate an expansion, but Peta feels it is outside the scope of the
project. However, because Omar is the owner and a senior stakeholder, Peta decides to
get input from other team members. She hopes to identify at least two members who will
support her position of keeping the rollout confined to the bar area. Peta meets with
Gilly, Alex, Larissa, Zane, Seydou, and Carter to discuss the pros and cons of expanding
the tablet rollout.
○ Step-by-Step Instructions
■ Step 2: Access the Supporting Materials
○ Email Exchange: Stakeholder Intro

○ Meeting: Identify Mutual Benefits
■ Step 3: Review the Supporting Materials. Make note of the following
details:
● Each person’s involvement with the project
● Their stated position on the expansion
● Any mutual benefits that could result from keeping the tablet
rollout confined to the bar area (remember, a mutual benefit is
when all parties involved gain some kind of value or advantage)
■ Step 4: Identify one person to join your coalition. When choosing a
potential supporter, consider how much power and influence they have.
Your coalition must have enough power and influence to help you
convince two senior stakeholders - Deanna, the Director of Operations,
and Omar, the owner of Sauce & Spoon - that expanding the rollout is not
a good idea.
■ Step 5: Write an email to your potential supporter. Make sure that your
email has a subject line, greeting and introduction, body, conclusion, and
closing. Your email should also include the following:
● A short summary of Omar’s request to expand the rollout
● At least two reasons why expanding the rollout may be unwise
● A request to help you convince Omar and Deanna to stick with the
original plan and limit the rollout to the bar area.
■ Step 6: Apply Conger’s four steps of effective influencing:
○ Establish credibility
○ Frame for common ground
○ Provide evidence
○ Connect emotionally
● When planning your influencing approach for your email, consider
your audience, their involvement in the project, and their thoughts
on the expansion. Think about how an expanded test launch might
affect them, as well as any mutual benefits that could affect them.
Review: Initiating a Project

➢ Wrap-up
○ Let's take a moment to review what you've accomplished so far. You started by
analyzing documents, conducting research, and applying strategic thinking to
complete the project charter for Sauce and Spoon's tablet rollout project. Next,
you use the project charter as a tool to align the project's scope and goals among
key stakeholders. Then you completed your own stakeholder analysis and learned
how to use one when preparing for project negotiations. You also identified
aspects of a project that often require negotiation, along with aspects that
provide benefits that could support a mutually beneficial agreement that works
for all stakeholders. Finally, you applied your knowledge of power and interest to
identify people to be part of a coalition aimed at persuading stakeholders to a
certain viewpoint. Defining and getting stakeholders aligned with the details,
negotiating project scope and goals, and being able to effectively influence others
are super important to getting off to a successful start in any project. It's here in
the beginning that you want to get clear on what you're setting out to
accomplish with the project. That way, you'll be able to accurately track the
project's progress and feel confident you're working within the timeframe and
budget allowed. Being able to practice these concepts, create project
documentation, and apply this knowledge will help you prepare for job interviews
and become a great project manager. Coming up next, you'll continue to learn
from Peta in her role as project manager for Sauce and Spoon. In the upcoming
activities, you'll take the work you've done here and move into the planning phase
of the project to build out a project plan with tasks and milestones.
Building Out a Project Plan

You will examine project documentation, conduct online research, and analyze key conversations
to identify tasks and milestones and then document and prioritize them in a project plan. You
will also demonstrate effective communication techniques for making accurate time estimates
for project tasks.
Learning Objectives
● Examine project documentation, conduct online research, and analyze key
conversations to identify tasks for a project.
● Document, prioritize, and organize project tasks and milestones in a project plan.
● Apply different techniques for determining time estimates and add confidence
ratings.
● Recognize effective strategies for negotiating with empathy to develop accurate
time estimates.
Identifying Tasks and Milestones

➢ Introduction: Building out a Project Plan
○ So far, you should have completed a project charter for Sauce and Spoon's tablet
rollout. The project charter helps you organize vital project information, create a
framework for the work that needs to be done, and communicate those details to
the necessary people. Once the project charter is created and confirmed, you'll
use it to start the project planning stage. In the upcoming activities, we'll be
progressing from the initiation phase of the project life cycle to the planning
phase. Here, you'll put your knowledge and skills to work on a project plan, which
is the central artifact a project manager builds during the planning phase. Most
projects capture requirements in this artifact. The project plan you build for Sauce
and Spoon will be a critical part of your project management portfolio. It will
demonstrate your ability to break a large project into a set of achievable, smaller
tasks.
○ Before we get started, let's review the project scenario. Sauce and Spoon is a
small but growing chain of restaurants with five locations. They've hired Peta as
their first in-house project manager to launch the pilot of tabletop tablet menus at
two of their locations. Throughout the course, you'll observe Peta as she works to
complete this project in-scope, on time, and within budget. You'll create project
management documents based on the scenario, just as you would if you were the
project manager. As you work through these materials, you may want to take
notes about project details in order to complete some of the activities. The
project management documents you create will help you practice your skills by
applying them to a real-world scenario. These documents will also provide you
with a portfolio to speak to during a future job interview. In the next group of
activities, you'll analyze conversations, emails, and other forms of documentation
to build out a project plan. As you continue on, you'll identify tasks and
milestones within the Sauce and Spoon tablet rollout. You'll also demonstrate
effective communication techniques, like asking the right questions and
practicing empathy, which will help you make accurate time estimates for each
task.
➢ Identifying Project Tasks: Analyzing Documentation
○ In this lesson, you'll learn to analyze project documentation, including documents
from previous projects, to identify tasks for a new project. This documentation
includes project charters, emails, and old project plans which a business may have
available when you join a new organization or switch to a new project. Then, in
the upcoming activity, you'll begin building the project plan for Sauce and
Spoon's tablet rollout by adding project tasks to a spreadsheet that will serve as
your project plan. It’s recommended that you use the provided project plan
template to start your document, but you're also welcome to create your own
spreadsheet or use your preferred project management software.
○ First, we'll review the purpose and function of a project plan. A project plan is
useful for any project, big or small, since it helps you document the scope,
tasks, milestones, budget, and overall activities in order to keep the project on
track. At the center of the project plan is the project schedule. The schedule is
your guide for making time estimates for project tasks, determining
milestones, and monitoring the overall progress of the project. One of your
main jobs as a project manager is to identify all of the project tasks, estimate how
much time each task will take, and track each task's progress. So how do you go
about adding tasks and milestones to the plan for the very first time? The first
thing you should do is review the goals and deliverables in the project charter.
Then, make a list of all the items that have tasks or milestones associated with
them. As a reminder, milestones are important points within the schedule that
indicate progress. They usually signify the completion of a deliverable or phase of
the project. And project tasks refer to activities that need to be accomplished
within a set period of time. They're assigned to different members of the team
according to each person's role and skills.
○ In order to reach a milestone, you and your team must complete certain tasks. For
example, one of the deliverables of the Sauce and Spoon project is promoting
the new tablet menus with table signs and email blasts. In this instance, a
milestone could be the completion of this deliverable, which would include all of
the tasks that are required for getting sign offs on the final versions of the
marketing materials and confirming the dates of the email blasts. Some of these
tasks would include writing multiple drafts of the different marketing materials,
generating an email list, and programming the emails to be sent on the correct dates.
For each deliverable, ask yourself: What steps do we need to take in order to
achieve this? The steps will become the individual tasks that need to be
completed.
○ Let's turn our attention to another deliverable for Sauce and Spoon: the
implementation of a post-dining survey to assess customer satisfaction. What
steps do you need to take in order to achieve this deliverable? You might need to
assign a team member to develop a survey. You'll also need to determine how you'll
deliver the survey and create a process for carrying it out. These are just a couple of
examples of the many tasks you'll need to complete in order to achieve the
deliverable. It's your job to help uncover the rest of the tasks.
○ How do you uncover more tasks? In addition to the project charter, there are
other common forms of documentation that can help you identify tasks. For
example, you might ask your stakeholders or colleagues to share emails or an
older project plan for a similar project. Let's discuss how these might be useful as
you build your list of tasks. Emails that relate to the project can provide lots of helpful
information for you to pull tasks from. Since so much communication in the
workplace happens over email, ask to have relevant emails that contain
discussions about the project's details forwarded to you. These emails can help
you uncover tasks, and they can also help you identify team members to connect
with further if you have additional questions.
○ It's also helpful to review an older project plan for a similar initiative to find out
what kind of tasks were included. For example, if you are a project manager
tasked with launching a new product, you might ask a colleague with experience
launching other products for the same company to share their project plan as an
example. Or, if your project includes some construction work, you might ask
colleagues about unrelated projects that also had construction components.
○ Previous project plans can provide helpful inspiration as you create your own list
of tasks. They can also help you identify possible task durations, subject matter
experts, and even suppliers that may be helpful to your project.
○ As you review project documentation, take note of information that suggests
other tasks your team will need to complete in order to execute on project
deliverables. During this process, ask yourself questions like: Is there a large task
being worked on by many people that could be broken into smaller tasks assigned
to individuals? Are there signals that imply prior tasks need to be completed first?
For example, a deliverable like "install tablets" might imply selecting a tablet
vendor as a prior task.

○ We've covered a lot in this video, so let's review. The project plan helps document
the scope, tasks, milestones, budget, and overall activities in order to keep the
project on track. To add tasks to your plan, search for useful information from
existing project documentation, such as the project charter, email threads, and
old project plans from a similar project. As you review project documentation,
take note of information that suggests additional tasks and milestones that your
team will need to complete in order to meet project deliverables. In the next
activity, you'll review the supporting materials to start building the Sauce and
Spoon project plan.
➢ Tips for Defining Project Tasks

○ The process of identifying project tasks and defining them is one that requires
practice. Breaking tasks down into workable parts is challenging because you
have to decide which tasks may require additional subtasks and which tasks do
not. For instance, if you are managing a cross-country move, you do not need to
break down the task of unloading boxes from the car into which box should be
moved first. However, you may need to break down the movers’ tasks into
smaller, more detailed steps. As you progress in your career, you will get better at
breaking tasks down. In the interim, here are some guidelines to help you improve
this very important project management skill.
Define project tasks in one or two sentences
○ When writing descriptions of project tasks, keep them to one or two sentences
long. If you find that a certain task description needs to be longer than one or two
sentences, this indicates that the task is complex and could be broken down into
smaller tasks or that it may need further clarification.
Look at project task dependencies

○ When looking at how you might break certain parts of the project down into
tasks, consider task dependencies, or what has to be completed or handed off
from one person to another before work on each task can begin. Identifying
dependencies can help you decide how much a task needs to be broken down. For
instance, if you are managing a project that includes an awards ceremony and one
of the tasks is to set up the stage, the dependencies for this task could include
getting estimates from an audiovisual (AV) contractor, procuring necessary
equipment, and constructing the stage backdrop.
Enlist help from team members

○ It is often helpful for your team to be involved in the task breakdown process. You
might have a meeting where you discuss each broad goal or major task with the
team. This way, team members can present varying perspectives as they work
together to break down tasks. For example, if someone on your team has had
experience on a similar project, they may suggest a certain task actually be broken
down into three different tasks.
Define project tasks by the amount of time they will take to complete
○ Defining project tasks by the amount of time they’re expected to take will reveal
any especially lengthy tasks. If a task is expected to take a long time, it could
indicate that there are additional subtasks that need to be defined. Identifying
tasks by time is helpful for scheduling other tasks or events around the longer
tasks. This strategy also helps you determine appropriate milestones, as
milestones are often the culmination of a series of tasks. Acknowledging the
completion of a large and lengthy task is also a great way to celebrate success,
learn from the process, and keep the project on track.
Identify project tasks by their “done” factors

○ Begin with the end in mind: What does it mean for the task to be considered
“done”? From there, you can work backwards to see if you’ve missed any steps
and identify checkpoints for completion along the way.
➢ Reflection: Analyzing a Project Charter

1. As a project manager starting a new project, one of your main responsibilities is to
identify all project tasks. Often, you need to analyze documentation, such as project
charters, emails, and old project plans, to identify tasks for your team. In this exercise,
you will review a project charter and list possible tasks.
2. Start by writing at least two strategies to identify and define tasks. For example, one
strategy is to review the deliverables in the project charter and ask yourself, “What steps
does the team need to take in order to achieve this?”
a. A good way to identify tasks would be to review correspondence and meeting transcripts
to identify what the deliverables for the project are. A good strategy for defining the
tasks is to think about all of the small details that are required for the deliverable to be
created and list them out.
3. Next, review the sample project charter:
Project Charter: Website Redesign for a Restaurant
Project Summary: Launch a website redesign that now features online ordering to
expand ordering options and increase revenue.
Goals of Project:
● Increase revenue by 15% in the first six months
● Increase visitor time on the website by 10% in the first three months
● Increase customer email collection by 50% in the first 12 months
● Expand online ordering to four third-party delivery platforms in the first three months
● Resolve all urgent technical issues reported by customers in the first three months
Deliverables:
● Digital photograph collection of food and business location
● Online content archive, including written content and existing graphics/media
● Online ordering embedded in the landing page
● Online ordering loyalty program
● Available on third-party delivery platforms (e.g., Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash, and
GrubHub)
● Staff training on new ordering process
Scope and Exclusion:
In-scope:
● New design of website
● Add new photos to website
● Add rewritten and new content to website
● Online ordering functionality and payment options
● Staff training
● Information and content for third-party delivery platforms
Out-of-scope:
● Social media management
● Rebranding of the company logo and colors
● Implementing online chat
● Online-only menu
Benefits and Costs
Benefits:
● New options for customers to order food

● Increase in sales through this new medium of online ordering
● Persuade more customers to purchase food with better quality photos and copy
● Increase search engine rankings with website improvements
● Grow email list from opt-ins to online promotions
● Increase online awareness through third-party delivery platforms
Costs:
● Website designer: $6,500
● Photographer: $1,000
● Staff training: $250
4. As a project manager overseeing the launch of the website redesign, use the strategies
outlined in question two and the charter above to write at least five tasks for the project.
➢ Activity: identify Project Tasks: Analyze Project Documents
○ Activity Overview: You will identify project tasks by reviewing project and company
documents. Then you will draft the project plan for Sauce & Spoon’s tabletop menu
tablets project.
○ Scenario: Peta, the new in-house project manager for Sauce & Spoon restaurants, has
finished drafting the project charter for their tabletop menu tablets project. Her next
step is to identify tasks to include in a project plan that will help her team reach the
project’s goals. To identify project tasks, Peta spends some time reviewing project
documentation for the current tablet project. She also examines the project plan from a
completed Sauce & Spoon project for information that could help the team complete
the tablet rollout.
● Project Charter
● Historical Project Plan
● Email Exchange: Tablet Logistics
■ Step 3: Make a list of 10 tasks.
● Review the project charter, historical project plan, and email exchange
and identify 10 tasks that might be required for the tablet rollout
project. Identify at least one task from each supporting document.
Remember that project tasks refer to activities that need to be
accomplished within a set period of time, which eventually lead to the
completion of a milestone.
● Then, add the tasks to the Task Brainstorm tab of your project plan in
the Task column.
● As you add your tasks, ask yourself the following Guiding Tips &
Questions:
○ Are there multiple tasks implied by a single sentence? E.g.,
“Launch a reservation system” implies that the team selected,
installed, tested, and then launched the reservation system.
○ Always ask yourself what decisions might need to be made
before an action is taken and what testing might need to be
done to verify the success of that action. These decisions and
test might also be considered tasks for the project plan.
■ Step 4: Save your work
○ What to Include in Your Response
■ At least 10 project tasks from the supporting materials (including at least
one task from each supporting document).
1. What are some resources you can consult to find tasks to add to a project plan?
a. Relevant work documents, like emails or meeting notes.
b. Project plans used in the past for similar projects.
c. The project charter
2. Which tasks might you identify from your Sauce & Spoon menu tablets project charter?
a. Install tablets in the bar areas at the Downtown and North restaurant locations
b. Implement a post-dinging survey to assess customer satisfaction
c. Train management, FOH staff, and BOH staff
3. Which tasks from the historical project plan could be helpful for the tablet project?
a. Create contracts and statements of work for vendors
b. Create a launch day plan: staffing, troubleshooting, etc.
c. Generate quotes and review costs
4. Which project tasks can you identify from the email exchange about tablet logistics?
a. Schedule an electrician
b. Connect the Sauce & Spoon marketing team with Terrific Tablets for branding
➢ Identifying Project Tasks: Conducting Online Research

○ By now, you should have analyzed existing project documentation to identify a
list of tasks related to the Sauce and Spoon tablet pilot. In this lesson, you’ll learn
a few tips for conducting online research, which is a helpful strategy for gathering
domain knowledge. Domain knowledge refers to knowledge of a specific
industry, topic, or activity. If you're unfamiliar with a new project's domain, then
analyzing supporting project documentation will help you broaden your
knowledge. There will be times throughout your career when you'll be new to an
organization or industry. You might be assigned to a project that's unlike
anything you've ever managed before, and that's okay. New challenges can be a
really exciting part of the job. So how do you identify tasks and monitor progress
for a project or industry that you're not familiar with?
○ Another key to success when working on an unfamiliar project is knowing where
to find useful information that can help you increase your domain knowledge.
Here's an example. Let's say you've been hired to manage projects in the private
banking industry. In order to successfully manage these projects, you'll need a
basic understanding of how private banking works. This includes things like how
clients open accounts, back office operations, and how trade confirmations are
verified. And, in the case of Sauce and Spoon, you'll need a base level
understanding of the restaurant industry, some of which you've already come
across during this course, like knowing about guest averages and table turn times.
Again, you don't need to be an expert on your project, but becoming more
familiar with different industries and types of projects is a valuable skill that
demonstrates your versatility. Having industry knowledge can also save you time
on future projects within that industry, since you won't have to ask as many
questions or do as much research. That said, if you're new to an industry or
organization, no one will expect you to have all the answers right away. One way
to help build up your domain knowledge when you get started with project
planning is through online research. Online research can help increase your
knowledge of industry terms, techniques, processes, and more, all of which can be
helpful as you embark on a new project. This allows you to read up on how other
organizations have managed similar projects. It's also an opportunity to draw
inspiration from their successes and to learn from their mistakes.
○ So what should you be aiming for as you do research for a given project? Let's go
over a few tips that can help you get started. First, try searching online for news
coverage of similar projects at other companies. For example, you might search
for news articles that focus on restaurant groups who've added tablet ordering
capabilities to their restaurant locations. Experiment with search terms like "menu
tablet news" or "restaurant tablet news" to find relevant news articles. As you
read, take notes on interesting findings. Did the company experience any
surprising outcomes following their product's launch? Did they come across any
unanticipated roadblocks? If so, make note of these, and decide if there are tasks
that you should add to your project in order to achieve similar results or to avoid
similar roadblocks. Identifying where similar successes or mistakes might play out
in your own project can help you uncover tasks that you may have otherwise
overlooked.
○ It's also helpful to search online for research on topics related to your project. For
example, you might search for phrases like "restaurant tablet research" or "digital
menu ordering." Adding search tags like "best practices" or "key takeaways" can
help streamline your search results. Then, you can review the relevant research for
information that might help inform your project planning.
○ You could also try researching similar projects in other industries. This can be
especially helpful when you're new to a project or industry. For example, even
though your project may center around tablet usage in a restaurant setting, you
can also learn about the installation process from research on tablet usage in
similar settings, like retail stores or coffee shops. The details will be different, but
similar projects in other industries can be a helpful source of ideas.
○ Once you've done some initial online research, review the list of tasks that you've
identified so far and research the specifics of executing that work. For example,
maybe one of the tasks on your list is choosing the tablet model that you'll
ultimately install in the restaurants. Are there any smaller subtasks your team will
need to complete to decide on a tablet model? Searching online can help to
uncover any additional tasks you'll need to account for.
○ Let's recap what we learned in this lesson. Online research can help you increase
your domain knowledge of industry terms, techniques, processes, and more.
When you conduct your online research, keep the following tips in mind:
■ Search for news articles about similar projects in other companies.
■ Research similar projects in other industries.
■ And finally, review your list of tasks and research the specifics of executing
that work.
Ready to get started? Head over to the next activity, where you'll perform online
research to identify more tasks and milestones for the Sauce and Spoon tablet
rollout.
➢ Share your Domain Knowledge
○ Domain knowledge refers to having specialized expertise in a specific industry,
topic, or activity.
■ What are 2-3 areas in which you consider yourself to have domain
knowledge?
■ What is one domain that you are more interested in learning about?
➢ Activity: Identify Project Tasks: Conduct Online Research
○ In this activity, you will conduct online research to identify additional tasks to add
to your project plan.
○ Scenario: Peta wants to identify more project tasks for the tablet rollout - but first, she
needs to expand her domain knowledge of the restaurant industry. Peta decides to
conduct online research on similar projects, which should help her identify additional
tasks. This research also allows Peta to draw inspiration from other projects, and to
learn from their successes and mistakes.
○ Step-by-step instructions:
■ Step 1: Access your draft.
■ Step 2: Conduct online research.
● Go online, and research projects like Sauce & Spoon’s menu tablet
rollout to identify more project tasks. You may want to search for:
○ News coverage of similar projects at other companies
○ Research on topics related to your project
○ Similar projects in other industries.
● To find the information you need, use keywords from the lessons
or the following list:
○ Restaurant tablet research
○ Restaurant tablet how to
○ Restaurant tablet ordering
○ Digital menu ordering
○ Menu tablet news
○ Menu tablet key takeaways
○ Restaurant tablet best practices
○ Restaurant tablet rollout project plan
○ Restaurant POS launch plan
○ Restaurant tablet implementation plan
■ Step 3: Add your research to the project plan. In your project plan draft,
add at least two online resources you found under the Additional
Resources tab. These could be articles, blogs, web pages, or something
else. Include the link, today’s date, and any notes in the corresponding
columns.
■ Step 4: Add tasks to the project plan. Identify two tasks you identified
through your online research that could be helpful for the Sauce & Spoon
project. Add them to the Task column in the Task Brainstorm tab in your
project plan draft.
■ At least two resources from your online research
■ 2 - 5 new tasks identified from your online research
1. How does domain knowledge help project managers with new projects?
a. Means they don’t need to know anything about an industry to work in it
b. Makes them experts in a given industry and types of projects in that industry
c. Provides information about a given industry and types of projects in that industry
d. Saves time on future projects within that industry

2. Imagine you come across the following information in your online research: “Our
restaurant keeps our devices safe by always locking them up at the end of service, and making
sure we keep track of them at all times.” What tasks could you create from this finding that
would help with the tablet rollout project. Select all that apply.
a. Run tests on the tablet software
b. Enable GPS location services on each tablet
c. Create a procedure for securing tablets at the end of the night (at the table or in a
safe)
d. Upgrade the restaurant’s security system
3. Imagine you come across the following information in your online research: “Tablets
increase customer confidence that their credit card information won’t be stolen when they
understand that transactions take place through a secure portal at the table.” What tasks
could you create from this finding that would help with the tablet rollout project? Select
all that apply.
a. Partner with a credit card company to offer discounts.
b. Create messaging about payment portal security to display on the tablets.
c. Encourage all customers to use cards even when seated at tables without tablets
d. Include payment security talking points in waitstaff training
➢ Identifying Project Tasks: Analyzing Key Conversations
○ In the last lesson, you learned some tips for conducting online research to help
improve your domain knowledge and discover tasks to add to your project plan. In
this lesson, you'll learn how to identify more tasks by analyzing key
conversations related to the project. The Sauce and Spoon project is fairly
complex and will result in a project plan with many tasks. Populating your plan with
a set of tasks can indicate to future employers that you're able to identify key areas of
work based on documentation, research, conversations, and more. It can also
demonstrate that you're able to synthesize these tasks into a single, organized
document, which is a critical part of project management. Reviewing project
documentation and researching your project online can help you identify tasks,
but that won't tell you everything you need to know. Discussions with other
people working on the project, from stakeholders to team members, can help you
uncover tasks that you're still missing or clarify the smaller subtasks.
○ Let's start with tips for identifying tasks through group conversations with
members of your project team. One way to discover more tasks is to hold a group
brainstorm session with team members who will likely work on those tasks. For
example, Peta might meet with the Sauce and Spoon project team to brainstorm
potential challenges that the waitstaff and guests might have with the tablets.
Discussing these as a group can help identify ideas for tasks that may have been
overlooked. Another way to discover tasks is to hold one-on-one conversations
with team members about tasks they'll likely be responsible for completing. For
example, you might have a discussion with a vendor who specializes in training
restaurant employees to determine how to prepare for the training, or you might
reach out to a graphic designer to discuss creating new marketing materials. Your
team, outside vendors, and company executives have specific expertise and job
experience that gives them a deeper understanding of the work required to complete
tasks or reach milestones. Through conversations with teammates, you might learn
that certain tasks are more complex than you assumed, or that you're missing a
key step of a given process. In this case, leverage the expertise of your teammates
to discover what you don't know and to fill in gaps in your list of tasks. In addition
to connecting with teammates to uncover project tasks, it may also be helpful to
consult with other people in your organization who are experts on given tasks.
Though these people may not be involved in your project, they may be able to
provide valuable expertise that can help you identify processes and fill in gaps.
○ Once you've connected with members of your project team and other experts in
your organization, examine your list of tasks. Are there still areas where you need
more information? If so, it may be helpful to have a conversation with your key
stakeholders to fill in any gaps. As we've discussed, senior stakeholders are often
busy with other aspects of their jobs, so you should be strategic about who to ask
for a conversation. Stakeholders who have high- or medium-level interest or
influence in the project are most likely to provide the information you need. Some
examples include stakeholders who are subject matter experts and those who are
directly affected by the outcome of the project, like your team's leadership. You
can refer back to your stakeholder analysis for help deciding who would be best to
connect with. Once you've identified which stakeholders would be most helpful,
make sure you're prepared by gathering as much information as possible ahead of
your conversation and outlining clear outstanding questions that you still need
answers to. During the conversation, present your research and your current list
of tasks and explain exactly how they can help you move forward. This will give
your stakeholder a clear picture of what you've accomplished so far and help
them to identify gaps or missing tasks that are required to achieve your goal.
Ample preparation helps ensure that you can get the information you need while
respecting the limited time of your stakeholders. Keep in mind that conversations
you have about project tasks will often contain more details and information than
you need to create a thorough list, but you may want to note some of this extra
information since it may be useful later in the project. Each task on your list
should be detailed enough that you'll be able to check in on progress and identify
problems early on, but not so detailed that you're endlessly revising your project
plan and burdening your team with the need to update you constantly on their
work. The right level of detail to include in your task list will vary from project to
project and team to team. Striking the right balance is a skill you'll develop over
the course of your career.
○ Let's do a quick recap. Discussions with other people working on the project can
help you uncover missing tasks or clarify smaller subtasks. Some ways to uncover
tasks include brainstorming with team members assigned to similar or related
tasks. Holding one-on-one conversations with team members about tasks,
consulting with other people in your organization who are experts on given tasks,
and having conversations with stakeholders. The right level of detail to include in
your task list will vary from project to project and team to team. As a project
manager, a key part of your role is identifying the right level of detail and then
synthesizing it into a clear, concise list of tasks in the project plan. In the
upcoming activity, you'll review the supporting materials to uncover more task
details and add them to the Sauce and Spoon project plan. Head to the activity to
get started, and then meet me in the next lesson.
➢ TYK: Identifying Tasks
1. As a project manager working on a new project, you need to identify potential tasks for
the team. For this project, there are many roles that require specific expertise and many
distinct tasks. Additionally, some team members will have similar tasks. You’d like to have
the team generate a full list of detailed tasks and get agreement on the tasks and
owners. What interaction should you have?
a. One-on-one conversations with team members.
b. Group brainstorm with the team.
c. Leadership check-in with key stakeholders.
d. Discussion with experts not on the team
2. As a project manager working on a new project, you need to select a graphic designer on
your team to work on a marketing campaign. You’re unsure of each designer’s
background and skill set. Which type of interaction would be best to learn more about
each teammate’s background and identify potential tasks?
c. Meeting with key stakeholders.
the team. For a deliverable, you need to create marketing materials, but your team’s
primary expertise is product development. Which type of interaction would be best to

identify marketing-related tasks.
the team. For this project, you plan to get input from the team’s leadership about tasks.
Which type of interaction would be best to identify tasks?
5. As a project manager, you’re going to meet with a stakeholder to discuss potential
project tasks. What are two best practices to prepare for the meeting?
a. Wait to gather task information so you can be more open minded during the meeting.
b. Schedule a pre-call before the official meeting.
c. Gather as much task information as possible before the meeting.
d. Outline clear questions that still need answers.
➢ Activity: Part 1: Identify Project Tasks from Key Conversations
○ Identify Project Tasks: Analyze Key Conversations: Peta is speaking to the project
team at Sauce & Spoon about their upcoming plans to implement tablets at two of the
restaurant locations. Help Peta identity project tasks based on these conversations.
■ Peta (P): We just had a project meeting and discussed needing to train
waitstaff on how to use the tablets. How does this typically get handled?
■ Seydou (S): We’ve found that the best strategy is to train some key staff
members at the location, and have them run the training.
■ P: I was under the impression that you would run the training.
■ S: We’ve found that having a third party vendor come in to do the training
hasn’t made for the best implementation. Waitstaff tends to resist
changing the way they interact with customers, and the tablet benefits
aren’t always obvious. If someone in-house does the training they’re more
likely to get on board.
■ P: So it sounds like we’ll have you train a small group of us, then we’ll
schedule a second training with all the staff at each location.
● Seydou identified that wait staff can be resistant to change and prefer
to learn from people they already trust.
■ Peta (P): I’m curious about an initiative your location tried last year. I heard
you tried something new with your wait staff that didn't quite work, and I
wanted to get your feedback. You tried piloting no tips at your location,
right? Can you tell me how that worked out?
■ Nia (N), GM, Waterfront location: I think the idea floating around the
restaurant industry is that no tipping is the future. The idea is to include
the tip in the price of the food, and restructure pay and incentives for the
entire staff based on that. We didn’t anticipate how the staff would react.
Half our wait staff quit. Part of the issue was that they felt they could
make more elsewhere because of the restructured pay. But part of it was
our fault, too. We didn’t get wait staff buy-in before we rolled it out. They
felt we brought this new initiative - something that directly affected their
pay - without telling them, and they didn’t like it.
■ P: So, the bottom line is, if you’re implementing something that could
affect wait staff tips, get their buy-in first, correct?
■ N: Absolutely. And have it come from a GM. Have a staff meeting, or
smaller team meetings, and keep communicating.
● Nia is concerned that the tablets might impact tips and suggests GMs at
each location should tell their teams about the project.
■ Peta (P): There's something I could use your help with since I know you’ve
been the GM for a while and the staff really respect you. We need to make
sure to get the wait staff on board with the tablets before they start using
them.
■ Gilly (G), GM, North: Yes, especially after the disaster last year after the
Waterfront location tried rolling out no tipping. I was already planning on
having a meeting to update the staff. I’m excited about the tablets, so
hopefully I’ll be able to convince them. If not, I know their concerns and
fears, and can help mitigate them. I was a waitress once.
■ P: Seydou also mentioned that some of us would get trained, and then we
could train the staff.
■ G: That sounds like a good plan. Be sure to coordinate with Alex about
scheduling a training for the Downtown location. I think we should also
have a test run after we train the staff. Take a Sunday morning, invite
friends and family, and mimic a full service. Then we can test the training,
and test the tablets to see if there are any issues for when we fully launch.
● Gilly recommends testing out the tablets with friends and family who are
unlikely to get upset if there are problems.
➢ Activity: Part 2: Identify Project Tasks from Key Conversations

○ Scenario: AFter conducting some online research about restaurant tablets, Peta calls
Seydou and Gilly to get a better understanding of project tasks. She also discusses a past
Sauce & Spoon initiative with Nia, the general manager of the Waterfront location. This
conversation helps Peta understand the potential impact of the tablet project on the
waitstaff.
■ Step 2: Access the Supporting Materials.
■ Step 3: Add tasks to the project plan. Add four new tasks to the Task
Brainstorm tab of your project plan based on the conversation transcripts.
Any tasks that were identified in Part 1:Analyze key conversations can be
added here.
■ The four tasks identified from the phone conversation transcripts (at least
one task per conversation)
➢ Ordering Tasks and Identifying Milestones
○ So far you've identified and added tasks to your project plan. You've gathered
information from relevant project documentation, online research, and other
people on the project team. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to order your task list
and share several techniques for identifying milestones. Maybe you've already
identified a few milestones on your own. These techniques will be helpful to keep
in mind when you're working through the activity after this lesson.
○ Let's start with ordering your task list. By now, you should have a long list of
project tasks. To finalize the list, review what you have so far. Check for any
remaining larger tasks that could still be broken down into smaller subtasks, and
add those tasks to your list. When you think you've listed all the necessary project
tasks in your project plan, the next step is to arrange the tasks in the order that
they need to be completed. Determining the proper task order will help you
assign start and end dates for each task. When determining priority, first consider
the basic order of operations. In other words, what is the natural sequence of
tasks? Are there any dependencies or prerequisites? For example, you can't train
staff on how to use the tablets before they've been installed and tested.
○ To help you order tasks, you can have a conversation with your team to uncover
dependencies or prerequisites from each person who owns a task. You might ask
each person what needs to happen before they can start their work. Similarly, you
can search the internet for information with terms such as "prerequisites for
launching new hardware." After you've thought through the order, adjust the
tasks in your project plan to reflect this. To do this, simply rearrange the
spreadsheet rows to set the order for your tasks. For example, the task of
researching different models of menu tablets needs to happen before the task of
signing a contract with the menu tablet supplier. Makes sense, right? You
probably wouldn't want to sign a contract with the supplier before you'd
researched every possible option.
○ Once your tasks are in order, you'll begin identifying milestones. Remember that
milestones are important points within the project schedule that indicate
progress. Milestones usually signify the completion of the deliverable or phase of
the project. To determine milestones within your list of tasks, identify points in
the project plan where you and your team can evaluate the work completed so
far. For example, if there are multiple tasks related to menu tablet installation, a
milestone might be the first internal test run of the tablet's ordering capabilities.
These types of milestones may be the same as some of the deliverables you listed
earlier. Another way to determine milestones is to identify important tasks that
your stakeholders have a particular interest in. To do this, review your notes from
previous conversations with stakeholders, and identify tasks that stakeholders
seemed eager to know more about or wanted to review when complete. If your
stakeholder has a high interest in a given task or point in the project, label that
task as a milestone. For example, one of the Sauce and Spoon stakeholders
might be interested in knowing when a tablet supplier has been selected since
that decision will impact the budget.
○ As you review your list, you should also identify tasks that carry a high risk or
signal the completion of a phase or major task. These tasks are often considered
milestones because they have a major impact on the project's overall progress. For
example, the first successful test run of the menu tablet's ordering capabilities
might be considered a milestone.
○ Let's review. Once you've listed all of the necessary tasks in your project plan,
you'll need to rearrange the tasks in the order in which your team needs to
complete them. It's also important to consider the natural sequence of tasks, as
well as the dependencies or prerequisites for each task. Once your tasks are in
order, you'll need to identify milestones. When determining milestones, it's
crucial to identify the points in the project plan where you can evaluate the work
completed so far, identify the tasks that stakeholders have a particular interest in,
and identify tasks that carry a high risk or signal the completion of a phase or
major task.
○ Ready to get back into your project plan? Head to the next activity to reorder your
list of project tasks and identify your project milestones. Then, head to the next
lesson where you will learn about adding time estimates to each task.
What are techniques to identify milestones?

★ Identify points in the project plan where you and your team can evaluate the work
completed so far. These types of milestones may be the same as some of your
deliverables.
★ Identify tasks that signal the completion of a project phase or major task. You may
want to consider these tasks as a milestone because they have a major impact on the
project’s overall progress.
★ Identify important tasks that your stakeholders have a particular interest in. To do
this, review your notes from previous conversations with stakeholders. Identify tasks
that stakeholders were eager to know more about or wanted to review when complete.
★ Identify tasks that carry a high risk. You may want to identify tasks with high risk,
such as a test, as a milestone.
➢ Activity: Order Tasks and MIlestones
○ In this activity, you will apply what you have learned about assessing the tasks in
your project plan, ordering them, and identifying milestones. At the end of this
activity, you will have a partially completed project plan.
○ Scenario: Now that Peta has identified the tasks associated with the tablet project, the
next step is to organize those tasks and determine milestones. A milestone is an
important point within the project schedule that indicates progress. It usually signifies
the completion of a deliverable or phase of a project.
○ Step-by-step Assignment Instructions:
■ Step 2: Group related tasks. Under the Task Brainstorm tab in your
project plan draft, update the Task column by grouping tasks that are
related to each other. For example, researching tablet features, comparing
tablet pricing, and confirming compatible operating systems are all tasks
related to choosing a tablet vendor.
● In addition, pay attention to dependencies, arranging tasks in the
order they need to be completed. For example, if one of your tasks
is training waitstaff to use the tablets, a dependency might be
scheduling a staff meeting first to introduce the concept of the
tablets to the staff. In this case, you would want to order the staff
meeting first, then the wait staff training.
● As you group and order the tasks, consider the following Guiding
Questions:
○ Which tasks are related to achieving the same deliverable
or goal?
○ What is the natural sequence of tasks?
○ Are there any dependencies or prerequisites?

● You should already have 8-12 tasks in your list from previous
activities.
■ Step 3: Identify Milestones. Remember, a milestone is an important point
within the project schedule that indicates progress and usually signifies
the completion of a deliverable or goal.
● As you identify your milestones, consider the following Guiding
Questions:
○ Are there points in the project plan where you and your
team can evaluate the work completed so far?
○ Can you identify important tasks that your stakeholders
have a particular interest in?
○ Can you identify tasks that carry a high risk or signal the
completion of a phase or major accomplishment?
● For example, a single task might be “Integrate tablets with POS
software.” Completing this task could signal the completion of a
phase if it requires testing and carries high risk. In this case, the
task would also qualify as a milestone.
● Or, you may have several related tasks, for example, around
training. These could include: manager training, waitstaff training,
training schedule, and having the devices available for training. In
this case, you might identify “Complete training” as a milestone.
Similarly, there may be a number of tasks around having the
tablets installed in the restaurants, so “Complete tablet
installation” could be another milestone.
■ Step 4: Add milestones. Add at least three milestones to your list.
○ Before submitting your project plan, check it to make sure it meets the following
criteria:
■ At least 3 milestones have been identified (3 points)
■ Related tasks are listed for at least two milestones (2 points)
Making Accurate Time Estimates

➢ Time Estimation: Asking the Right Questions
○ In the last few lessons, you learned how to identify project tasks and milestones
by analyzing project documents, conducting online research, and having
conversations with teammates, stakeholders, and subject matter experts. Now,
we'll review some strategies for getting accurate time estimates for your tasks
and milestones. Then, in the upcoming activities, you'll analyze supporting
materials and apply strategic thinking to get estimates for the Sauce and Spoon
tablet project.
○ Time estimation is a prediction of the total amount of time required to
complete a task. Providing time estimates for each task gives you a better sense
of the overall project timeline in relation to individual deadlines and milestones.
Knowing the estimated duration of a task also lets you easily track its progress so
you can recognize if the task is likely to go over the estimated time. That way,
you'll be better able to project the timeline and quickly make any necessary
adjustments. As mentioned earlier, you won't necessarily be an expert on the
projects you manage initially. On top of reviewing project documentation and
doing some research, you'll also need the help of your team and other subject
matter experts to fill in some of the details and provide input.
○ Asking the right questions can help your experts get to the most accurate time
estimates possible.
○ Let's go over some strategies for getting accurate time estimates from your task
experts.
■ First, check their understanding of the task. Ask the expert to explain all
the detailed steps involved in the task. You won't include every detail in
the project plan, but by having the expert do this, you're getting them to
thoroughly think through the work involved before providing you with an
estimate.
■ Next, ask for estimates of the sub-steps and make note of them. Then add
them all up and compare that total with the experts estimate of the total
time needed to complete the task.
○ Another strategy is to discuss the assumptions the expert might be making when
they give you an estimate. For example, what equipment do they assume they'll
have? What kind of supplies? How many people do they assume are working on
the task? What are their assumptions about the skill and experience level of the
people working alongside them on the task?
○ Then ask the task expert to consider how likely it might be that all or some of
these assumptions might not work out and how that might impact their estimate.
○ One important detail to clarify here is the difference between an effort estimate
and a total duration estimate. An effort estimate only takes into account the
actual time it takes to complete a task. A total duration estimate accounts for the
effort, estimation, and any other factors, like getting approvals, prep work, testing, and
so on.
■ For example, imagine one of your tasks is designing and launching the
check out page for the tablet. The effort estimation for designing the page
might be eight hours, which is the amount of time it takes to mock up and
implement the design, but the total duration of the task includes testing,
feedback, and approvals needed to launch. That means that the total time
estimate for the check out page is actually more than eight hours.
○ Finally, another strategy for getting accurate estimates is to compare the expert's
estimates against the actual time spent on similar tasks in previous work. Ask the
expert to think about a similar project they worked on and describe what was
different and what was the same. Ask how long that project took and whether
thinking about that project changes their estimate all.
○ Time estimation is a prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a
task, providing estimates for each task gives you a big picture sense of the project
timeline in relation to individual deadlines and milestones, and asking the right
questions can help your experts get to the most accurate estimate possible. Try
checking their understanding of the task or ask for estimates of the sub-steps.
Discuss assumptions and compare the expert's estimates against the actual time
spent on similar tasks in previous work.
○ In the next lesson, you’ll learn another strategy for getting accurate time
estimates called the three point method. Then, in an upcoming activity, you'll add
time estimates to the Sauce and Spoon project plan.
What are some strategies for getting accurate time estimates from your task experts?
★ Compare the experts’ estimates against the actual time spent on similar
tasks in previous work.
○ Ask the expert to think about a similar project they worked on and
described what was different and what was the same. You can also
check an expert’s understanding of the task and ask for estimates of the
task’s substeps. Finally, discuss an expert’s assumptions and ask them
to consider how likely it is they will impact the estimate.
★ Ask for estimates of the substeps and make note of them.
★ Check their understanding of the task.
★ Discuss the assumptions the expert makes when they give you an
estimate.
➢ TYK: Time Estimation
1. What are the benefits of providing accurate time estimates for individual tasks?
a. They help you predict if a milestone may go over a deadline.
b. They enable you to avoid purchasing expensive project management software.
c. They help you accurately track task progress.
d. They establish a better sense of the overall project timeline.
2. As a project manager, you try to get an accurate time estimate for a task by
communicating with an expert. After considering their time estimate, you are
unsure if it includes all steps of a task, so you ask them to explain each step in
detail. What strategy for getting an accurate time estimate did you choose?
a. Check the expert’s understanding of the task.
communicating with an expert. After receiving their time estimate, you ask
questions like, “What equipment do you suppose you’ll have?” and “How many
people do you expect to work on the task?” What strategy for getting an
accurate time estimate did you choose?
a. Discuss the assumptions the expert may be making when they give an estimate.
communicating with an expert. You ask them to think back to a task that
resembles the one for this project and describe what was the same, what was
different, and if thinking about this previous task changes their estimate. What
strategy for getting an accurate time estimate did you choose?
a. Check the expert’s estimates against the actual time spent on similar tasks.
5. What type of time estimate considers how long it takes to complete a task, plus
the time it takes to test the product?
a. Total duration estimate
➢ Time Estimation: Three-Point Estimating
○ Three-point estimating is used to help determine the most realistic time
estimate for a task. It uses optimistic and pessimistic calculations, meaning
calculations based on the best-case and worst-case scenarios. A side benefit to
this strategy is that it takes into account potential risks that could impact not
only the task estimation, but other aspects of the project, like budget and
resources. Just as the name implies, in three-point estimating, there are three
parts of the estimate to examine.
○ Here's how it works. Each task receives three time estimates: optimistic, most
likely, and pessimistic. Each estimate indicates the projected amount of time a
task will take under that category and how likely any potential risks are to occur.
An "optimistic" estimate assumes the best-case scenario: Issues will not occur and
the task will be completed within the estimated time. In other words, it's how
long you hope the task will take, assuming everything goes as planned. For
example, if all the supplies needed for a task come in early and everything works
the way it's supposed to. A "most likely" estimate assumes some issues might
occur. Another way to think about a most likely estimate is that it is based on how
long the task usually takes under normal circumstances, like if the supplies arrive
at the expected time and you only need to make some slight adjustments before
everything eventually works the way it's supposed to. And finally, a "pessimistic"
estimate assumes that issues will definitely occur. This is where everything that
could go wrong does go wrong; for example, if the supplies are late or the order is
incorrect and nothing works the way it's supposed to. When determining
estimates using this technique, you'll need to ask your task experts questions or
conduct research that will help you understand best- and worst-case scenarios.
Then add these notes to the plan for each task.
○ Let's try out three-point estimating with an example from the Sauce and Spoon
project: the task of training the staff to use the tablets. You ask the person tasked
with arranging the staff training to give you a time estimate in each category and
to describe the conditions for each. The task expert tells you that the conditions
for an optimistic estimate would mean the vendor who is hired to do training is
well-qualified, has all the materials they need, and shows up on time to deliver the
training. All of the staff shows up on time and successfully completes the training
within the scheduled amount of time. All of the equipment works for the staff to
practice on. In this best-case scenario, your task expert estimates four hours—two
hours to conduct the training, and one hour each for setup and post-training
review on the originally-scheduled date. In a most likely scenario, the task expert
assumes that the vendor is qualified but might not have all the necessary
materials. They'll need to modify something or someone on the restaurant staff
will need to find some supplies, or the vendor might be new and need extra time
to prepare or take longer to deliver the training. Usually, a couple of staff
members can't attend or be on time, so extra training time would need to be
scheduled. There could also be some minor glitches with the equipment and the
training might need to be rescheduled for a different day later in the week. The
time estimate in this case is closer to six hours, and the date is likely to get
changed to two or three days later than originally planned. Under pessimistic
conditions, you could have a situation where the original training vendor quits
and a new vendor has to be hired. There could be several unexpected staff no-
shows or turnover right before the training. Or possibly the equipment doesn't
get delivered on time or doesn't work, so the training can't happen until the new
equipment arrives. In this case, the actual training time is still around six hours,
but the date has to be rescheduled for up to a full week later than originally
planned. When conducting your own research or having conversations with task
experts, be mindful of the three points so that you can determine the outcomes
of optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic timing. If someone quotes you a time
estimate, don't just take their word for it without understanding the context
they're estimating from. Think about it this way—if someone is being optimistic,
they might estimate that a task will only take them two days to complete. If you
go with that estimate and it ends up taking a whole week, your schedule is off.
But if someone is being pessimistic and quotes one month and the task only takes
a week, then you've got extra time in your schedule that could have gone toward
other tasks or led to an earlier product release. Always accounting for a worst-
case scenario might seem like a good thing, but it's actually wasteful if you
calculate most of your estimates this way. You want to examine the best- and
worst-case scenario timing and compare these with the most likely scenario. From
there, you can build in a buffer that accounts for risks that are likely but still keeps
the project progressing at an efficient rate.
○ Three-point estimating is a technique to help determine the most realistic time
estimate for a task. It uses optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic calculations.
Three-point estimating takes a little more work, but it gives you a clearer sense of
what's possible with each task so you can make a more realistic and accurate
estimate. There are even formulas to help you quantify these estimates that we
won't get into here, but we encourage you to check out in the course readings.
○ In the next activity, you'll review the supporting materials, where Peta has had
conversations with some of the Sauce and Spoon project task experts. Then you'll
come up with time estimates for the tasks they discussed and add them to your
project plan.
➢ The Three-point Estimating Technique
○ Estimating is a crucial aspect of project management. Project managers are
expected to accurately estimate essential elements of the project, such as costs,
scope, and time. There are many different estimation techniques that can be used,
depending on what aspect of the project needs an estimate. Estimation
techniques allow project managers to provide better forecasts to stakeholders
and clients and more accurately budget the funds and resources they need for
project success.
○ The three-point estimating technique can be used to help determine the most
realistic time estimate for a task. It uses optimistic, pessimistic, and most likely
calculations, meaning calculations are based on the “best case” (optimistic),
“worst case” (pessimistic), and most probable scenarios.
Three-point estimation
○ In this technique, each task receives three estimates: optimistic, most likely, and
pessimistic. Each of these three estimates is then associated with the
corresponding amount of time that task is expected to take.
The three-point estimating process

○ For each task, add a duration estimate in each category: optimistic, most likely,
and pessimistic. You can get these estimates by doing research on the task or by
asking a task expert. As a best practice, add notes about the conditions that
determine each estimate.
Determining a final estimate

○ To determine your final estimate—the estimate you’re going to use in your project
plan—examine the optimistic and pessimistic timing, then compare it with the
most likely timing. Consider the conditions that are likely to exist while the task is
being completed. Does it seem reasonable that the most likely time can be met? If
your team has never completed this task before, or if dependencies for the task
are unknown, then the final estimate should be closer to the pessimistic estimate.
If your team is familiar with the task and you’re able to confirm the conditions for
an optimistic estimate, then the final estimate can be closer to the optimistic
estimate. Alternatively, simply use the most likely estimate, especially if the
difference between the optimistic and pessimistic estimates is minimal (a few
hours or no more than one or two days). A good practice is to build in a “buffer”
that accounts for risks that are likely but still keeps the project progressing at an
efficient rate.
Three-point estimation formulas

○ Some projects will require you to calculate specific numeric values for task time
estimates. There are many online resources that provide more instruction for how
to calculate estimates, but we’ve provided two popular formulas: the Triangular
Distribution and the Beta (PERT) Distribution.
○ For each formula: E is Estimate (the final estimate you’ll assign to the task), o =
optimistic estimate, p = pessimistic estimate, and m = most likely estimate.
The Triangular Distribution

○ The weight of each estimate in this equation is identical, which means the most
likely case does not affect the final estimate more than the optimistic or
pessimistic estimates.
The Beta (PERT) Distribution

○ The Beta (PERT) distribution is a weighted average. The most likely estimate
receives a multiplier of four, while the overall divisor is increased to six.
○ This method takes into account that the most likely case is more likely to occur,
so it’s given more weight. The added weight is reflected in the multiplier of four.
○ Placing more weight on the most likely estimate increases the accuracy of the
estimate. In most cases, the Beta (PERT) Distribution has been proven to be more
accurate than three-point estimating and is often used to calculate both cost and
time estimates.
➢ Activity: Part 1: Identify Time Estimates for Your Project Plan: Help Peta determine time
estimates for the project by choosing the right follow-up questions.
○ Peta (P): We haven’t really talked about an estimate for shipping and receiving
these tablets.
○ Seydou (S): Once you’ve decided how many tablets you’ll need, I’ll put the order
in with Terrific Tablets and have them shipped from the warehouse.
○ P: And how long does that take? [Peta is trying to get a time estimate for delivery of
the tablets, so knowing the shipping time is the most important question to ask.]
○ S: Usually about a week.
○ P: Usually about a week? Could it take longer? [In order to have confidence in the
shipping time, it’s important for Peta to determine how much Seydou’s estimate might
be off by.]
○ S: It depends on if they have the stock, which they should.
○ P: What are the chances they wouldn’t have it in stock? [Peta should ask Seydou to
consider how likely it might be that his assumptions might not work out.]
○ S: Low. I just got an email that they’re releasing a new, upgraded version of the
tablet. They’re expected to arrive a few weeks before you’ll need them.
○ P: Have there been any past incidents with delayed shipping? [Peta should ask
Seydou to compare his estimates against similar tasks in previous work.]
➢ Activity: Part 2: Identify Time Estimates for Your Project Plan
○ Activity Overview: In this activity, you will identify time estimates and add them to your
project plan. To do this, you will review Peta’s conversation from the last activity, Part 1:
Identify time estimates for your project plan, and two additional conversations about
time estimates.
○ Scenario: Once Peta ordered project tasks and identified milestones, she called Seydou
to determine how long certain project tasks should take. The next step is to check in with
Deanna and follow up with Seydou to clarify some of her estimates. She also reviews
some project documentation, like emails and the historical project plan, to gather more
task time estimates.
● Meeting: Tablet Shipping Estimate
● Meeting: Menu and Coupons
● Meeting: Scheduling Software Installation
■ Step 3: Determine time estimates from the conversations. Review the
conversation transcript and determine likely time estimates that the tasks
being discussed will take. Will it take a few days? A week? Add your time
estimates under the Estimated Duration column on the Task Brainstorm
tab of your project plan. If you’ve identified a task from one of these
conversations that was not already included in your project plan, you can
add the new task and the time estimate to the Task Brainstorm tab.
■ Step 4: Add time estimates for other tasks in the project plan. Review
past project documentation and supporting materials. Then add time
estimates for 5 - 10 additional tasks to the project plan.
○ What to include in your response:
■ Time estimates for the new tasks referenced in the conversation
transcripts (there are at least six tasks discussed in the supporting

materials).
■ Time estimates for 5 - 10 previously listed tasks.
1. Peta spoke with Seydou about how long it would take for the tablets to arrive. What are
some risks that might affect the time estimate for shipping and receiving the tablets?
a. A shipping delay
b. Broken devices
2. Peta spoke with Deanna about how long it should take to finalize menu items and
coupon values. What are some risks that might affect the time estimate for uploading
menu and coupon content?
a. Carter wants to revamp the menu before he finalizes the menu and coupon information.
b. Carter’s schedule can be unpredictable.
3. Peta spoke with Seydou about how long it would take to integrate the tablets with Sauce
& Spoon’s POS system. What are some risks that might affect the time estimate around
POS integration?
a. Sauce & Spoon may not be running version 3.0 of their POS software.
b. Sauce & Spoon may need to be update their POS system
4. Based on the tablet shipping estimate transcript, what time estimate is appropriate for
the tablet shipping schedule?
a. 10 days
5. Based on the scheduling software installation transcript, what time estimate is
appropriate for the software installation schedule?
a. 3 days
➢ Time Estimation: Applying Confidence Level Ratings
○ Earlier, we discussed how to get accurate time estimates from your experts. In
this lesson, we'll discuss how to determine a confidence level rating for each of
your estimates. A confidence level rating indicates how confident you are in an
estimate's accuracy. Being able to share these ratings with stakeholders is
helpful because they indicate how likely it is that a task will be completed in the
amount of time estimated. Estimating is not a perfect science, so adding a
confidence level rating for a task allows you to address any uncertainty. In an
upcoming activity, you'll finish calculating your time estimates and add
confidence level ratings to your tasks in the Sauce and Spoon project plan.
○ A confidence level rating ranges from high, meaning you're very confident in your
estimate, to low, meaning you're not very confident in your estimate. Knowing
the confidence level of your estimate and adding notes about any risks or issues
that might affect the estimate can help you identify whether you should ask the
project team for their input. They might be able to point out the estimates or
tasks you should track more closely.

○ Additionally, if you notice that your confidence is low across a large percentage of
task estimates, you might want to communicate your uncertainty about the
project timeline to stakeholders. There are a few ways to determine a confidence
level rating. Using the three-point technique we just discussed is one way of
gaining confidence in your estimates. If you can show that you've considered the
best- and worst-case conditions for a task, then your confidence level rating for
that task's time estimate would be high, since you have a thorough understanding
of the task. Another way to determine a confidence rating is by polling your team
about the tasks they're assigned and coming to a consensus about your collective
confidence.
○ To do this, you could calculate their level of confidence as a percentage, which
means polling everyone on their estimates and calculating the average confidence
level. You might find that they're 90% confident, which would mean you have an
overall high confidence rating. Or maybe they're only 60% confident, which would
mean you have a medium confidence rating. Or you could define categories for
the team. For example, we've never done a project like this before, we've done
this once before, we've done this a handful of times, and we've done this a ton of
times already. Each category correlates to your confidence level. If they've never
done the project before or have only done it once, then the confidence rating for
the time estimate might be low.
○ Estimating is far from an exact science, particularly in project management when
there are so many unknowns. Implementing a system that accounts for those
unknowns and ensures an accurate picture of the project timeline means
everyone will be better off over the long term.
○ Let's review what we've covered. A confidence level rating indicates how
confident you are in an estimate's accuracy. You can determine confidence
ratings in a few ways, including polling your team on the tasks they're assigned to
or by defining categories. And remember, estimating is far from an exact science,
particularly in project management when there are so many unknowns.
Implementing a system that accounts for those unknowns and ensures an
accurate picture of project costs means everyone will be better off over the long
term. In the next activity, you'll review supporting materials and add confidence
level ratings to each of your time estimates. Coming up, we'll discuss effective
negotiation techniques to get even more accurate time estimates.
➢ Activity: Add Confidence Ratings
○ Activity Overview: You will assess the time estimates in your project plan and add
confidence ratings based on notes from a project team meeting.
○ Scenario: By now, Peta has added a number of tasks to the project plan and assigned
them time estimates. Now Peta wants to get a sense of how confident the team is that
those time estimates are accurate. This information will allow her to update the timeline
for completion and be fully prepared to launch the project.
■ Step 2: Access supporting materials.
● Meeting: Project Update
■ Step 3: Review the Supporting Materials. As you review, take notes on
the feedback Peta asks for on certain tasks, keeping in mind you will be
responsible for updating confidence ratings in the project plan. Make
note of details related to best-case and worst-case scenarios, and how
confident the team is with the task estimates discussed at the meeting. If
you identify any new tasks from this meeting that were not already
included in your project plan, you can add them to the Task column under
the Task Brainstorm tab of your project plan.
■ Step 4: Add three-point time estimates. Use the supporting materials
provided in this and previous activities to determine an Optimistic time
estimate, a Most Likely time estimate, and a Pessimistic time estimate for
the task. Add these estimates to the corresponding columns under the
Task Brainstorm tab in the project plan.
■ Step 5: Add confidence ratings. Add confidence ratings to at least four of
your tasks in the Confidence Ratings (H/M/L) column under the Task
Brainstorm tab.
■ Step 6: Add notes. Add notes to at least four tasks. Notes can include any
information on a task critical to time estimates or its completion. You can
pull them from the project team meeting notes or any previous supporting
material.
○ What to include in your response:
■ Three-point time estimates for at least four tasks in the project plan.
■ Confidence ratings for at least four tasks in the project plan.
■ Notes for at least four tasks in the project plan.
1. The meeting notes state that training will happen in two phases - one for managers and
one for staff. Which three point time estimates would you choose for fully training the
team (including planning, training the managers, and training the staff at each location)?
a. Optimistic: 10 days; Most likely: 14 days; Pessimistic: 21 days
2. Which pieces of information should Peta consider when determining the confidence
rating for the wiring time estimate?
a. The restaurant has attempted table wiring at least once before.

b. The team’s level of confidence in the time estimate.
c. The electrician is confident in the amount of time they need to complete the wiring.
3. The meeting notes state that Sauce & Spoon has never integrated tablet software with
their POS system before and may need to upgrade the system before starting the
integration. What confidence rating is appropriate for the POS system time estimates?
a. Low
4. The meeting notes state that the electrician could complete the wiring for both locations
in two business days (or 16 hours). Because the restaurants cannot close for a full day for
the upgrade, the team estimates four business days (two half days at each location) to
complete the wiring. Based on this information, what notes could you make to add
context for this task in the project plan?
a. “Notify GMs when their locations need to close for wiring”
b. “Check with electrician on whether mornings or afternoons work best with their
schedule”
➢ Time Estimation: Effective Time Estimate Negotiation
○ Now that you've added tasks, time estimates, and confidence ratings to your
project plan, let's prepare for upcoming negotiations concerning time estimates.
○ Peta has to negotiate with team members about some of the tasks that have low
confidence level ratings or that are estimated to take longer than she hoped.
You'll help by analyzing the supporting materials, recording notes, and identifying
some effective negotiation techniques.
○ Earlier, you applied some negotiation skills to discussions about the project
scope. Negotiation skills can also help you get accurate time and effort estimates,
but the skills you use and the approach you take will be a little different. In this
case, you're negotiating with a task expert, not a stakeholder. Your goal is to try
to determine an accurate time and effort estimate for a task, instead of
persuading them to agree with a certain outcome, you're trying to arrive at an
objectively accurate estimate together. On any project, you'll have to work with
people who have a tendency to over or underestimate time, costs or resources.
People don't do this intentionally. Usually they're just being optimistic or trying to
please you by providing what they think you want to hear rather than what's
realistic. Or sometimes they might be overly cautious and give you an extreme
estimate in case something doesn't go according to plan. In some situations,
using negotiation skills to get accurate time estimates might be critical to the
success of the project. There are lots of different negotiation techniques out
there, but let's focus on a few that are specific to negotiating a time estimate.
Focus on interests, not positions, present mutually beneficial options and insist
on objective criteria, if a task expert gives you a time estimate that's different
from what you hoped for. There are a few techniques you can use to try and reach
an estimate that works for both of you.
○ Let's start with the first technique, saying no without saying no. The idea behind
this technique is to get the other person to start working out an alternative
solution with you. Here's how. First, think about the ways we usually tell someone
no, that won't work. That's not going to happen. I can't do that. Or there's no
way. Statements like these can make the person you're communicating with feel
defensive, and shut down the conversation. Instead, ask open-ended questions
like, how would you like me to proceed? How can we solve this problem? And
what can I do to help? Questions like these invite the other person to collaborate
with you. This keeps the conversation focused on reaching a resolution that works
for both of you.
○ Let's explore the next technique. Focus on interests, not positions. Here, the goal
is not to win. Instead, try to identify the other person's interests, their basic
needs, wants, and motivations around completing a certain task. You might be
working with a task expert who cares deeply about completing the task with a
high degree of quality. But you're concerned that if you don't meet the deadline,
the quality of the work won't matter. You can ask if there are any areas of quality
they'd be willing to compromise on, that would shorten the schedule estimate,
but still allow them to complete the task to an acceptable degree.
○ A third technique is to present mutually beneficial options. We covered this a little
already, but here's how you can apply this concept when negotiating time
estimates. Imagine both you and your task expert want to complete the task as
quickly as possible. But the expert's time estimate is still longer than you'd like.
Asking some open-ended questions, like the ones listed earlier, can help you figure
out if there's a solution that will satisfy both of your goals. Maybe there's
information the expert is missing, or a resource that you could commit to finding
and supplying to make the estimate lower.
○ The last technique is to insist on using objective criteria to define a time estimate.
Objective criteria is based on neutral information like market value, research
findings, previously documented experience or laws and regulations. When you
use objective criteria, you're basing the agreement on known or shared principles.
The key is to agree in advance about which objective criteria to consult and then
to use the information to determine your estimates. You might have an expert
who insists on following their instincts when coming up with time estimates. If
you ask them in advance to provide clear, objective data that supports their
instincts, you can get them to arrive at a more accurate estimate.
○ Let's review what we've covered. There are many scenarios where negotiation
skills for a time estimate might be critical to the success of the project. A few
techniques that are specific to negotiating a time estimate are say no without
saying no, focus on interests, not positions, present mutually beneficial options
and insist on objective criteria. Now you have a few new negotiation techniques
for your project management toolbox.
As a project manager, a team member gives you a time estimate that’s different from
what you hoped for. You ask the team member to provide neutral information, such as
research findings, to support their estimation. Which time estimation negotiation
technique did you use?
Insist on objective criteria.
➢ Time Estimation: Negotiating with Empathy
○ Asking for time estimates or questioning why an aspect of the project is delayed
can be a difficult conversation. That's why practicing empathy is so important
when negotiating and when communicating in general. Empathy is the ability to
understand and feel what others are feeling. It's when you make the effort to
imagine yourself in the other person's position and experience things from their
perspective. Approaching a conversation with empathy can make the discussion
much easier. You've learned about how to bring empathy into project
management in general, including being present, listening, and asking questions.
In this lesson, we'll discuss how you can bring empathy to conversations about
task estimates and timelines. Asking questions about how long a task will take
could make some people feel insecure. They might feel like you don't trust them,
that you think they're not competent, that you believe you know more than they
do about their own work, and so on. Have you ever felt like someone didn't trust
you or questioned your ability to complete your work? Even when you're just
trying to get a clear understanding of a task you don't understand, asking
questions without empathy can leave team members with the sense that you're
micromanaging them. Micromanaging is when a manager too closely observes,
controls, or continuously reminds the people they're managing of the work
they've been assigned. This has a negative impact because it demonstrates the
manager's lack of trust and confidence in the people they oversee. There are
several ways you can bring empathy to your conversations. One way is to listen
with curiosity. Ask questions to demonstrate your interest in what people have to
say. Rather than making assumptions or suggestions, start the conversation with
a question. For example, you might ask the person how long a particular task took
them on a previous project, rather than suggesting a time frame to complete a
similar task. Another way to show empathy is to periodically repeat what you think
the other person said. Noticing you restate their message in your own words will
encourage them to confirm their intent and will ensure you understand what
they're communicating. It might also help them view the issues you're discussing
from a different perspective. You can also demonstrate empathy by trying to
connect with their experience. Let the person know that you understand that
making estimations can be difficult for anyone, yourself included. You might share
a time on a project when you struggled with making a time estimate for a task, or
misestimated it altogether. Make it clear that you know they want to do the best
job possible and you want to support them.
○ Practicing empathy also means you're able to recognize your own judgments.
Acknowledge to yourself if you're making internal judgments about the person
you're communicating with, like if you're having doubts about their work quality,
for example. Then find ways to view the situation more compassionately. Even if
you don't speak your judgments aloud, people are very good at reading body
language and facial expressions and interpreting the tone of others. Try to put
yourself in the other person's position and find out about any barriers they might
be facing. Another strategy for practicing empathy is recognizing buffering. A
team member might add a buffer to their time estimate for a task without
communicating why they added the buffer. Ask them up front if they've included
a buffer to account for holidays, sickness, childcare, or emergencies. This can
demonstrate your empathy for their situation and can also help you get a more
accurate estimate. Encourage them to open up about this extra buffer by assuring
them that you want an honest answer, even if it's not ideal. And finally, in order to
effectively employ all of these strategies for practicing empathy in your
conversations, you need to be able to fully focus on what the other person is
communicating. This means avoiding distractions. Putting your phone on silent,
not looking at phone notifications or texting, and closing your laptop are some
ways to show the person that you're giving them your undivided attention and
that what they're sharing is important to you.
○ Let's do a quick review. Empathy is the ability to understand and feel what others
are feeling. Some tips for bringing empathy to your conversations are: listen with
curiosity, repeat what you think you heard, connect with their experience,
recognize judgments, recognize buffering, and avoid distractions. Excellent.
Consider these tips for practicing empathy in the upcoming activity.
In addition to avoiding distractions, what are some ways to bring empathy to conversations?
★ Connect with people’s experience.
★ Repeat what you think you heard.
★ Recognize buffering.
★ Listen with curiosity.

★ Recognize judgements.
➢ Respond: Negotiating with Empathy

○ By asking the GM to describe a previous experience that was similar, the PM is
listening with curiosity.
○ By repeating what the GM has said in a slightly different way, the PM is showing
that he understands what the GM is communicating.
○ The PM is connecting with the GM’s experience by acknowledging something
similar and providing reassurance.
○ By recognizing his own judgments, the PM can avoid making assumptions about
the GM’s ability to complete the project.
○ By asking about the upcoming wedding, the PM is recognizing buffering in a way
that shows empathy and helps establish a more accurate timeline.
○ By deliberately stepping away from their laptops and phones, the GM and PM are
avoiding distractions.
➢ Torie: Practicing Empathy as a Program Manager: Hi. I'm Torie, and I'm an Education
Program Manager at Google. Specifically, I work on our digital literacy curriculum, called Applied
Digital Skills, that helps learners of all ages learn the practical digital skills needed for the jobs of
today and tomorrow. Empathy can be really important with project management because a lot
of times, you're dealing with a lot of different potential work styles and communication styles
with various members of the team and various stakeholders, so you have to learn how to
communicate with those different styles and potentially tailor your messaging to different
audiences. It's really important to be able to understand how different people may feel, how they
may like to be communicated to, so that you can ensure that you are communicating your
project goals and your impact in a very impactful way. So one example where I've had to practice
empathy as a program manager is when I was leading a project with about five different people
on the program team. We were running into some issues with some missed deadlines, actually. I
had to end up communicating with one of the project team members just to try to understand
what was going on, why were some of the deadlines being missed? Ultimately, we discovered that
there were some things personally that were going on that we ultimately ended up having to re-
shift some of our resources and get help from other teammates. So that's an example of just
trying to meet people where they are. Understand that there's lots of things outside of work that
are also going on, and sometimes you can adjust your timelines and your deadlines as needed or
get help from other team members along the way. When you are negotiating task estimates, I
think a really good thing to do right from the beginning is just ask a lot of questions. Just talk to
different people on the team. Maybe you're even new to the team and you want to get some
different experience from folks who've been on the team a little longer, and just try to figure out
if there are any examples of past projects that are similar to the one that you're leading. Try to
see if there are other projects that may be a little different but have a different timeline. I think
that can really help in the beginning. Just ask a lot of questions and collect as much data and
information as you can from the beginning.
➢ Module 2 Challenge
1. One of the deliverables in your project involves marketing your new product with email
blasts. Your team writes several drafts of the different marketing materials, generates an
email list, and programs the emails to be sent on the correct dates. Which of the
following represents a milestone in your project plan?
a. Targeted email lists are generated.
b. Emails are programmed to be sent on the correct dates.
c. Marketing emails are sent on scheduled dates.
d. Marketing materials are drafted.
2. What is the purpose of your project plan?
a. To keep your project on track
b. To document scope
c. To identify milestones
d. To determine tasks
3. You start a new job as a project manager in an industry that is unfamiliar to you. Which
of the following are examples of domain knowledge that you will need to have a basic
understanding of? Select all that apply.
a. Industry terms
b. Industry market performance
c. Industry processes
d. Industry competitors
4. You need to reach out to a high-influence stakeholder for help in identifying project tasks.
You gather as much information as possible and outline clear questions for the
stakeholder. Why is it important to complete this prep work before your conversation?
a. This preparation reveals the skill gaps within your team.
b. This preparation will answer your questions without having to meet with the stakeholder.
c. This preparation demonstrates your respect for your stakeholder’s limited time.
d. This preparation demonstrates your independence.
5. You have created an ordered list of tasks for your project plan. What is the next step for
identifying milestones?
a. Identify tasks that can be completed most quickly.
b. Identify alternative orderings for your list of tasks.
c. Identify points in the task lists where you can evaluate work completed so far.
d. Identify additional tasks for your project plan.
6. Which of the following may indicate a milestone for your project?

a. A task that involves the fewest dependencies.
b. A task that your team has the most experience with.
c. A task that has the highest confidence ratings.
d. A task that has a major impact on the project’s overall progress.
7. What term refers to a time estimate that only takes into account the actual time it takes
to complete a task?
a. Milestone estimate
b. Taskflow duration estimate
c. Effort estimate
d. Total duration estimate
8. Which of the measures involved in “three-point” time estimations express how long you
hope the task will take, assuming everything goes as planned?
a. Planning time estimates
b. Most likely time estimates
c. Optimistic time estimates
d. Milestone time estimates
9. Why is the three-point time estimating technique a good way to determine a confidence
rating for your time estimates?
a. It removes all uncertainty from your estimate.
b. It is a commonly used technique that everyone is familiar with.
c. It is the time estimating technique that involves input from the most people.
d. It ensures you have considered the best-case and worst-case conditions for a task.
10. When you ask questions of your team members without showing empathy, you can leave
them feeling too closely observed, controlled, or continuously reminded of the work they
have been assigned. What is the term that expresses this negative impact your team
members feel in this case?
a. Arguing
b. Micromanaging
c. Harassment
d. Justifying
Review: Building out a Project Plan

➢ Wrap-up
○ Great job making it to the end of this section. In this last series of activities, you
transitioned from the initiation phase of the project life cycle to the planning
phase, putting your knowledge and skills to work on a project plan, you analyzed
project documentation to improve your domain knowledge and identify project
tasks, and you uncovered more tasks by conducting online research and analyzing
key communications with the project team and task experts. Then you
determined accurate time estimates for each task by knowing which questions to
ask and practicing effective negotiation techniques, you added confidence level
ratings to your estimates by using the three-point estimating method, and you
learned how to demonstrate empathy in your conversations about task estimates.
The project plan you've built for Sauce and Spoon will be an important part of
your project management portfolio. It demonstrates your ability to break a large
project into a set of achievable, smaller tasks. You can also use your project plan
during an interview to discuss how you approach project management work. Up
next, we'll get ready to move into the execution stage of the Sauce and Spoon
tablet rollout project by creating a quality management plan.
Maintaining Quality
You will learn how to define and describe quality management standards and evaluate them against
those standards to ensure that the project is achieving the required level of quality. You will distinguish
evaluation questions from survey questions and recognize how to effectively share qualitative data. You
will also learn strategies to facilitate a productive retrospective by encouraging participation,
accountability, and positivity.
● Define and describe key quality management concepts, including quality
standards, evaluation questions, and evaluation indicators.
● Determine quality standards and evaluate against those standards to ensure that
the project is achieving the required level of quality.
● Discuss the surrey development process and distinguish between survey
questions and evaluation questions.
● Use a retrospective to identify areas of improvement.
● Develop effective stakeholder reports by applying storytelling strategies to
describe data.
● Discuss strategies to facilitate a productive retrospective by encouraging
participation, accountability, and positivity.
Developing a Quality Management Plan

➢ Introduction: Maintaining Quality
○ So far, you've completed a project charter and a project plan for the Sauce &
Spoon tablet roll out project. Coming up, we'll move from the planning phase of
the project life cycle to the execution phase. But before you can begin executing,
you'll need to make sure your project's quality management plan has been
established so you know you're delivering a project that meets your stakeholders'
expectations. In the upcoming lessons and activities, you'll practice defining
quality standards for your project. Then you'll evaluate how successfully the
project's standards are being met and present your findings to stakeholders.
You'll also create a retrospective document, which project managers use during
discussions about project progress, and any process improvements that need to
be made. Before we get started, let's review the project scenario for this course.
Sauce & Spoon is a small but growing chain of restaurants with five locations. They've
hired Peta as their first in-house project manager to launch the pilot of tablet menus at
two of their locations.
○ Over the next several lessons, you’ll learn helpful information you can use to
complete each activity and assessment, and we will go over tips that you can take
with you after you complete this course. By the time we're done, you'll
understand how to establish a list of quality standards for one aspect of the
Sauce & Spoon project. You'll also practice writing evaluation questions and
survey questions that will help you determine if the quality standards are being
met. And finally, you'll learn how to improve the process along the way and create
a retrospective document, which you'll be able to add to your portfolio of project
management documents.
➢ Key Quality Management Concepts
○ In this lesson, we'll review key quality management concepts and discuss in more
detail the importance and purpose of maintaining project quality.
○ A crucial part of project planning and executing includes implementing a quality
management plan and holding yourself to it throughout the project. Quality planning
refers to the process that the project manager or the team establishes and follows for
identifying and determining exactly which standards of quality are relevant to the
project as a whole and how to satisfy them. We can't just launch a project and
assume everything will be okay. That's why planning for quality with clearly-
defined standards, processes, and methods of evaluation is important. It helps
keep you focused on whether or not the project is progressing successfully and
alerts you to any adjustments that need to be made to keep the project on track.
Remember, as a project manager, you're responsible for the planning and
execution of the project, as well as for the successful completion of the project.
Quality planning works together with general project planning and aligns with the
overall project process. Project goals and success criteria for the Sauce and Spoon
tablet project will focus the details of a quality management plan on quality
standards, evaluation questions, and feedback surveys to ensure that the project
is delivering on quality and producing a desired outcome. After this lesson, you'll
practice project quality management by identifying quality standards for the
Sauce and Spoon tablet pilot.
○ There are many benefits of creating and maintaining quality management in a
project. Some of these benefits include delivering a quality product, decreasing
overhead, and increasing collaboration and ongoing reviews. Overhead is another
word for costs. Quality management helps decrease overhead by reducing the
amount of errors that would cost the organization money to fix. Quality
management processes ensure that the team is always learning and providing
feedback, which in turn ensures that the project is on track to achieve its
intended outcome.
○ In earlier courses, we covered the main concepts of quality management. Let’s do
a quick review here. The main concepts are quality planning, which we defined at
the beginning of this lesson; quality standards, which are the requirements,
specifications, or guidelines that could be used to ensure the materials, products,

processes, and services are fit for achieving a desired outcome; quality assurance, or
QA, which is a review process that evaluates whether your project is moving towards
delivering a high-quality service or product; and quality control, often known as QC.
Quality control refers to the techniques that are used to ensure quality standards are
maintained when a problem is identified. Here we'll focus on building quality
standards for the Sauce and Spoon project, but in many projects, all of these
concepts get built into an overarching quality management plan which
documents all the information needed to effectively manage quality throughout
the project life cycle. The quality management plan defines the policies,
processes, and criteria for project quality, as well as the roles and responsibilities
for carrying them out. Again, there are lots of different ways to develop and track
quality management for your project, but the benefits and main concepts that
make up quality management remain the same.
○ Let's review. Some of the benefits of quality management include delivering a
quality product, decreasing overhead, and increasing collaboration and review,
and the main concepts of quality management are quality planning, quality
standards, quality assurance, or QA, and quality control, or QC. Understanding
these benefits and concepts will help you ensure you deliver a project that meets
your stakeholders' expectations. Coming up, you'll apply your understanding of
quality management to develop quality standards for the Sauce and Spoon tablet
rollout.
■ Quality control ensures that you maintain quality standards when
problems arise with a product or service.
■ Which of the following are benefits of implementing quality management
in a project? Select all that apply.
● Delivering a quality product [by ensuring that progress is regularly
audited and problems are quickly identified]
● Decreasing costs [by helping your team to anticipate errors that can
lead to additional expenses]
● Increasing budget and resources
● Decreasing time to launch
● Increasing collaboration and ongoing reviews [by establishing
regular check-ins and ensuring that everyone agrees what good work
looks like]
➢ Defining Quality Standards
○ Now that we reviewed the benefits and main concepts of quality management,
we'll explore what it means to define quality standards. We'll also discuss how to
evaluate those standards to ensure you're meeting the project's goals. Before we
get into discussing quality standards, let's define what we mean by project
quality. Quality means making sure that you deliver what you say you will and that you
do so as efficiently as you can. Getting a project done on time and under budget
doesn't necessarily mean you've met your goals; you need to be sure you've
delivered a project that meets your stakeholders' needs. That's why project
quality is tracked throughout the life cycle of the project. You can measure
project quality by defining quality standards for the various aspects of the project,
like major tasks, milestones, and deliverables. Quality standards are the
requirements and specifications that your product or service must meet in order to be
considered successful by your organization and the customer. Establishing standards
helps you identify ways of testing and evaluating the project's quality throughout
the planning and execution phases and after the project is launched. If the quality
of different aspects of a project is failing to meet the agreed-upon standards, you
then have the opportunity to adjust your project plan to meet those standards.
○ Let's use an example from the Sauce & Spoon project. One of the deliverables is
training of management, front of house staff, and back of house staff. How will
you know if that deliverable has been fulfilled successfully? What are the
expectations or standards your stakeholders have for meeting this requirement?
For this deliverable, think about what the staff needs to be able to do or
demonstrate at the end of the training. Does each staff group need to be trained
on the same things? Will management have different training requirements for
front of house and back of house staff? Does the training need to fit within a
specific time frame, budget, or geographic location to be considered successful?
Your answers to questions like these will be the start of your list of quality
standards for this deliverable.
○ There are lots of resources that can help you determine the standards for your
project, and standards will look different depending on the type of project. The
first resources to consult are project documents like the business case and
project charter. These documents state the goals, scope, budget, and other
details that can clarify the different requirements of the project so it's acceptable
to your stakeholders. Just like you did when you identified tasks and time
estimates, if you need more information to help you determine quality standards,
you can have conversations with experts and stakeholders and you can do some
industry research. For example, if you need to know how long it takes the tablets
to recharge, ask the vendor who will be training the staff or the tablet sales
representative. It's also a good idea to have conversations with the stakeholders
who are funding the project to understand their perspective on how long they
expect the tablets to last before needing to be replaced. Do industry research on

the internet to see if there are established quality standards for the type of
project that you're working on. For example, software and construction industries
have established quality standards related to functionality, design, and safety.
Other categories of established quality standards that you'll find in many
industries include ease of use, productivity, effectiveness, and customer
satisfaction.
○ It's important that your standards are objective and measurable so you can clearly
identify that the standard has been met. As you have conversations and conduct
your research, you might notice stakeholders referring to a general category, like
ease of use, without providing specifics. As the project manager, you should aim
to get specific details by asking, "What would be a sign that the tablets are easy
to use or hard to use?" You might get a response like, "It shouldn't take longer
than 20 seconds to place an order," or "Returning customers report that it's faster
to use the tablet versus placing an order with a server." Now you have objective,
measurable standards.
○ Let's consider a few questions to ask yourself when considering various
standards. If standards are related to productivity and effectiveness, you might
want to ask questions like, "Should the existence of the tablets change anything
about how the front of house staff works? Does it make them faster or allow
them to serve more tables at one time?" If standards are related to customer
satisfaction, you could ask questions like, "How would the tablets ideally impact
the customer's experience? What would you want the customer to do or say as a
result of using the tablets?" By asking yourself or your task experts these kinds of
questions, you can narrow down the standard that you're aiming to make
objective and measurable. All of these resources, such as project documents,
conversations with experts, and industry research, can help you determine the
quality standards for different aspects of your project. But remember, you'll still
need to use your critical thinking skills to determine the right standards and
adjust them, if necessary, to meet the specific needs of your project.
○ Let's review what we've discussed so far. Quality means making sure that you
deliver what you say you will and that you do so as efficiently as you can.
Quality standards are the requirements and specifications that your product or
service must meet in order to be considered successful by your organization
and the customer. There are lots of resources that can help you determine the
standards for your project, including project documents like the business case and
charter, conversations with experts and stakeholders, and industry research. Some
common categories of established quality standards from various industries
include functionality, design, safety, ease of use, productivity, and

effectiveness. Finally, it's important that your standards are objective and
measurable so you can clearly identify that the standard has been met.
○ Coming up, you'll use your critical thinking skills to determine quality standards
for one part of the Sauce & Spoon tablet project. Then you'll learn how to
evaluate against your standards to ensure that your project is achieving the
required level of quality.
■ A health and fitness company has produced a new app. Which of the
following could be examples of quality standards for the app? Select all
that apply.
● At least 75% of customers report improved health after three
months.
● The app’s design is attractive and appealing.
● Customers track food and activity on the app four or more days a
week.
● 90% of customers state that they can easily navigate the app’s
features.
● Standards need to be objective and measurable so you can clearly
identify that the standard has been met.
■ Quality standards should be measurable so you can clearly determine that
your team meets them.
➢ Activity: Add Quality Standards to Your Project Plan
Activity Overview: In this activity, you will identify the criteria for meeting quality
standards for a portion of the tablet rollout, and add them to your project plan.
Quality standards are the requirements and specifications that the final project
must meet in order to be considered successful.
Scenario: As the team thinks ahead to the tablet test launch at Sauce & Spoon,
Peta needs to identify quality standards. During their weekly check-in meeting,
Peta and Deanna review some of these standards.
Step-by-Step Instructions:
● Step 1: Access your draft.
● Step 2: Access your supporting materials.
○ Meeting: Weekly Check-In
● Step 3: Review supporting materials. Review the meeting transcript and
take notes on the details Peta and Deanna discuss about defining quality
standards.
● Step 4: Add the notes to your project plan. List the notes you took about
quality standards under the Quality and Evaluation tab. Record the
primary quality standard the team is focused on in the Category column.

Then add the quality criteria that correspond to that category in the
Criteria column.
What to Include in Your Response:
● The primary quality standard discussed in the supporting materials
● Five criteria to support the quality standard
1. What are some ways that Peta and Deanna agree to measure the customer satisfaction
quality standard for the tablet project?
a. Lobby wait time of under 10 minutes
b. An average table turn time of 45 minutes
c. 98% order accuracy
d. 80% email capture and restaurant newsletter opt-in
2. Quality standard criteria should be objective and measurable. In addition to the methods
mentioned in the check-in transcript, what is another way Deanna and Peta could
measure customer satisfaction for the tablet project?
a. Increase wait staff efficiency
b. Create a positive experience around the tablets
c. 5% more birthday celebrations across restaurant locations
d. Increase customer retention in tablet areas by 5%
3. In addition to customer satisfaction, what are some other quality standard categories
that could help evaluate the success of the tablet test launch?
a. Environment
b. Ease-of-use
c. Design
d. Functionality
Evaluating Quality Standards
➢ Creating Evaluation Questions
○ In the last lesson, we reviewed the main concepts of quality management and
defining quality standards for a project. Then, after analyzing project
documentation and a conversation between Peta and stakeholders, you helped
solidify a list of quality standards for one of Sauce & Spoon's project deliverables.
Once the quality management plan is underway with clearly-defined quality
standards, you're ready to measure against your standards and can finally begin
implementing the project. Since the last activity, Peta and her team have begun
implementing the tablet rollout. Both of the restaurants that were selected for the
pilot have had tables outfitted with tablets. The staff has been trained and guests
have been placing their orders using the new tablets.
○ In this lesson, we'll discuss the importance of evaluation as it relates to the
project's quality management plan, specifically quality assurance. Remember,

quality assurance consists of reviewing processes to evaluate whether or not your
project is delivering an acceptable level of quality. And evaluation involves observing,
measuring, and then comparing your findings to a set of agreed upon criteria. This
could be your quality standards or the overall goals of your project. Coming up,
you'll create evaluation questions as part of the QA process so that you can
measure how well your project is meeting the established quality standards.
Understanding how to create strong evaluation questions will give you the
tools and skills you need to measure the success of your project throughout
the project life cycle.
○ In the same way that quality management plans may look different for each
project, quality assurance could be implemented in a variety of ways. Some
examples of quality assurance are beta testing, internal checklists, and feedback
surveys. Each of these methods allow you to evaluate and measure how well your
project is meeting its goals. Evaluation is a form of research designed to promote
learning and inform decisions. It also provides accountability and helps you assess
to what extent the project has achieved its objectives. When you use evaluation,
you're able to improve upon, judge, and learn about different aspects of the
project and the project itself. For example, with the Sauce & Spoon project,
evaluation can help you improve how to implement the staff training process
more efficiently. It might help you judge or assess whether something is working
the way it was intended or whether you should continue in the same direction. It
could be that the staff had a hard time learning how to use the tablets because
the touch screens kept malfunctioning, in which case you'd need to assess
whether or not to continue with the original launch date. You also need to make
sure that the project is not creating any unintended problems, either for the
organization, your team, or anyone else impacted by the project's existence. For
example, you'll need to assess when the best time for tablet installation is. If you
schedule tablet installation when the restaurant is open, that might create a
negative dining experience for restaurant guests. By reflecting on areas of
improvement and judging how certain aspects of the project performed, you learn
what things made the project run as intended, how it can be replicated, and how
challenges could be overcome in the future. Your evaluation may have a single
focus, like identifying what needs to be improved or judging whether a project or
process should continue in its current format. Regardless of your goals, your
evaluation will ultimately allow you to assess all three of these areas of
improvement and lead you to a better understanding of the overall success of the
project, as well as its impact on and benefit to the organization.
■ Which of the following are examples of quality assurance (QA)? Select all
that apply.
● Internal checklists [Your project team can employ quality assurance
methods to evaluate whether or not your project is delivering an
acceptable level of quality. Internal checklists support this process.]
● Project charters
● Beta testing [Quality assurance consists of reviewing processes to
evaluate a project. Beta testing is one QA method to help you evaluate
and measure how well your project is meeting its goals.]
● Feedback surveys
○ Now that we know why evaluation is used in project management, let's get into
the evaluation process so that you know how to carry out an evaluation and get
the information you need. In order to identify what you really want to know about
your project, first articulate why you're evaluating. Understanding your "why" will
shape the types of questions you ask about your project. This goes back to
improving, judging, and learning. Even though all three of these will be
addressed to some degree, certain aspects will have a more specific focus for
evaluation. You can narrow down what to focus on by reviewing both the project
goals and organizational goals and determining how the aspect you're evaluating
connects to one of these goals.
○ Let's discuss an example. The Sauce & Spoon project has just reached one of its
last milestones—the completion of three key deliverables that are required for
project launch testing. Those deliverables are: installing the tablets, integrating
the tablets with the POS system, and training the staff to use the tablets. In an
upcoming meeting with stakeholders, Peta will need to provide an update on the
project's progress and share an evaluation of this milestone. It's important for
Peta to share this evaluation since it will inform stakeholders on future phases of
the project and beyond, including a tablet rollout at two more restaurant
locations. So Peta's "why" is judging the quality and performance of the tablets
and identifying ways to improve the training process.
○ Once you've decided what your reasons for evaluating are, you're ready to write
out your evaluation questions. An evaluation question is a key question about
the outcomes, impact, and/or effectiveness of your project or program. There
are two main categories of evaluation questions: questions that ask how you can
make improvements and questions that help you measure and compare.
■ Questions that help you improve sound like this: How can we improve?
What is working and what's not working? Which goals are being met? Who is
benefiting? What are the most common participant reactions?
■ Next, we have questions that measure and compare. These questions will
help you make judgments about how or whether to proceed with the
process or with the project itself. Questions for measuring and comparing
sound like this: What were the results? Were there unintended outcomes?
What were the costs and benefits? Are there any lessons to be learned? Should
we continue?
○ So if we think back to the Sauce & Spoon project, one of the evaluation questions
might be: To what extent do tablets improve the staff's work performance? If you
keep in mind the overall goals of the project, you'll be able to write effective
questions that generate the type of data you want. Effective evaluation questions
meet the following criteria: They address stakeholder or user values, interests,
and concerns; they relate to the purpose of the project and of evaluation,
they're worth answering and are important for the project and beyond; and
they're practical and feasible to answer with available resources.
○ Let's review some of what we've learned so far. Evaluation is a form of research
designed to promote learning and informed decisions. It also provides
accountability. An evaluation question is a key question about the outcomes,
impact, and/or effectiveness of your project or a key aspect of your project. And
there are two main categories of evaluation questions—those that ask how to
make improvements and those that help you measure and compare.
○ In the next lesson, we'll discuss how to create evaluation indicators for your
questions, which will help you focus on the type of feedback that will be most
useful to your project. You'll apply what you've learned in upcoming activities as
you review the supporting materials and write your own set of evaluation
questions and indicators.
➢ TYK: Evaluation Questions
1. Fill in the blank: ___ involves observing, measuring, and then comparing your findings to
a set of agreed-upon criteria.
a. Evaluation
b. Regulation
c. Standardization
d. Administration
2. Which quality management process includes beta testing, internal checklists, and
feedback surveys?
a. Quality assurance
b. Quality standards
c. Quality planning
d. Quality control
3. What does evaluation help project managers to do?

a. Improve, judge, and learn about projects
b. Plan, execute, and complete projects
c. Budget, schedule, and scope projects
d. Track, manage, and communicate about projects
4. What aspects of a project do evaluation questions measure?
a. Impact
b. Risks
c. Effectiveness
d. Outcomes
5. There are two main categories of evaluation questions. One types helps you make
improvements. What does the other type help you do?
a. Manage and delegate
b. Adjust and regulate
c. Empathize and communicate
d. Measure and compare
6. Certain evaluation questions help improve a product or service while others help measure
and compare. Which three of the following questions can help you improve?
a. Which goals are we meeting?
b. What works and what doesn’t?
c. What were the results?
d. What are the most common participant reactions?
e. What were the costs?
7. Which three of the following evaluation questions can help you measure and compare
project outcomes?
a. Which goals are we meeting?
b. Are there any lessons to be learned?
c. How can we improve?
d. What were the costs and benefits?
e. Were there unintended results?
8. Which criteria do effective evaluation questions meet?
a. They address stakeholder or user values, interests, and concerns.
b. They relate to the purpose of the project.
c. They are practical and feasible to answer with available resources.
d. They quickly reduce project overhead.
➢ Determining Evaluation Indicators
○ In the last lesson, we discussed the importance of evaluation and how to come up
with effective evaluation questions that address certain aspects and outcomes of
your project. In this lesson, we'll discuss how to determine evaluation indicators.
○ Evaluation indicators reveal the specific type of data that needs to be collected to
help you answer your evaluation questions. In the next activity, you'll identify
evaluation indicators for each of your evaluation questions and add them to the
Sauce and Spoon quality management plan.
○ Simply put, indicators state what you want to measure or evaluate, like the
number of something, level of satisfaction, preferences, or demographic
information such as age, gender, experience, and so on. Similar to the way
quality standards add specificity to your deliverables and goals, evaluation
indicators take your evaluation question and determine the specific type of
response you're aiming for. You'll need this information to understand whether or
not your project or process meets the quality standards that were agreed upon in
the project plan.
○ Let's return to the Sauce and Spoon project and the evaluation question which
asks, "To what extent do tablets improve the staff's work performance?" To
evaluate this, you'll have to ask yourself, "How are you going to measure work
performance?" You'll have to decide on indicators of work performance like faster
table turnover rates, higher tip averages, or higher quality rating from customers.
○ Another way to think of indicators is that they provide pathways for answering
your evaluation questions. Indicators demonstrate that the outcomes are
achieved and provide measurable evidence of meeting a goal. They also include
visible signs like test scores, attendance rates, or observed behavior. The word
indicate means point out or show. Evaluation indicators point out or show the way
to answer the evaluation question. This could include visible signs of how the staff
works with the new tablets. Observed behavior such as fewer staff members
congregating by the beverage station or arriving late to work could be an
indicator of increased productivity or over 90 percent staff compliance with the
tablet-ordering process could be an indicator of order placement accuracy.
○ Evaluation indicators determine what data needs to be collected that will help you
answer your evaluation questions. This includes clues, signs, or markers that
measure one aspect of a project and demonstrate how close that aspect is to
meeting the quality standards that have been established. In the next activity,
you'll add evaluation indicators for each of the evaluation questions you added to
the Sauce and Spoon quality management plan.
➢ Activity: Create Evaluation Questions and Indicators
Activity Overview: In this activity, you will create evaluation questions in order to help
you determine if the project is meeting the quality standards you outlined. An evaluation
question is a key question about the outcomes, impact, and/or effectiveness of your
project or program.
You will also create evaluation indicators to help you get the right information needed to
answer the questions. Evaluation indicators define the specific type of data that needs to
be collected.
Scenario: Now that the tablet test launch is complete, Peta wants to ensure that it leads
to a successful rollout at both pilot locations. She does this by creating evaluation
questions and indicators to measure the results of the test launch, and assess the
project’s progress at this stage.
Step-by-Step Instructions:
● Step 1: Access your draft.
● Step 2: Create evaluation questions. Based on the quality standards you
identified in the last activity, create 2-3 evaluation questions you would ask to
assess the success of the tablet launch. Add these questions under the Quality
and Evaluation tab in your project plan, in the Evaluation Questions column.
○ Remember, there are two main types of evaluation questions. There are
questions that ask how you can make improvements, such as:
■ How can we improve?
■ What is working and what’s not working?
■ Which goals are being met?
■ Who is benefiting?
■ What are the most common participant reactions?
○ There are also questions that help you measure and compare, such as:
■ Were there unintended outcomes?
■ What were the costs and benefits?
■ Are there any lessons to be learned?
■ Should we continue?
○ A well-crafted evaluation question should provide you with valuable data.
As you create your evaluation questions, consider the following:
■ Does the question address stakeholder or user values, interests,
and concerns?
■ Does the question relate to the purposes of the project and of
evaluation?
■ Is the question worth answering and important for the project and
beyond?
■ Is the question practical and feasible to answer with available
resources?
● Step 3: Add evaluation indicators. Create an evaluation indicator for each
evaluation question. Add your evaluation indicators under the Quality and
Evaluation tab in your project plan, in the Evaluation Indicators column.

○ Evaluation indicators state the specific type of data you need to collect to
answer your evaluation questions. As you create your evaluation
indicators, ask yourself the following questions:
■ What do you want to measure or evaluate? The number of
something? The level of satisfaction? Preferences? Demographic
information like age, gender, or experience?
■ Will the indicator demonstrate that you have reached the desired
outcome?
■ Will the indicator provide measurable evidence of meeting a goal?
Examples of measurable evidence could include things like test
scores, attendance rates, or observed behavior.
What to Include in your Response:
Be sure to address the following elements in your updated project plan:
● 2-3 evaluation questions
● One evaluation indicator for each question
1. Which of the following are examples of good evaluation questions you could ask about
customer satisfaction with the tablet project?
a. Which customers are posting about their experiences on social media?
b. Are customers having a better dining experience with the tablets?
c. Does the wait staff enjoy using the tablets?
d. Are customers receiving the correct orders?
2. Which of the following are examples of good evaluation questions you could ask about
tablet ease-of-use?
a. How quickly are customers learning how to navigate tablets?
b. Which staff members are the best at training customers on the tablets?
c. Do all the tablets work as expected?
d. Do customers think the tablets have an attractive design?
3. Which of the following evaluation indicators can help answer the evaluation question,
“Have we improved customer satisfaction?”
a. Guests who use the tablets are 50% more likely to recommend the restaurant to a
friend.
b. Guests redeem coupons 25% more often.
c. Guests with shorter wait times report wanting to return 20% more often than
those with longer wait times.
d. The length of the average customer visit shortens by 15%.
4. Which of the following evaluation indicators can help answer the evaluation question,
“Are the tablets functioning properly?”
a. 98% of customers who use tablets receive the correct order.

b. Wait staff can log into their tablet accounts on the first try.
c. Appetizer sales increase by 10%
d. Tablet error logs report a maximum of one error per shift.
➢ Developing a Survey
○ By now, you should have created a list of evaluation questions related to your
quality standards for the Sauce & Spoon tablet roll out project and added
evaluation indicators for each question. In this lesson, we'll discuss the survey
development process, and how a survey question is different from an evaluation
question. Surveys are one of the tools that project managers use to get answers
for their evaluation questions. There are lots of methods for collecting data, and
surveys are a popular method in project management. In a survey, each
respondent answers a set of clearly-defined questions, and the data are
collected and analyzed. This data could be used to demonstrate specific
examples of the evaluation indicators you identified for your project. For the
tablet rollout, Peta has decided to create customer surveys as a way to get
answers to the project's evaluation questions. So in an upcoming activity, you'll
write a set of survey questions and add them to your quality management plan.
Being able to develop a survey and write survey questions is important because it
demonstrates your ability to understand the goals of your project and assess how
your stakeholders and users value the project. This helps you determine if you're
achieving your quality goals and where you need to make adjustments.
○ Let's start with a brief review of surveys. Surveys are tools you can use to
evaluate and measure the quality of a project's process, goal, or deliverable.
Making surveys a part of your quality management plan is one way to help you
understand what's working and what's not working. Surveys assess the criteria
you want to evaluate and provide you with data that will point out whether
you've met your quality standards.
○ Designing an effective survey that will deliver the data you want is a skill and
follows a strategic development process. First, you'll need to develop evaluation
questions and define your evaluation indicators, which you've already done. Then
you can determine what type of survey to design and questions to ask that will
give you the data you need to answer your evaluation questions. Since you've
already come up with your evaluation questions and indicators, the next step is to
determine what types of survey questions you're going to ask as a reminder. A
survey question is different from an evaluation question. An evaluation question is a
key question about the outcomes, impact, and/or effectiveness of your project or
program, whereas a survey question is designed to collect data, which can help you
answer your evaluation questions. In other words, survey questions are a more direct
interpretation of your evaluation questions, designed to get data points.
What’s the main difference between a survey question and an evaluation question?
Survey questions are a more direct interpretation of evaluation questions that are
designed to collect data. Evaluations questions ask about the outcomes, impact, and/or
effectiveness of your project or program.
○ Let's consider a specific example: the Sauce & Spoon evaluation question that
asks, "To what extent do tablets increase work performance?" One of the
indicators of work performance is how much side work the staff are able to
complete during a shift. Some corresponding survey questions might be: Are the
tablets easy to use? Was there enough time during the training to practice and
ask questions? On average, how many of your side work tasks are you able to
complete during a shift? Since using the tablets, how often have you sent back an
incorrect order? The answers to these questions will give you data to track and
answer your evaluation questions. So how do you write effective survey questions
that will address what you're trying to evaluate?
○ There are two different types of survey questions you can ask, open-ended and
closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions require more than one-word
answers, such as yes or no. They ask respondents to answer in their own words.
For example, what went well during the presentation? What did you find most
useful or interesting about the presentation? The point is that the respondent has
to construct their own answer to the question rather than selecting from a list of
predetermined answer choices. Closed-ended questions can be answered with a
single response, like yes or no or true or false or selecting a single answer from a
list. Let's examine three types of closed-ended questions in more detail. The first
type of closed-ended question asks for yes/no or true or false answers. These are
questions like "Did you order an appetizer?" and "Have you eaten at this
restaurant before?" The second type of closed-ended question is multiple choice.
Multiple choice questions have—you guessed it—multiple answer choices. You're
usually instructed to select one of the answer options or to select all that apply.
The question could be something like "How often do you dine at this location
each month?" and then a range of answer options like zero to one, two to three,
four to five, and five or more. A third kind of closed-ended question is a scaled
question. Scaled questions provide more than two options, but they're different
from multiple choice because they ask the respondent to rate their answers on a
scale. For example, how often something occurs, how much they like or dislike
something, or how important they think something is. A sample scaled question
might be "On a scale of one to five, how do you rate your overall dining
experience, with one being poor and five being excellent?" Regardless of the
question type, creating good survey questions is a skill that takes a bit of practice.
○ Here's some tips. First and foremost, make sure your questions are asking what
you mean to ask. Each question should be specific and address only one
measurable aspect. Be careful not to make assumptions about your respondents.
For example, don't assume that everyone taking your survey knows or enjoys the
same things or has similar life experiences. Ask questions and provide answer
options that allow people to answer accurately about their experience. At the
same time, you want to make sure that your questions don't provide too much
detail or information. If you do, you might end up influencing the respondent to
answer in a certain way, which could unintentionally create bias.
○ Let's review so it's fresh in our minds. Survey data helps you determine if you're
achieving your quality goals and where you need to make adjustments. Surveys
can also help you understand what's working and what's not working, help you
assess the criteria you want to evaluate, and provide data that will point out
whether you've met your quality standards. The survey development process
includes developing evaluation questions, defining your evaluation indicators, and
determining what type of survey to design and questions to ask.
○ In the next activity, you'll review your quality management plan and create survey
questions for one of Sauce & Spoon's evaluation questions.
➢ TYK: Survey Development
1. Fill in the blank: ___ are a method of collecting data you can use to evaluate and measure
the quality of a project’s processes, goals, or deliverables.
a. Quality planning
b. Quality management plans
c. Surveys
d. Evaluation indicators
2. What is the relationship between survey questions and evaluation questions?
a. Evaluation questions collect data that helps you formulate survey questions.
b. Survey questions collect data that helps you formulate evaluation questions.
c. Survey questions collect data that helps you answer evaluation questions.
d. Evaluation questions collect data that helps you answer survey questions.
3. What is the purpose of an evaluation indicator?
a. An evaluation indicator summarizes research conclusions so the project team can
share their findings with stakeholders.
b. An evaluation indicator asks a key question about the outcomes, impact, and/or
effectiveness of your project or program.
c. An evaluation indicator serves as a research tool that asks respondents to answer a

set of questions that the project team can analyze.
d. An evaluation indicator clarifies the specific type of data you need to collect to
answer your evaluation questions.
4. Imagine that a bank adds a new check deposit feature to its mobile app. One of the
evaluation questions for the new feature is: “Does the new feature improve user
experience and satisfaction with our app?” Which of the following survey questions can
help you answer this evaluation question?
a. Would you recommend this feature to a friend?
b. When did you first hear about this feature?
c. On a scale of 1-5, where 1 is “very easy” and 5 is “not at all easy,” how easy is this
feature to use?
d. Did you encounter any technical difficulties while using this feature?
e. Do you know which other banking apps include this feature?
5. Imagine that a meal kit service pilots a new line of customizable recipes for different
dietary needs. One of the evaluation questions about the pilot’s outcome is: “How
satisfied are our customers with the new recipes?” Which of the following survey
questions would be most useful to answer the evaluation question?
a. How often do you use our meal kits?
b. Do we offer enough high-protein options to fit your active lifestyle?
c. Why is our best-selling pasta primavera your favorite recipe?
d. How many of our new recipes would you make again?
➢ Quality Counts (DP)
○ Quality management encompasses a wide range of methods to ensure your
project is meeting the intended goal. It is crucial throughout every phase of the
project to help keep the team on track and meet customer expectations.
○ In this lesson, we discussed a lot of concepts related to quality management,
including quality standards, evaluation indicators, and survey and evaluation
questions. These are only a few of the various ways in which you can manage and
measure quality.
■ In your personal and professional experience, have you implemented any
of these measures to manage quality?
■ Have you applied different quality management methods?
■ What outcomes have you observed when quality management measures
are in place, and agreed upon by all members of a team?
Presenting Data
➢ Delivering an Evaluation Presentation
○ In the last lesson, we discussed the value of feedback surveys and how to create
effective survey questions. Then you had the chance to write some questions for
one of Sauce and Spoon's user feedback surveys. Since the last lesson, the Sauce
and Spoon surveys have been administered and the data has been collected. This
data is the result of your evaluation, so now it's time to analyze the data and
report your findings on how well the project is measuring up to its quality
standards.
○ In this lesson, we'll cover tips and best practices for determining your audience,
choosing the style of your evaluation report, and delivering an effective
presentation. We'll also discuss how to distinguish between reviewing data and
presenting an evaluation. Then, in the next activity, you'll apply what you've
learned to analyze survey data and create presentation slides for an upcoming
stakeholder meeting. You'll be able to add these slides to your project
management portfolio to demonstrate your ability to synthesize and summarize
data into recommendations for a particular audience.
○ There are different ways to present an evaluation, and you'll need to decide which
style is best for your project and audience. Start out by considering your
audience. Think about what's most meaningful to them, as well as how much time
they have. If your audience is a mix of roles or groups like team members,
managers, stakeholders, and executives, consider the best way to share
information with each group. In some cases, you'll need to present the same data
in different ways. Different audiences have different reasons for wanting
information.
○ Your team, for example, could benefit from a detailed report so they can address
aspects of the project they're responsible for. However, groups like senior
stakeholders and executives typically do not need, want, or have the time for a
detailed analysis. They would rather have a summary of the most important
information and the impact it has on their investment in the project. After you've
considered your audience, you should create a detailed evaluation report that
addresses your evaluation questions. You can then take the detailed report and
summarize the information into the most appropriate format for a given audience.
○ In addition to a full report, two common reporting styles include a summary
sheet and a slide-based presentation. A summary sheet is a one- or two-page write-
up with just the most relevant information. Think of it as a flier or snapshot of your
findings. And a slide-based presentation uses digital slides to visually present
information.
○ Presenting evaluation findings should not just be a raw data report; your
presentation needs to reflect what the data means and explain how it informs a
response to the evaluation questions. In order to do this, you need to filter and
analyze the data. This is probably the most important part because this is where
you make sense of the data for yourself. By filtering and analyzing, you become
familiar with the results, the respondents, and what those results mean in regards
to project quality.
○ Here's the difference between reporting data and presenting evaluation findings.
Let's say the survey data reveals that 36% of respondents reported a negative
dining experience with the tablets, but what does that data mean? It could mean
several things. It could mean that the tablets weren't installed correctly, resulting
in performance glitches. It could mean the tablets were poor quality, so even if
they were installed correctly, the tablets just didn't function very well. It could
mean the staff wasn't trained well enough, resulting in delayed or incorrect
orders. Or it could mean that respondents simply didn't like using the tablets and
prefer a standard dining experience.
○ You see, data alone isn't enough. You need to conduct additional analysis that
explains the data. Your job is to figure out what the data means and explain how
the data answers your evaluation questions. When you can explain what the data
means in your own words, you'll have the basis for your presentation. A good way
to start analyzing data to present is to look for trends, patterns, and anomalies.
Another tip is to share this process with some of your team members. Taking
turns sharing what you think the data means allows you to check your
understanding and uncover additional information through your varied
perspectives.
○ After you've analyzed your data and know how you'd like to present it, shape the
story of your findings by tying it all together into one cohesive narrative. Take
some time to think about what you're hoping to achieve, the points you want to
make, and the questions and concerns you want to answer. A great way to
present an evaluation is through a story. Storytelling is the process of turning
facts into narrative to communicate something to your audience. This is
essentially what you do when you present your evaluation findings—you tell the
story of your data. We provide some great tips and more details of the
storytelling process in those earlier courses, so check them out if you need more
help. For the tablet project, the point of the presentation is to demonstrate to
stakeholders whether or not the project is successfully meeting quality standards,
so you might start by reminding them of the overall goal and purpose of the
project. From there, identify the milestone that's being evaluated and how it's
expected to meet the project goals. Explain what the data revealed, but don't
cover every single data point or survey question. Again you're telling a story about
the data, not presenting the raw data itself. Identify any major issues the data
revealed and summarize the rest. If the data reveals that things were going well,
pick a few highlights and move on. If there are some major failings, suggest
possible solutions or craft specific questions you need answers to.
○ Let's review. There are different ways to present an evaluation. You need to
decide which style is best for your audience. To do this, consider what's most
meaningful to them and how much time they have. In some cases, you'll need to
present the same data in different ways. Common reporting styles, in addition to
a full detailed report, are a summary sheet, and a slide-based presentation. An
evaluation is not simply a raw data report. It needs to reflect what the data means
and explain how it informs a response to the evaluation questions. In order to do
this, you'll need to filter and analyze the data. A great way to present an
evaluation is through a story. Storytelling is the process of turning facts into
narrative to communicate something to your audience. In the next activity, you'll
review data results from the Sauce and Spoon feedback surveys and craft
presentation slides that tell the story of your evaluation. Then you'll wrap up the
section with a retrospective.
Which two steps should you take to start analyzing data to present?
○ Report raw data to confirm evaluation findings.
○ Take turns with teammates sharing what you think the data means. [You can take
turns sharing what you think the data means. This allows you to check your
understanding and uncover additional information through your varied perspectives.]
○ Change quality standards to align with the raw data.
○ Look for trends, patterns, and anomalies in the data. [Your job is to figure out what
the data means and explain how the data answers your evaluation questions. To do this,
you need to analyze the data. You should look for trends, patterns, and anomalies in the
data and talk though data interpretation with your teammates.]
➢ Evaluation Presentations: Components and Tips
○ Once a survey has been administered and all of the data has been collected for
evaluation, you'll have what you need to prepare an evaluation presentation. An
evaluation presentation examines how well your project is working according to
an identified set of standards.
○ What to Include in Your Evaluation Presentation
■ Introduction
● The introduction serves as a summary of your presentation and
includes an overview of the project’s goals and desired outcomes.
It should include a summary of your findings, lessons learned, and
recommendations moving forward. This is a very important section
of your presentation, but keep it brief. Your introduction should be

no more than a paragraph and only include the most necessary
information.
■ What is being evaluated and why
● Here is where you will state the purpose of the evaluation.
Remember, in the context of project quality management, the
purpose of evaluation is to measure how well your project is
meeting the established quality standards. Presenting evaluation
findings to your stakeholders shows them how well the project is
meeting quality standards and informs them of the project’s
success. To do this:
○ State the goal, milestone, or deliverable that is being
evaluated and the quality standards that were defined for
that aspect of the project.
○ Include the evaluation questions and indicators that were
used to evaluate each quality standard.
● Pro tip: Remember, your stakeholders have limited time. When
preparing your presentation, only select the most important
standards and questions.
■ Evaluation findings
● Now it’s time to state your findings. Give each standard its own
section within this portion of the presentation, and summarize
what the findings mean for each standard. Make a clear judgment
about the findings: What did you learn? What can you take away
from the data? Tell the story of what the data means for the future
of the project and for the stakeholders.
○ Example: "The data reveals that 36% of users felt their
dining experience was negatively impacted by the tablets."
It’s up to you to synthesize that data and determine why
that might be. Maybe it’s because the tablet software
wasn’t installed properly, resulting in glitchy technology. Or
maybe it’s because the staff wasn’t trained effectively, and
therefore the ordering process was seriously delayed.
Maybe some customers just don’t want tablets taking their
orders, and they prefer to deal with wait staff. Explain what
the data means in a way that allows stakeholders to make
decisions or declare this aspect of the project successful or
not.
● Pro tip: Visualize the data with graphs or charts to quickly convey
the message of the findings.
■ Conclusion with recommendations
● In your conclusion, state your findings again and propose a couple
of recommendations for how to apply the findings to the next
phase of the project. You can also outline how these findings may
be used in future projects.
○ How to Format Your Presentation
■ Slide-based presentations can be created using digital applications like
Google Slides or Microsoft PowerPoint. This type of presentation uses
images and succinct bullet points to provide the necessary information to
stakeholders. Slide-based presentations typically include summarized
information rather than lengthy, in-depth paragraphs. They are great tools
for high-level presentations, when your stakeholders do not need to know
every single project detail.
○ Additional Tips
■ Tailor communications to stakeholders: When it comes to
communicating important milestones to stakeholders, consider whom you
are presenting to. Tailor your presentation to your audience in a way that
they will understand and enjoy.
■ Start with an interesting hook: Begin your presentation with an ice
breaker, joke, or an interesting visual aid to get your stakeholders’
attention right away.
■ Use visuals throughout your presentation: The use of visuals creates
interest and keeps the audience engaged in your presentation.
➢ TYK: Evaluation Findings
1. What is the first thing you should do when preparing an evaluation presentation?
a. Filter and analyze data.
b. Shape the story of your findings.
c. Consider your audience.
d. Create a detailed evaluation report.
2. Which are the most efficient methods for presenting evaluation findings to senior
stakeholders and executives?
a. Full evaluation report
b. Raw survey data
c. Summary sheet
d. Slide-based report
3. By ___ data, you become familiar with survey respondents, results, and what those
results mean for project quality.

a. Transcribing and storing
b. Collecting and sorting
c. Filtering and analyzing
d. Memorizing and communicating
4. Imagine you are a project manager creating an evaluation presentation based on the
results of a customer survey. You analyze the data, learn what the data means, and
confirm how the data answers your evaluation questions. What is the final step you need
to take before presenting your results?
a. Draft a data-driven evaluation report with your findings.
b. Ask your audience members to complete the customer survey themselves.
c. Think about what is meaningful to your audience.
d. Shape the story of your findings into a cohesive narrative.
➢ Activity: Present Evaluation Findings
Activity Overview: You will prepare a six-slide presentation based on the results of the
customer satisfaction survey you created in the last activity. This information will help
you measure the success of the tablet test launch. Your presentation should tell the story
of the test launch to high-level stakeholders.
At the end of this activity, you should have a completed presentation.
Scenario: The test launch is complete and the team has compiled the survey results.
Peta’s next task is to identify key data points from the survey responses and prepare a
presentation. Her presentation should tell the story of the test launch, including what
worked, what didn’t, and recommendations for next steps. She will present her findings
to Omar, the CEO, Deanna, the Director of Operations, and several potential investors for
the next tablet rollout project at the remaining Sauce & Spoon locations.
Step-By-Step Assignment Instructions

Step 1: Access the template: Presentation: Test Launch Findings
Step 2: Access supporting materials: Test Launch Customer Survey Results
Step 3: Review the supporting materials. The survey results include the
questions and responses to a 15-question survey that 50 of Sauce & Spoon’s
friends and family members completed on their tablets at the end of the test
launch event.
As you review the survey results, take notes on the following:

● Identify responses that meet the goals and quality standards you set
during the planning phase.

● Identify responses that show that there’s still room for improvement.
● Pick one data point that helps illustrate and support the point you want to
make in your presentation. For example, if you’d like to demonstrate that
a majority of customers were satisfied with the test launch experience,
you might use survey data that shows a majority of customers had a
positive response to their dining experience.
Step 4: Create your presentation slides. Remember that this presentation is for
high level stakeholders and potential investors, so be sure to tailor your
presentation for the right audience.
● Slide 1: Title your presentation.
● Slide 2: Summarize the milestone you reached - the tablet test launch -
and how you achieved it.
● Slide 3: Give an overview of what the project team wanted to measure.
This should be based on the evaluation questions and indicators.
● Slide 4: Include one data point from the survey. This should be in the form
of a chart or graph, or by comparing numbers.
● Slide 5: Describe one recommendation for improvements or next steps in
the tablet rollout.
● Slide 6: Describe a second recommendation for improvements or next
steps in the tablet rollout.
Facilitation Retrospectives
➢ The Value of Retrospectives
○ In the last lesson, you practiced your presentation skills by synthesizing data into
evaluation findings and communicating those findings by creating slides to be
shared with key stakeholders. In this lesson, we'll briefly review retrospectives and
their value to a project team. Retrospectives are an example of quality control
because they help teams adjust and improve processes as needed.
○ Coming up, you'll learn from Peta as she facilitates a retrospective. You'll break
down the conversations and extract the details you'll need to build into the
retrospective document.
○ Let's start with a refresher on retrospectives. A retrospective, sometimes referred to
as a retro, is a workshop or meeting that gives project teams time to reflect on a project.
A retrospective gives you a chance to discuss project successes and setbacks and
to learn from mistakes. Though retrospectives often happen at the very end of a
project, they're also a helpful process improvement tool that can and should be
used throughout the project life cycle, especially after reaching a project
milestone. For example, right after implementing the tablets and testing them
with beta users is a great time for a Sauce & Spoon retrospective. You could
celebrate parts of the project that have gone well so far and identify opportunities
for improvement as the project moves toward upcoming milestones.
○ Retrospectives have lots of benefits. They encourage team building by providing
team members with the opportunity to understand different perspectives
within the team. They also facilitate improved collaboration on future projects,
and they promote positive changes in future procedures and processes.
Because a retrospective is a specific type of meeting, it's crucial to have an
agenda to help guide the discussion, organize the meeting, and document
learnings. As the project manager, you need to manage the tone of the
conversation, make sure that every team member feels included, and identify
details that will be recorded in the retrospective document for future reference. In
other words, it's your role to facilitate a respectful and productive retrospective
discussion that recognizes successes and areas for improvement.
○ Let's recap the main ideas. A retrospective is a workshop or meeting that gives
project teams time to reflect on a project. Three main purposes of retrospectives
are to encourage team building, facilitate improved collaboration, and promote
positive changes. And remember, it's your role as project manager to facilitate a
respectful and productive retrospective discussion that recognizes successes and
areas for improvement.
○ In this next activity, you'll practice preparing for a retrospective by creating a list
that includes successes and areas for improvement. Once you're done with this
lesson, you'll observe how Peta interacts with her team members as she conducts
the retrospective and adds information to your document.
➢ Activity: Complete a Retrospective Document
Activity Overview: You will review project documents in order to identify successes and
areas for improvement relating to project milestones. You will then create a retrospective
document that records this information.
Scenario: The project team has completed two important milestones: installing the
tablets and training the staff. Part of the training milestone included a test launch to
make sure the tablets worked properly and to let the staff practice their training. Now
that the test launch is over, Peta reviews the customer survey data and holds a
retrospective review with the project team. They discuss what has gone well so far and
identify areas for improvement going forward.
Instructions:
1. Access the template. Retrospective Review
2. Access supporting materials.
○ Test Launch Customer Survey Results
○ Meeting: Retrospective
3. Review supporting materials and add notes to the retrospective document.
Review the customer survey results and identify three aspects of the test launch
process that went well for guests, and three aspects that need improvement. For
example, “40% of guests rated their experience as a 4 out of 5,” could be
considered something that went well.
○ Add the items you identified to your Retrospective Document. Go to the
template and follow the instructions below:
i. In the Feedback From column of your Retrospective Document,
use the dropdown to select Customers.
ii. In the Type column, select either Went Well or Needs Improvement
according to the type of feedback you want to add.
iii. In the Description column, add a description of the aspect that
went well or needs improvement.
iv. In the Evidence column, add the supporting evidence such as a
quote from a customer or a data point from the survey.
v. Finally, in the Actions column, add the action or actions you would
suggest the company or project team take to address each aspect
you identify.
4. Add more notes to the retrospective document. Review the retrospective
meeting transcript and identify three aspects of the tablet test launch that went
well for the project team, and three aspects that need improvement.
○ Add the aspects you identified to your Retrospective Document. Go to
your template and follow the instructions below:
i. In the Feedback From column of your Retrospective Document,
use the dropdown to select the Project team.
ii. In the Type column, select either Went Well or Needs Improvement
according to the type of feedback you want to add.
iii. In the Description column, add a description of the aspect that
went well or needs improvement.
iv. In the Evidence column, add the supporting evidence such as a
quote from a customer or a data point from the survey.
v. Finally, in the Actions column, add the action or actions you would
suggest the company or project team take to address each aspect
you identify.
What to Include in Your Response
★ Three items that went well, according to the customer survey
★ Three items that need improvement, according to the customer survey
★ Three items that went well, according to the retrospective review
★ Three items that need improvement, according to the retrospective review
1. What areas of the project went well, according to the customer survey results?
a. 12% of customers experienced technical issues with the tablets
b. 78% of the customers signed up for the newsletter on the tablets
c. Customers enjoyed extended time at the tables
d. Customers found the checkout process quick, easy, and secure
2. What areas of the project were considered a success during the test launch, according to
the retrospective review?
a. Table turn time stayed about the same
b. Guests seemed to get the hang of the tablets
c. 72% of customers reported that their orders were correct
d. Tickets were easy to track and came through at a good pace
3. According to the retrospective review, what are two areas that need further
improvement?
a. Graphic functionality of the tablets
b. Table turn time at both locations
c. Order accuracy from the kitchen
d. New menu items
➢ Retrospectives: Encouraging Participation
○ In the last lesson, we reviewed the importance of retrospectives. Now it's time to
figure out how to deal with the sometimes tricky aspects of retrospectives. In this
lesson, we'll take you through effective techniques you can use to address a lack
of participation during a retrospective. Low participation can prevent a project
team from making meaningful process improvements. But if you've got methods
you can rely on to help boost participation, you'll be more prepared to lead any
kind of retrospective throughout your career in project management. After this
lesson, you'll review supporting materials that will demonstrate how Peta handles
lack of participation in a retrospective. You'll be able to identify and add several
new details to your retrospective document.
○ First, let's just say it, retrospectives can be a bit intimidating. When you host a
retrospective with your team, you draw attention not only to project successes,
but also to challenges. If a team feels uncomfortable voicing challenges, then they
might not be very eager to participate during a retrospective discussion. So
before jumping into any retrospective, make sure to ask yourself, does your team
seem likely to contribute to the discussion? If you feel like the answer might be
no, follow along as we discuss a few useful techniques used at Google to
encourage participation in a retrospective. One technique that they use
frequently to encourage participation is to create a safe environment for the
team. To create a safe environment, you might open the meeting by adopting a
policy of what's said here stays here, what's learned here leaves. Remind the team that
the retrospective is a meeting free from stakeholders or customers, and that it's a
safe space where the team can speak directly about problems. To help increase
participation, it can also be helpful to model the kind of participation you'd like to
elicit from your team. So if you're trying to help your team feel comfortable
speaking candidly about project successes and challenges, you could set the tone
by starting the discussion with your own successes and challenges. Before the
meeting, try preparing a few examples of tasks or processes you know you could
have handled better. If you know that you made a mistake on a project task, say it
out loud. For example, maybe you made a paperwork error that slowed down
tablet delivery by two business days. Be honest about your mistakes and talk
about how you'll avoid similar errors going forward. When you admit to your own
mistakes, you make it okay for the rest of your team to share their mistakes too.
Another useful technique to encourage participation is to pose a group question
and ask for individual responses. For example, you could ask your team members
to each think of one success and one challenge from the project so far, then ask
each team member to share their responses. If you find that a question you've
asked doesn't get the kind of response you'd hoped for, try phrasing it in a
different way. For example, if questions like, "What went well?" and, "What went
wrong?" don't get you the responses you'd like, try alternatives. Maybe ask
something like, "What about this project should we start, stop, and continue?"
Finally, if your team is participating but contributing only very recent successes
and challenges, it may be helpful to review the project timeline. This is a technique
for encouraging teammates to think further back in the project life cycle to
identify successes and challenges. If you remind your team of the project timeline,
you can refresh their memories and spark more discussion about the entire
project.
○ Let's do a quick recap. Low participation during a retrospective can prevent a
project team from making meaningful process improvements. Some effective
techniques to encourage participation include: establish a safe environment for
the team, model the kind of participation you'd like to elicit from your team, pose
a group question and ask for individual responses, and review the project timeline.
In the upcoming activity, as you review the supporting materials, you'll get a look
at how Peta handles lack of participation in a retrospective and you'll add some
content to your accompanying retrospective document. After you've finished the
activity, the next lesson is meant to discuss techniques for encouraging
accountability.
➢ Reflection: Encouraging Participation
○ In the last activity, you reviewed a retrospective meeting transcript in which Peta led the
team through a retrospective.
○ Part of a project manager’s job is to ensure that retrospectives run smoothly, with all
attendees participating. In this quiz, you will identify how Peta addresses a lack of
participation in a different version of the retrospective.
Peta: Hi everyone! Thanks so much for taking the time to debrief about the tablet test
launch. We’re one step closer to the official launch! Before we begin our discussion, I
just want to say that I want everyone to feel like they're in a safe space here. Please feel
free to share whatever you need to in order to help us improve this process. Ok! Does
anyone want to start with what they observed as a success and what they observed as
an opportunity for improvement?
[long pause]
Alex: I think it went well.
Peta: Can you tell us a little bit about what you think went well?
Alex: Well, maybe someone else could go?
[long pause]
Peta: I could certainly go first. I think some of our successes were that we got all the
tablets installed, working, and had a chance to test them out! And that, in general,
everything went pretty well. The customers got the hang of the tablets, the tickets went
through, and the payments worked for the most part. I know personally, though, that our
table turn rate didn’t see much improvement, which was one of our goals. But we can
certainly focus on that going forward and brainstorm ways to improve efficiency. Who
wants to add anything?
[long pause]
Peta: Ok, if no one will jump in, why don’t we do this. Let’s go around and jot down
some ideas on the whiteboard about what went well and what can be improved. Gilly,
do you want to start?
➢ Retrospectives: Encouraging Accountability

○ In the last lesson, we explored ways you could address a lack of participation
during a retrospective. In this lesson, you’ll learn some techniques for
encouraging accountability during a retrospective.
○ Accountability refers to being responsible for decisions associated with a
project or task. Accountability is a really important part of a productive

retrospective. If a retrospective is meant to serve as a helpful tool for process
improvement, then participants in the retrospective need to be honest about how
the team could have performed better. Only then can the team figure out how to
improve in the future. Knowing how to push a team to take accountability for a
given project will be a huge benefit to you in your career. After this lesson, you'll
review supporting materials that demonstrate how Peta handles individual and
team accountability in a retrospective. Then you'll identify and add new details to
your retrospective document.
○ Accountability and blame are two very different things, and only accountability
belongs in a retrospective. Blame shuts people down instead of empowering
them to share honestly. Accountability doesn't involve assigning blame to specific
team members for mistakes. Instead, it encourages the team to think holistically
about mistakes and challenges in identifying solutions for the future. Another benefit
of accountability is that it encourages ownership. When a team member feels
ownership over an aspect of the project, they may be more motivated throughout
the project to ensure that aspect meets quality standards and helps the project
progress towards the goal.
○ So let's discuss some great techniques you can use to encourage accountability
during a retrospective. One technique is to come prepared with specific
challenges to discuss as a group. This could be especially helpful if you find that
your team wants to focus discussion only on project successes. To encourage
accountability, call attention to a specific challenge. Maybe the Sauce & Spoon
kitchen managers provided feedback that they felt left out of decisions made by
the general managers. During a retrospective, you might share this feedback with
the group and asked the team to help figure out problems that led to this
feedback. Another useful technique is to turn team complaints into smart action
items. You've learned that project goals should be SMART, which means that they
are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. But here's
another tip, action items could be SMART too. If you find that your team does
more complaining than problem solving, pick a complaint and turn it into a
SMART action item. For example, let's go back to our example where the kitchen
managers feel out of the loop on general decision making. As a project manager,
it might be a good idea to add an action item to invite the kitchen manager to the
weekly staff check-in meetings. If you want to take it one step further, you can
even add a five-minute agenda item for the kitchen manager to discuss issues and
get feedback. Then you could make a plan to check in two months to find out if
they're still feeling this way or if they feel more included. By showing your team
how to turn complaints into action, you can help your team become more
solution oriented.
○ When it comes to encouraging accountability, it's also a good idea to push the
team to identify its role in creating a given challenge. Your team might seem
inclined to focus only on challenges they feel they had no control or influence
over, like a late delivery from your tablet supplier, for example. When discussing
challenges that the team seems reluctant to take responsibility for, you can help
your team think about the series of events that led to a given challenge. Then, you
might push your team to identify a moment in that series of events when they
missed an opportunity to recognize and address the problem. Let's go back to the
tablet supplier delivery issue. Maybe if someone on the team had been assigned
the responsibility of managing the tablet supplier early on in the project, they
might have set up weekly check-in calls with the vendor. This could have given the
restaurants the foresight to plan for and work around the missed delivery. When
you help your team identify its own role in creating challenges, you encourage
reflection that might lead to helpful insights and ideas for process improvements.
○ As your team talks about various challenges they faced, make sure criticism
remains constructive. Constructive criticism is a respectful form of feedback
that is intended to help the recipient improve a piece of work. If criticism of a
portion of the project begins to go from constructive to unhelpful or harsh, it will
be your role as the project manager to redirect the conversation. To change the
subject, try to detach the challenge being discussed from any specific person in
the room. You can do this by steering the conversation toward process
improvements that the entire team can learn from.
○ Let's review the main ideas. Accountability and blame are two very different
things, and only accountability belongs in a retrospective. Accountability refers to
being responsible for decisions associated with a project or task. Accountability is
about encouraging the team to think holistically about mistakes and challenges
and encouraging ownership. Some techniques you can use to encourage
accountability during a retrospective include: come prepared with specific
challenges to discuss as a group. Turn team complaints into SMART action items.
Push the team to identify its role in creating a given challenge, and detach the
challenge being discussed from any specific person in the room. In the upcoming
activity you'll observe as Peta encourages accountability during retrospectives,
and you'll keep building out your retrospective document. After you've completed
the upcoming activity, meet me in the next lesson to discuss techniques for
addressing negativity in a retrospective.
➢ Reflection: Encouraging Accountability

In the last quiz, you reviewed how Peta addressed lack of participation in a retrospective
meeting. In this quiz, you will identify the ways Peta encourages accountability in the
retrospective.
Peta: In looking at the customer survey, it shows that we didn't hit our goal of
decreasing table turn time. I'm sure we'll be able to speed that up as we go, but I'm
curious if anyone has any thoughts as to why we're seeing guests spend the same
amount of time at the table with the tablets as before we installed them.
Deanna: We might want to look at waitstaff training. The waitstaff might need to adjust
how they go about their interactions, which could cut down on turnover.
Gilly: We might also want to look at kitchen speed.
Peta: Let’s look at everything that might contribute, including the kitchen turnaround. I
think we all have to do our part to contribute to the goals. I did want to note that Alex,
your location actually had a quicker turn time than Gilly's location by about fifteen
minutes. Do you have any insights?
Alex: We just encouraged the waitstaff to speed up the visits. That was one of our
objectives, and since the tablets sped up checkout, it was easy.
Peta: Gilly, what were you doing differently?
Gilly: I know my customers. I know they want to come to dinner and hang out and have
a good time, so I instructed my staff to let them.
Peta: Gilly, I know that the team—including you and me—had discussed that one of the
objectives we wanted to hit was speeding up table turn. We know that the tablets create
efficiencies to do that, so we need your location to start focusing on that objective.
Gilly: I don't want to rush my customers through dinner.
Peta: I can understand that. But is that all customers? Maybe some customers do want
a quick dining experience, while others want to hang out.
Gilly: Possibly. But I don't want the tablets to change the experience, which is why they
come to Sauce & Spoon.
Peta: We do want to speed up the dining experience at your location, but we can talk
more about ways to identify guests who might want to hang out a little longer and those
who would like a more efficient dining experience. Maybe the majority would like a
faster dinner, and we could help them get that experience. Would you take the initiative
to have your waitstaff speed up dining time but also be sensitive to guests who might
want to stay longer?
Gilly: Sure, we can chat more.
➢ Retrospectives: Addressing Negativity

○ In the last lesson, we discussed some ways you could encourage accountability in
a retrospective. In this lesson, you'll learn how to address negativity in a
retrospective. Thoughtfully handling negativity is an important skill you'll need in
order to effectively lead productive discussions in the future.

○ The ability to guide discussions that break down project performance while
maintaining a constructive and positive tone will help you identify and improve
problem areas of a specific project. After this lesson, you'll observe Peta carefully
handle negativity as she leads a retrospective. Then you'll apply similar techniques
as you wrap up your own retrospective document.
○ Before you do your own retrospective, it's important to ask yourself, is this
conversation likely to feel stressful for the team? Sometimes the answer will be
yes. Let's talk about why negativity sometimes comes up during retrospective
discussions. Retrospectives are a great way to build trust, honesty, and direct
communication with a team. But keep in mind, if the environment doesn't feel
psychologically safe to the team, it's very easy for a retrospective to turn
negative. Negativity could make it more difficult to hold a productive discussion
that identifies solutions to project challenges. If you sense subtle or even obvious
negativity during a retrospective discussion, here are some techniques you can
use to change the tone of the meeting and guide the team toward a more positive
outlook. To address team negativity, aim to set a positive tone at the start of
the meeting. Kick off by highlighting project successes. Maybe the team
received positive feedback from a stakeholder, or you could thank the team for
their hard work in reaching a major milestone.
○ Determine how you'll set the tone of the meeting. Meeting props can help with
this. For example, you might hand out an even number of green and red index
cards to each participant and ask attendees to write successes on the green cards
and challenges on the red cards. Passing out green cards might subtly encourage
the team to think of successes in addition to challenges. Even on teams with a
generally positive overall dynamic, it's always possible for negativity to come up.
So it might be a good idea to try anticipating any potential negativity by meeting
one on one with team members before the retrospective happens. If you get
the feeling that one team member is likely to bring a negative attitude to the
retrospective, try asking yourself a few questions. Does this person feel insecure
about the value they add to this team? Does this person receive negative
feedback on the quality of their work? Understanding the root of the negativity can
help you figure out how to help the person engage with the group in a more positive way.
For example, if you sense the person is feeling insecure, you could try reassuring
them of their value. A single negative voice can derail otherwise productive
discussions. As the retrospective leader, it's your role to step in when one
person's negativity dominates the conversation. To deal with negative
participation from an individual team member, consider asking team members
individually to share their thoughts. Calling on team members individually does a

few things. It gives each person room to share challenges. It helps them model
solution-oriented thinking for their negative team members. And it discourages
the negative team member from dominating the conversation by responding to
every question.
○ Finally, you might call a meeting break. A timeout is a great way to help de
escalate the situation. It's good to remember that there's no single technique that
fits every scenario. How you choose to address negativity will depend on the
situation.
○ Let's review. To address negativity during a retrospective, you can aim to set a
positive tone at the start of the meeting, determine how you'll set the tone of the
meeting. Consider asking individual team members to share their thoughts rather
than posing questions to the group, or call a meeting break.
○ In the upcoming activity, you'll observe Peta by reviewing the supporting
materials as she navigates negative situations in the Sauce & Spoon team's
retrospective.
➢ Reflection: Addressing Negativity

In the last quiz, you reviewed how Peta addressed accountability in a retrospective meeting. In this quiz,
you will identify the ways Peta addresses negativity in the retrospective.
Alex: Are we going to talk about the fact that orders are still being made incorrectly in
the kitchen? The customer survey shows that even with the tablets, the kitchen was still
making the orders wrong.
Carter: I didn't see that in the survey.
Peta: I think that's a good point, Alex. Actually, Carter, the survey results show that 28%
of the orders were incorrect. We had talked before about reducing food waste by
reducing the number of dishes returned to the kitchen. Since the tablets eliminate any
waitstaff error in ordering, I think we need to address this issue.
Carter: Like I've said before, it's not the kitchen, it's the generous send-back policy we
have. We shouldn’t let people just sample dishes and send back whatever they don't
like.
Alex: If we don't get this fixed, we won't have any customers to fix the tablets for.
Carter: We should change the policy. What they order, they get.
Alex: Obviously, you're not going to realize that it's really the kitchen staff getting things
wrong.
Carter: I don't think it is.
Alex: There just doesn't seem to be any reasoning with you, even when we have the
facts. I don’t know what else to do.
Peta: Hang on. I think we can agree that the goal for all of us is to have satisfied
customers who have an enjoyable experience, right?

Alex: Right.
Carter: Yes.
Peta: Alex, I can understand your frustrations. Carter, would you commit to helping us
find out exactly where the problem is?
Carter: It's not just me and the kitchen. Others should help out too.
Peta: We all will. Why don't we talk more about this later, and why don't we take a quick
break.
➢ Dana: Leading Positive Retrospectives: Hi, my name is Dana and I'm a site reliability manager
at Google. A retrospective is a process that we go through at the end of every project where it
helps us to look back and learn about the things that went well, the things that went poorly and
where we get lucky. It's a way for us to see if we can take the lessons that we have learned from
a project, and then reuse them in the next project. Most commonly, we do retrospective at the
end of project. But then sometimes, if we're in the middle of the project and we find ourselves in
the need to make decisions, we would collect a lot of the data that we would collect for a end of
project retrospective and do that in the middle of the project. Typical retrospectives have to be
positive. They have to be blameless, and the goal is to continuously improve ourselves, our team,
and our processes. If we're approaching this with the correct mindset, we are asking all the
people who participated in the projects what are their individual takes on their parts of the
project and on the largest scale of the project, and typically, these are the people who will then
be working with your next project. One of the failure modes of retrospectives is when people
don't really speak up, and I see that quite often at Sprint retrospectives, where people, sit there
and don't say anything. Everything is fine. And that might be for two main reasons. One, they
don't really care about improving much because it's fine. They tolerate it. It's the way that it is.
But the second one is the one that I am more concerned with is the lack of psychological safety
when they don't feel like they can actually say what they think and have that result be well taken
by the people in the room. We need to make sure that our team has a safe space to bring up
these topics that we can actually change. And we can change a lot of things in our day to day, in
how projects are being managed, in how communication happens, and what projects we pick
and choose from when we do planning on an ongoing basis. So making sure that these venues
are accessible to our team members kind of assures them that they have a stake at what
happens next. And they can be impactful by virtue of what they say in postmortems, because at
least in the scope of the team, we will listen, we care, and you can make a difference.
➢ Module 3 Challenge
1. Which of the following is a common quality management tool to help ensure that your
project is delivering quality and producing a desired outcome?
a. Post-mortem reviews
b. Feedback surveys
c. Three-point estimating
d. Cost-benefit analyses
2. Which of the following are common resources for determining quality standards?
a. Profit and loss statements
b. Industry research
c. Business case documents
d. Corporate vision statements
3. Beta testing, internal checklists, and feedback surveys are all examples of what?
a. Quality standards
b. Quality control methods
c. Quality requirements
d. Quality assurance methods
4. There are two main categories of evaluation questions: Questions that ask how you can
make improvements and questions that help you measure and compare outcomes.
Which of the following questions intends to help you measure and compare?
a. Who is benefiting?
b. Which goals are being met?
c. What is working and what is not working?
d. What are the costs and benefits?
5. You are evaluating a customer experience initiative that you manage for an online
clothing store. Which of the following evaluation indicators would answer this evaluation
question: Are customers paying attention to our email newsletters?
a. Customers are 35% more likely to recommend your store to a friend.
b. Customers are 47% more likely to recommend your store to a friend.
c. Customers redeem store coupons 25% more often.
d. The store has increased the advertising budget by 25%.
6. You are creating a survey about the implementation of a new tool in your company. You
include the question “How many times have you used the new tool this week?” The
answer options are “zero times,” “1-2 times,” “3-4 times,” and “more than 4 times.”
What type of survey question are you asking?
a. A close-ended true/false question
b. A close-ended multiple choice question
c. An open-ended question
d. A close-ended scaled question
7. You need to prepare an evaluation presentation for one of your project’s senior
stakeholders. Which of the following presentation styles would be most appropriate for
your audience?
a. A slide-based presentation of evaluation methods and collected data.
b. A raw data report of survey feedback.

c. A detailed write-up of evaluation methods and collected data.
d. A one-page write-up of information relevant to their investment in the project.
8. Which of the following are among the main purposes of a retrospective?
a. To single out weak performers
b. To promote positive changes
c. To encourage team building
d. To facilitate improved collaboration
9. As a project manager, you are leading a project retrospective. You are nervous your team
might not participate. You start the meeting by discussing a mistake that delayed the
project by a couple of days. What technique are you using to encourage participation in
the retrospective?
a. Pose a question each participant can answer
b. Model participation
c. Review the project
d. Create a safe space
10. In the context of a retrospective, what term best refers to responsibility for decisions
associated with a project or task?
a. Accountability
b. Participation
c. Management
d. Blame
Review: Maintaining Quality

Wrap up: In this module, we moved from the planning phase of the project lifecycle to the
execution phase. You practiced quality management by defining quality standards for your
project. Then you evaluated how successfully the project standards were being met and
presented your findings to stakeholders. You also created a retrospective document. We also
went deeper into some concepts you learned earlier and introduced a few new approaches,
methods, and techniques. Along the way, you navigated negotiations, escalations, and
conversations with people in different roles, with different priorities and personalities. Finally,
you picked up techniques for handling retrospectives when they don't go as smoothly as
planned. You learned how to navigate through lack of accountability, lack of participation, and
negativity in retrospectives, which helped you draft your own retrospective for Sauce & Spoon to
add to your portfolio of artifacts. Great job. Now it's time to learn even more. Meet you back
here for the next set of lessons.
Effective Stakeholder Communication

● Effectively communicate problems and demonstrate their impact on an organization’s
OKRs to stakeholders.
● Compare a project closeout report to a stakeholder impact report.
● Prepare for a job interview in the field by reflecting on past projects, developing a 60-
second elevator pitch, and anticipating common questions.
Communicating with Senior Stakeholders

❖ Introduction: Effective Stakeholder Communication
➢ In the upcoming activities we'll continue the project execution phase and then
transition to the closing phase of the project life cycle. You'll demonstrate your
ability to communicate with stakeholders by writing an email about a problem to
a senior stakeholder. You'll also demonstrate your ability to wrap up a project by
creating a closeout report to present the project impact to executive
stakeholders. As you've learned throughout this program, communication is a
vital part of effective project management. That's why in the coming activities
we'll have you practice observing communication between the Sauce & Spoon
team. Based on those observations, you'll execute various communication
techniques, including drafting emails to stakeholders, creating a closeout report,
and writing an executive summary. At the end of this course, you'll take what
you've learned and create your own personal impact report to reflect on your
experience with this program.
❖ Communicating Project Problems
➢ So far in this course, you've had the chance to practice communicating about key
aspects of the project like deliverables, scope, timeline, and budget. In this lesson,
we'll discuss how to communicate project problems. In the upcoming activity
you'll learn how to synthesize a project problem into a one-sentence summary for
a senior stakeholder. Combining information from multiple sources like
conversations, emails and documents is a skill that project managers use
frequently. It's helpful to reference when leading conversations and meetings,
writing documentation and emailing team members regarding the project. Strong
communication involves combining information and potential employers may
want you to prove you're capable of doing so effectively. The problem summary
you'll write in the upcoming activity will be included in the practice email you'll
create later on.
➢ Okay, let's discuss project problems. Every project has its problems, and
communicating those problems is a part of your job as a project manager. Usually
project problems are small enough to address within the immediate project team,
but occasionally you'll need to escalate problems and propose solutions to a
senior stakeholder for their input and guidance on next steps. Stakeholders
shouldn't have to read different project documents or consult multiple email
threads in order to understand the project problem. Instead, it's your
responsibility as a project manager to synthesize relevant information from multiple
sources into a coherent summary that clearly communicates the issue.
➢ To write an effective one sentence overview of a problem, you'll need to synthesize
information from various sources like emails, presentations, meeting notes and more.
Synthesizing requires gathering information from multiple sources and using
those points to help form your own analysis. For example, it wouldn't be very
helpful to send a stakeholder a link to your project plan, because it doesn't give
them a thorough understanding of what the problem entails. To determine which
information is relevant and belongs in a one to two sentence overview for your
stakeholders, ask yourself, "How can I communicate a decision in a way that makes it
easy for them to decide?" For instance, let's say the project plan has five tasks
overdue because of supplier delays, and this may ultimately affect the final
deliverable of your project. You've been working on creating a few solutions to
mitigate this issue. Rather than sending your stakeholders a link to the plan and
pointing out all of the overdue tasks, you might summarize the problem by telling
them a number of tasks have run past their due date because of supplier issues,
so we recommend hiring a second supplier to hit the deliverable date. Otherwise,
we'll need to push the launch date back.
➢ This way, you present the problem succinctly to your stakeholders and offer a
solution. This allows stakeholders to agree with your solution, disagree with your
solution or provide one of their own. Either way, you've communicated the
problem and proposed a solution, which is your role as the project manager.
➢ Let's review. Communicating project problems is a part of your job as a project
manager. It's also your responsibility to synthesize relevant information from
multiple sources into a coherent summary that clearly communicates the issue.
Synthesizing requires gathering information from multiple sources and using
those points to help form your own analysis.
➢ In the upcoming activity, you'll practice communicating project problems by
writing your one to two sentence overview of a problem with Sauce & Spoon
tablet pilot. You'll write this overview using information you'll synthesize from
supporting materials.
➢ What should your first step be when potential problems arise?
■ Communicate the issue to your manager.
■ Escalate the issue to senior stakeholders.

■ Share the details of the issue with your team.
■ Synthesize information from multiple sources to form a coherent summary
of the issue.
❖ Reflection: Summarizing Project Problems
➢ In this activity, you’ll act as Peta and summarize an email regarding a problem with the
Sauce & Spoon test pilot. You will summarize the problem to Deanna, the Director of
Operations (a stakeholder). To begin, please read the email below:
■ To: Peta (Project Manager)
From: Gilly (North Location General Manager)
Subject: Customer Survey Results
Hi Peta,
I reviewed the customer survey results from the tablet pilot test launch.
From my perspective, one piece of negative feedback stood out from the
rest. Several of the customers mentioned they had a negative experience
when paying with cash.
I believe this is an important issue to resolve because about 10% of our

customers pay in cash. I think it may negatively impact the restaurant if
10% of the customers are having a negative experience with the checkout
process. This could lead to less repeat customers. It could also lead to
unenthusiastic word-of-mouth and less than stellar online reviews.
We should come up with a new process to more quickly handle cash

payments. I really like the new tablets, but we need a checkout process
that works well with both the credit cards, and cash. Regarding the new
process, it would help to make cash more accessible to our wait staff.
Currently, they have to go to the bar to access the cash register. We
should consider adding a second register by the kitchen. Also, to get
ahead of the issue, I think wait staff should ask customers if they’re paying
with cash or a credit card.
Please let me know how we should proceed with an improved cash

checkout process. I think we can figure out something that will work well
alongside the new tablets. I’m excited to use the new menu tablets full-
time!
Sincerely,
Gilly
General Manager - Sauce & Spoon North Location
➢ Using the email above, describe the problem that Peta needs to address to the
stakeholder Deanna, the Director of Operations.
■ The customer survey feedback described an issue with cash payments. As 10%
of customers pay with cash payments, this could cause a loss of repeat
customers if there is an issue paying with cash.
➢ Using the problem you identified, explain it in a professional manner to Deanna,
the Director of Operations. Remember, it’s your responsibility as a project
manager to synthesize information into a short summary that clearly
communicates the issue to the stakeholder. Consider including how to resolve the
issue. Write 1-2 sentences.
■ To: Deanna (Director of Operations, Sauce & Spoon)
From: Peta (Project Manager)
Subject: Potential Issue with Cash Payments
Hi Deanna,
The customer survey results brought an issue to light that has potential
impact on our repeat customers. Gilly let me know that 10% of the
customers pay with cash, but with only one register per restaurant
available, it can be difficult for the wait staff to access cash. Potential
solutions would be to have wait staff ask the customers if they are paying
with cash or card when seating, and also add an additional cash register by
the kitchen.
❖ Chris: The Art of Problem-Solving: Hi, my name is Chris, I'm a Program Manager Google. I work
on Search, so the types of programs that I manage on Search, in particular, are building features
for millions of users all around the world on many surfaces, languages and information needs of
users all over the world have. I can't emphasize enough, "Problem solving is quintessentially the
most important thing we do as program managers. It is the job." Whether it's a scope problem,
something is out of scope or the scope is increasing or decreasing, whether it's a budgetary
problem, like you don't have enough funds or too many funds, you don't have enough people, too
many people, wrong skillsets of people, whether it's a timeline problem, these are all problems
fundamentally that we're here to solve. Our job is to identify it, figure out a framework based on
our tools, on our processes, and methodologies, come up with a proposed solution and then get
buy-in for that solution. The only way you're going to do that is to put something principally and
organized together with these tools, and techniques, and methods. We try to always understand
what is the root cause of the problem itself? Typically what you're experiencing is sort of a red
herring or outcome of the underlying problem. Always debugging the initial underlying systemic
issue or the process issue or the tooling issue or the technical issue, whatever it may be, under
the hood, is actually the first step. Once you're able to identify and get enough information as to
what that problem is and how you might solve it, then objectively putting a plan together based
on those inputs is actually how you reach a decision which is the ultimate outcome. Many times
these charters or scope docs or meeting notes or trackers or documents, these artifacts that we
create or we manage on a day-to-day basis as part of our job, is the job. But that's actually not
the job, those are just mechanisms, and tools, and methods to help you do the real job which is:
running scope, running programs, convincing people, driving organizational change, solving
strategic initiatives. These things are just elements that help you navigate those problems as
opposed to being the problems themselves. I think that's a really important takeaway. I think this
is the thing that we practice most at Google in particular is trying to solve more complex, more
strategic, more holistic, larger, more complex problems on a day-to-day basis. If you're new to
this space, you haven't had the opportunity to work on these big problems. How do you build
that problem-solving expertise? Whether it's a hobby, whether it's building a new piece of
software for yourself, for your friend, whether it's another passion that you have in another
industry, all of these are great ways to build skills and opportunities to just solve problems. Every
industry, every business has them and there are lots of ways to solve these and build those skills.
❖ Connecting Project Problems to Goals
➢ In the last lesson, you practiced communicating project problems by writing a
brief summary of an issue affecting Sauce & Spoon's tablet pilot. In this lesson,
we'll revisit a concept from a previous course on Objectives and Key Results or
OKRs and their connection to projects. Then in the upcoming activity, you'll
connect your problem statement to Sauce & Spoon's OKRs.
➢ The ability to identify a project problems impact on your organization's OKRs will
help you determine and communicate the appropriate level of risk and urgency of
the problem. Objectives and Key Results are a tool for organization-wide goal
setting. OKRs combine a goal and a metric to determine a measurable
outcome.
➢ Let's break OKRs down. The objectives portion of the OKR defines what needs to
be achieved, which is similar to a goal. The key results portion of the OKR defines
how an organization, team, or individual will tangibly measure their success in meeting
the objective. For example, one of Sauce & Spoon's objectives might be to
prioritize customer needs and wants. The key result that indicates they've reached
this objective could be addressing feedback from customer reviews within 24
hours.
➢ Earlier in this course, you learned that OKRs can be a helpful reference point when
determining if a project goal is relevant to the needs of an organization. If a
project and its goals help contribute to the larger OKRs of an organization, that's
a good sign that your project is relevant and worth the time and money required
to complete it.
➢ OKRs can be a kind of shared language for an organization. At Google, for
example, every project, big or small, aims to contribute in some tangible way to
our organization-wide OKRs. Struggling to determine how a project might help us
reach our OKRs can be a strong indication that we should re-evaluate the project
as a whole. OKRs can be really helpful to reference when communicating with
stakeholders about project problems. You can make it clear to a stakeholder why
a given problem needs to be addressed by identifying the specific ways in which
that problem might impact an organization's wider OKRs. You can also point to
them to explain to stakeholders why a problem is worth their attention.
Stakeholders, especially those who hold senior positions within an organization,
often have a lot of work to focus on even beyond your project. Connecting a
solution to a company's OKRs can catch a stakeholder's limited attention.
➢ Let's take the Sauce & Spoon objective of: we seek to run an efficient, profitable
business model, or we seek to prioritize our customer needs. As you fine-tune the
problem summary you began in the previous activity, you can add a sentence to
explain how the issue jeopardizes the Sauce & Spoon mission to run an efficient
business model and meet customer needs.
➢ Let's review. In this lesson, you reviewed OKRs or Objectives and Key Results,
defined OKRs as a tool for organization-wide goal setting, and learned how they're
helpful when communicating with stakeholders about project problems.
➢ In the upcoming activity, you'll practice drawing connections between OKRs and
project problems. You'll use what you learn from the supporting materials to write
a sentence that connects your problem summary with Sauce & Spoon's OKRs.
After you've completed the activity, meet me in the next lesson where we'll
discuss composing emails to senior stakeholders.
❖ Reflection: Connecting Problems to Goals
➢ In this activity, you will consider how the email scenario from the previous activity (Peta
and Gilly’s checkout challenge) could impact Sauce & Spoon’s objectives and key results
(OKRs). Start by reviewing the email from the last activity.
➢ Review the following list of Sauce & Spoon OKRs. Pick 1-2 OKRs that could be
impacted by the problem Gilly describes in the email. Write them in the box
below.
● Serve delicious meals and provide an enjoyable dining experience
in less than an hour.
● Keep our operating expenses low and our budget precise in order
to focus on providing high-quality food.
● Ensure each large investment undergoes an analysis and results in

a positive return.
● Maintain a 4.5 star rating on our reviews platform.
● Consistently innovate through annual projects, like menu tablets,
to give customers a better dining experience.
● Host quarterly employee ideas and feedback night.
What do you think?
● Ensure each large investment undergoes an analysis and results in a
positive return.
● Maintain a 4.5 rating on our review platform.
➢ Select one of the OKRs you chose in the previous question. Then write 1-2
sentences to stakeholder Deanna (the Director of Operations) explaining how the
project problem could affect the OKR. Remember, it can be helpful to reference
OKRs when communicating with stakeholders about project problems.
■ When customers attempt to pay with cash and have a negative experience, they
may be tempted to review the restaurant negatively. This could affect Sauce &
Spoon's OKR of maintaining a 4.5 on our review platform.
❖ Writing Emails to Escalate a Problem
➢ In the last lesson, we did a quick review of objectives and key results. We also
discussed how connecting a project problem to an organization's OKRs can help
convince a stakeholder to take that problem seriously. In this lesson, we'll review
a few best practices for writing emails to get decisions you need from
stakeholders.
➢ As a project manager, identifying, and managing issues is part of the job. If an
issue is big enough to escalate to a senior stakeholder, then it's probably an issue
you're hoping to resolve as soon as possible. Email can be an effective tool for
quickly escalating a problem and asking for a decision from a stakeholder on how
to proceed. That's why it's really important to ensure that your email is written in
a way that effectively captures a stakeholder's attention and gets you the
response you need. There are a few best practices to keep in mind to make sure
your email doesn't get ignored.
■ First, think about what's most important to your stakeholder. Often
senior stakeholders will be more interested in a problem's potential impact
on an organization than its impact on a single project. This is where
connecting project problems to an organization's OKRs comes in handy.
Identify how a problem will impact your organization as a whole, and
ensure that you clearly communicate that impact within the first two
sentences of your email. Once you've determined what's most important
to your stakeholder, you'll be better prepared to draft an effective email.

■ Remember to write a clear subject line that briefly states what your
email is about. It's also helpful to include language in your subject line
that indicates what you'd like your stakeholder to do upon reading your
email. Do you need them to review a document you've attached to the
email? Try adding the words, please review, to your subject line. Is this an
urgent email that you need a quick response to? Then you might try
adding the word, urgent, to the subject line. Stakeholders, especially those
who hold senior positions within an organization, usually receive many
emails throughout the day, so including terms like urgent, timely, decision
needed, or please review, can help draw attention to your message and
make clear the action you'd like your stakeholder to take.
■ Remember to also keep the body of the email brief and to the point.
When communicating about a project problem to a busy senior
stakeholder, your email should briefly outline the problem, explain how it
might impact an organization's goals, and clearly state the decision you
need from your stakeholder in order to proceed. That's it. Write one or
two sentences that summarize your problem along with another sentence
that identifies how the problem may impact your organization's OKRs. If
there are documents or additional information that your stakeholder
might need to review to make an informed decision, consider including
hyperlinks or attachments with the information in your email.
■ Once you've finished writing your email, be sure to proofread it for
misspellings, grammatical errors, and inaccurate hyperlinks. Use spell
check and other grammar check functions in your email application or
online to help you make sure everything looks good.
■ Let's review. When writing an email to stakeholders, make sure to do the
following. Think about what's most important to your stakeholder. Write a
clear subject line, keep the body of the email brief, and proofread for
misspellings, grammatical errors, and inaccurate hyperlinks. Someday,
when you have to communicate issues to stakeholders in real-life
situations, you'll see how managing, tracking, and communicating project
problems is a huge part of running the project. In the upcoming activity,
you'll apply email writing best practices when you compose an email to a
stakeholder of the sauce and spoon tablet pilot.
When writing an email to get a decision from senior stakeholders, what should you
include in the body? Select all that apply.
■ An explanation of how this impacts the organization.
■ A lengthy explanation of how this problem affects the project.

■ The decision you need from the stakeholder.
■ A brief outline of the problem.
❖ Laura: Stakeholder Communication Best Practices: I'm Laura, the Executive Productivity
Advisor at Google. My role is to work one on one with executives in a coaching format in order to
help them with time management, meeting management, effective email, communication and
organization. When you're communicating with a stakeholder, you really want to think about the
absolute important information that they need to see. So you might give more details when
you're speaking with a coworker or a teammate. But when you're summarizing for an executive,
you really want to make sure you keep it concise. You want to do some work beforehand to
figure out what's the best way to get them information or to get a decision from them. Some
things that can be helpful with that is asking someone like their executive assistant, or someone
that's worked with them before, asking them what is their preferred communication style? What
types of presentations do they like to see? What information do they typically need in order to
make decisions? And by doing that work ahead of time and asking around, you're setting
yourself up for success, especially if you only have a limited amount of time or a short amount of
communication that you're able to get to the stakeholder. It's important to remember that while
you have multiple stakeholders or different projects, it is going to be different how each of them
like to communicate or like to receive information. One example is: I worked with a couple of
managers on a project, and both of them were stakeholders. One was very talkative and loved to
brainstorm through things. He wanted meetings with me pretty frequently, and he wanted to
hash out all of the details. The other stakeholder was completely the opposite, thinking about
how to tailor the same information, the same decision making process to each person that you
need information or stakeholder that you're working with is really helpful and important to
remember. I like to look at a presentation I'm giving to a stakeholder and think, what are the
probably the five questions they're going to ask me? And then I have that additional detail in the
appendix ready to go so that I'm able to make the most of their time. Another good tip is when
you come to a stakeholder with a problem or an issue, you also come with your proposed
solution or possible solutions, thinking about not just asking, what do I do? But saying, I think
maybe we should do A, but we could also do B and C. What do you think? That gives them a
starting point and they feel like you've done the background work and you know the problem
really well. If you're sending an update via email, you really want to make sure, just like a
meeting, that you're using the email in the best way possible. Something I like to do and that we
do often at Google is called TLDR at the top, which means too long didn't read. It's kind of a
funny way of saying there may be a lot of information, but here's the one sentence you need to
know from the email. So having some sort of summary at the top similar to that, saying, here's
an update on project A or need a decision or action requested or deadline by, that type of
communication right up front gives the stakeholder the ability to know what's coming in the
email. Then you want to think about how to be as concise as possible when you're developing the
email, so using things like bullets, highlighting or bolding, things that need to pop out to them,
reiterating your ask at the end of the email, including any sort of deadlines that you have. That's
really helpful so that if people are scanning or if they go back to read your email, they have all
the information that they need, including links, attachments, make it as easy as possible for
them to go through your email and reply to you with the information that you need.
Demonstrating Impact
❖ Completing a Closeout Report
➢ By now you've been with Peta through some of the most essential pieces of
managing and delivering a project. You followed her as she set goals, navigated
through the planning process, managed quality, escalated issues to stakeholders
and more. We've reached the point in the project where Sauce and Spoon has
launched the tablets after passing quality standards and most of the project
manager's work is done. In this lesson, we'll discuss one of the last elements of
project management: closing out the project and showcasing its impact. Before
Peta can consider her project completed, she has a few more tasks to take care
of. One of those tasks is to create a closeout report. The closeout report is a great
opportunity to compile all links and documentation into one place, a practice we like to
call: good project hygiene. The closeout report is also a time for reflection on your
team's performance, and it helps your team ensure every task was completed. A
closeout report confirms the project is done, summarizes deliverables, success
metrics, feedback, lessons learned and next steps and serves as a reference
document for the organization. If a follow up project is required or a similar
project is initiated, having these artifacts in one place will help these future
projects run smoothly and should another similar project occur, future project
managers will be set up for success if they have meticulous information on past
projects. An effective closeout report helps ensure that everyone is satisfied
with the work that was done, finalizes the efforts of the team and lets people
move on to new projects and tasks, and increases the impact of the team's
work through communication with other people who may not have been as
involved in the project. In addition to serving as a reference document for the
organization, a project closeout report is a document created by project
managers for project managers, future project managers and anyone interested in
the project elements and artifacts. Ideally, you want anyone unfamiliar with the
project to be able to read it and get a full understanding of what the project was,
why it was done and how well the project went.
➢ In fact, the project closeout report you will complete in this course should be able
to stand alone for your potential employers. You should be able to give them this
document as a sample of your work. They should understand the context of the
Sauce and Spoon tablet roll out project and get a demonstration of your ability to
synthesize and communicate information clearly.
➢ In a project closeout report, you'll start by adding your project summary. In this
section, you'll need to include the objectives. Another way to think about this is:
What was the desired result for this project?
➢ Next is methodology or approach. Make sure to denote which methodology or
approach your team used. Is your team using Waterfall, Agile, Lean, maybe a
combination of these or something else?
➢ One of the most important aspects of the closeout report is the performance
baseline. Here, you'll describe the actual results and compare them to the objectives
laid out in the planning and execution phases. You'll compare specifications like actual
project schedule versus planned project schedule, actual project cost versus planned
project cost and plan scope versus delivered scope. There's even a handy notes
column so you can explain any discrepancies or issues that arose. The remaining
sections are Key Accomplishments and Outcomes, Lessons Learned, Next Steps
and Project Documentation Archive.
➢ When filling out these sections, being thorough is key. We've included questions
to help guide you and ensure you're being detailed enough. But feel free to take it
one step further in your own closeouts by getting even more specific. And when
you're filling out these sections, keep in mind that the purpose of the closeout is
to compile and archive the most important aspects of the project.
➢ Let's review. When writing a project closeout, make sure to include the following:
project summary, methodology, performance baseline, outcomes, lessons learned
next steps and add a project documentation archive.
➢ Hopefully, I've explained just how important a closeout report is for a project. If a
project is repeated, or a similar project is initiated, this important documentation,
which includes your learnings and project outcomes, will set future project
managers up for success. In the next activity, you'll review supporting materials to
finish a close out report for the Sauce and Spoon tablet pilot.
❖ Identify: Components of a Closeout Report
➢ Fig & Fork, the sister restaurant to Sauce & Spoon, recently completed a 9 month
project and opened a new location on Main Street. As project manager, identify
where information belongs in your project closeout report.
■ Project Summary: describes the project and explains desired results.
●
■ Methodology: describes the approach and process you used.
●
■ Performance Baseline: shows actual results from the project and compares
them to the objectives.
●
■ Outcomes: list key accomplishments like achievements, problems solved, and
success metrics.
●
■ Lessons Learned: lists things that went well and things didn’t go well, across the
different parts of the project.
●
■ Next Steps: define any ongoing maintenance or development.
●
■ Project documentation archive: lists links to all relevant documents.
●
❖ Activity: Complete the Project Closeout Report
➢ Activity Overview: In this activity, you will complete a closeout report
summarizing the Sauce & Spoon menu tablet rollout project.
➢ Scenario: The Sauce & Spoon tablet rollout is now complete! Peta is finalizing the
project by creating a closeout report that details the project’s goals, the approach for
carrying out the project, and its key accomplishments. Completing the project closeout
report is especially important because Sauce & Spoon has just hired a second project
manager, Molly Edwards, to help Peta oversee the tablet rollout at the remaining
restaurant locations. Molly will reference Peta’s closeout report as she onboards and
begins planning her own projects.
➢ Instructions:
■ Step 1: Access the template.
● Closeout report
■ Step 2: Access the supporting materials.
● Test Launch Customer Survey Results
● Post Project Launch Check-In
■ Step 3: Review the supporting materials. First, review the customer
survey results from the test launch so you have a sense of the overall
customer experience. Then review the email exchange that details the
results of the rollout. You will use the information from these materials to
create the closeout report.
■ Step 4: Add the project summary and methodology to the closeout
report. Use the information from the email exchange, the customer survey
results, and other project documentation to fill out the project summary
and methodology sections of the closeout report.
● For the project summary, briefly describe the project management
approaches and/or processes used during this project. For example,
were any traditional or agile processes used? If so, during which
parts of the project were these approaches applied?
■ Step 5: Add key accomplishments, lessons learned, and next steps to
the closeout report. Use the information from the email exchange, the
customer survey results, and other documentation to fill out the key
accomplishments, lessons learned, and next steps sections of the
closeout report.
● For key accomplishments, address the following:
◆ Did the project achieve the initial goals?
◆ Were problems solved and eliminated?
◆ Does the final project deliverable meet or beat
requirements?
● For lessons learned, address the following:
◆ What were things that went well and things that didn’t go
well, across the different parts of the project?
◆ Were there unforeseen benefits or consequences?
◆ What processes did not work well? Why?
◆ Were there any key problems and what were the effects?
● For next steps, address the following:
◆ Is there any ongoing maintenance or development?
◆ Are there any open action items for post-project close?
◆ Are there any risks that could become issues if not
addressed in the next quarter, etc?
◆ Who will own the project going forward? Do you have any
recommendations for future project managers?
■ Step 6: Link relevant documents to the project documentation archive.
Any documentation that will be useful for future project managers or
stakeholders to reference. The documents include the project proposal,
project charter, project plan, and evaluation findings presentation.
➢ What to Include in Your Response
■ Project summary section
■ Methodology section
■ Key Accomplishments section
■ Lessons Learned section
■ Next Steps section
■ Project Documentation Archive section
1. Which of the following are good sources of information to help you assess the outcome
of the tablet rollout project?
a. Guests comments overheard by a member of the waitstaff
b. Data reports generated by the tablet software
c. Customer satisfaction survey data
d. Feedback from the project retrospective review
2. According to the information in the closeout report template, the survey results, and
Peta’s check-in email, which three major areas improved as result of the test launch?
a. Decreasing tablet turn time, decreasing food waste, and improving vendor
relationship management
b. Decreasing tablet turn time, simplifying tablet navigation, and decreasing food
waste
c. Simplifying tablet navigation, rebranding the menus, and installing more tablets
d. Installing more tablets, decreasing expenses by $3000, and rebranding the menus
3. Which of the following next steps are appropriate for the closeout report?
a. Plan to roll out tablets at other locations
b. Plan to open additional Sauce & Spoon locations
c. Continue to survey and solicit feedback from guests
d. Continue to improve order accuracy
4. What goals did the team achieve by implementing feedback from the test launch project?
a. Reduce food waste by 25%
b. Reduce table turn time by 30 minutes
c. Reduce the cost of menu items by 5%
d. Reduce daily guest count by 10%
❖ Project Impact Report

➢ In the last lesson and activity, you learned about keeping good project hygiene by
creating a project closeout report. Now we'll discuss a similar concept called
impact reporting, and you'll learn how to write an executive summary.
➢ The purpose of creating an impact report is to show others the value that's been added
to your project. Usually it's in the form of a presentation guided by a deck or
slideshow you've created. Unlike a detailed closeout report that's designed for
future project managers or other readers interested in the project details, an
impact report is typically created for senior stakeholders or project sponsors
who weren't involved in the day-to-day details of the project.
➢ Reporting your project impact is key for a few reasons.
■ It can help you to analyze results to adapt and improve services.
■ Motivate staff and senior stakeholders by celebrating achievements.
■ Build trust and credibility with supporters, sponsors, funders, and anyone
benefiting from the project.
■ Share lessons with similar organizations.
● Let's get into the elements that should go into an impact report. One of the most
important pieces of an impact report is the executive summary. It's where you can
highlight the key points of the project for your stakeholders. An executive summary is a few
sentences to a paragraph that describe the project's purpose and outcome. It provides an
overview of the main points of a larger report. It's written to share with the stakeholders
who might not have time to review the entire report. Think of the executive summary as a
highlight reel for your project. The purpose is to give senior stakeholders a concise and
strong description of positive outcomes within the project without giving them too much
information or being too vague. When creating an executive summary, ask yourself this
question: If an executive didn't have time to read all of the project documentation and
only had time to read this executive summary, would they be able to understand the
project highlights? Your executive summary should aim to answer questions like:
○ How effectively was the project delivered and what did we learn from it?
In addition to asking yourself some foundational questions, it's a good idea to review your smart
goals, your business case, and your project charter to help you write the executive summary.
These will help you reflect on and identify the most important aspects of your project, which are
likely tied to key accomplishments and positive outcomes.
● One useful tip you might find helpful when creating an executive summary is to actually
draft the rest of the impact report first. This will help you hone in on the most relevant
information to include in your summary. In this impact report template, you'll see slides
for results, what worked, and next steps. In these slides, you should aim to describe
your project in detail using things like graphs and images where applicable to tell the
story of the project success. The more detailed you get in these slides, the easier it'll be
to pull out and identify the highlights and add them to your executive summary. After
you've drafted those sections of the impact report, you're ready to draft the executive
summary.
● You'll want to include elements of the following information:
○ project vision. Here you'll specify what the purpose of your report was. What
need is the project fulfilling?
○ Key accomplishments. This is your opportunity to discuss which activities, tasks,
and milestones helped you to find success. What are the main highlights of the
impact report? Did your project increase profitability? What value did the project
add? Talk about those here.
○ Lessons learned. This is where you'll talk about potential improvements. How will
you change future processes for the better?
Let's explore an example of an executive summary. Say you just completed a project to launch a
new money saving app that automatically sends money from its users checking accounts into
designated savings accounts bi-monthly. The amount sent from checking to savings is
determined by how much money you have in your checking account at the time of withdrawal
plus a few other variables, like the frequency of deposits. Your beta users loved the app because
it helped them build a savings account without even thinking about it.
Let's start with our project's vision. It might say something like, our goal is to help users get
ahead financially by creating an algorithm-based automatic deposit system that pulls money into
a savings account.
Now let's talk about what the project accomplished. These are your key accomplishments, so you
might say, as we prepared to launch, we helped 1,000 beta users save over $300,000 in just six
months. This proved the use case and need for our app. In key accomplishments, you might also
want to include financial highlights. So we could say something like, by charging users three
dollars per month with 1,000 users in six months, we netted $18,000.
Finally, it's good to talk about what things could have been done differently. Include lessons
learned by saying something like, the main feedback received from our beta testing was that our
users wanted more frequent updates about when their money was being transferred. We'll add
that in our update.
Let's review the main ideas we've covered in this lesson. Reporting your impact can help you to
analyze results to adapt and improve services, motivate staff and senior stakeholders through
celebrating achievements, build trust and credibility with supporters, sponsors, funders and
those benefiting from the project, and share lessons with similar organizations. We also covered
executive summaries and how they're essential to highlighting the key elements of your project
to stakeholders. Now that you've got a better idea of what an impact report might entail, it's
time to write your own executive summary. We've built out an impact report so you can get a
sense of what a typical report might look like. All you have to do is fill in the executive summary
based on your new insights.
❖ TYK: Impact Report

1. Impact reports serve which two of the following purposes?
a. Impact reports provide a why that guides the team while they work on the project.
b. Impact reports are extremely detailed and include all of the various tasks
completed in the project.
c. Impact reports are designed to show others the value that the project added.
d. Impact reports are created for senior stakeholders or project sponsors who
weren’t involved in the daily details of the project.
2. What are the objectives of an executive summary?
a. To communicate the daily ins and outs of the project to other project managers.
b. To share key takeaways with senior stakeholders who may not have time to
review an entire report.
c. To provide an overview of the main points of a larger report.
d. To describe the project’s purpose and outcome.
3. What topics are typically included in an impact report?
a. Results
b. Next steps
c. Activity descriptions
d. Executive summary
e. What worked
4. What three elements are you likely to find in an executive summary of an impact report?
a. Project vision
b. Methodology and approach
c. Lessons learned
d. Key accomplishments
5. What should you describe in the key accomplishments section of a project impact report?
a. The potential improvements you may apply in the future.
b. The questions that you included in your user surveys.
c. The activities, tasks, and milestones that helped you find success.
d. The time estimates for your main project tasks.
❖ Activity: Draft an Executive Summary
Activity Overview: You will draft an executive summary for an impact report on Sauce & Spoon’s
tablet rollout.
Scenario: Now that the tablet rollout has officially launched and the project has come to a
close, Peta has begun working on the impact report. Her audience includes Omar, Deanna, and
several potential Sauce & Spoon investors who may want to sponsor the next round of tablet
rollouts at other locations. She uses the post-launch results about customer satisfaction and
revenue growth to write an executive summary detailing key accomplishments, lessons learned,
and next steps.
Instructions:
Step 1: Access the template.
Impact Report
Step 2: Review the impact report template. Review the data on slides 3-7 of the
impact report template. Take notes, keeping in mind you will need to summarize
the most important accomplishments, lessons learned, and next steps in your
executive summary. In addition to the impact report slides, you can also draw on
your experiences throughout the course to compose the summary.
Step 3: Write the executive summary. On the Executive Summary slide (slide 2),
write a few sentences to a paragraph summarizing the purpose and outcome of
the tablet project. Remember that your audience consists of senior stakeholders
and potential investors for Sauce & Spoon’s next tablet rollout project, so the
summary should provide a high-level overview. A “high-level” overview means
providing a basic and general explanation without going into all the details.
As you compose your executive summary, be sure to describe the following

elements:
■ The project vision: What need did the project fulfill?
■ Two key accomplishments: What value did the project add? What
activities, tasks, and milestones helped the project succeed?
■ Two lessons learned: What could have been done differently?

■ Two next steps: What work remains now that the launch is complete?
❖ Wrap-up
➢ So far you've used the skills you learned in previous lessons to execute the entire
life cycle of our example project with Sauce and Spoon.
■ First, in the initiation phase, you learned how to create a project charter,
and then you identified project goals and deliverables. You
demonstrated how to conduct a stakeholder analysis to prepare for
negotiations with stakeholders.
■ Then you went into the planning phase where you determine tasks in
order to accomplish the goals set forth. You learned the value of holding
team brainstorms in order to ensure all tasks were included and we
explored some techniques for creating accurate time estimates for each
of those tasks.
■ As you moved from the planning to the execution phase, you started
executing tasks as part of quality management, where you set quality
standards and measured quality with user surveys.
■ Next up was the closing phase where you learned how to connect
problems to project goals by creating OKRs. You learned the importance
of a closeout report. Finally, you learned about impact reporting and how
to write a great executive summary so that your senior stakeholders can
quickly understand the impact of your project.
➢ In the next lesson, we'll wrap up the whole program and apply the knowledge
you've gained to taking the next step in your project management career.
❖ Personal Closing Report
➢ You've come such a long way in this course. Let's take a moment to celebrate
your successes and growth in project management. We call this process personal
closing reporting. Similar to what you've done in the retrospective documents and
close out reports you've created throughout this program, let's take a moment to
reflect on what you just completed, the Google Project Management Certificate.
➢ Let's start by listing your key accomplishments. Think all the way back to when
you first started the program up until now, what challenges have you overcome
throughout this process? Maybe there were particular lessons or concepts that
you didn't think you'd ever understand, but you surprised yourself when you
finally figured them out. Maybe you overcame challenges in your personal life
while taking this course. If you have a full time job but still found the time to
complete this course, that's a major win. Take a moment to write some of these
down, then reflect on any lessons you've learned. Maybe you were having a busy
week, and you feel like you didn't spend enough time on one particular lesson.
You might have wanted to read it more thoroughly, because you felt it was
important. Maybe you learned that you loved managing stakeholders, but you
didn't enjoy budgeting and procurement as much. Take note of those learnings.
➢ Next, you'll want to think about what steps you can take from here to advance
your project management career. This could be contacting recruiting companies
or asking your current boss to give you more responsibility. Maybe it's setting a
goal to spruce up your resume and apply to five project management jobs a week.
Write those next steps down, then take that a step further and add your goals to
a timeline as if they're part of a project you're managing. Like we've said time and
time again, project management is part of your everyday life. Then finally, add
your own executive summary. Rather than the executive summary you learned
about earlier, this is an executive summary of your experiences in the program.
When you're writing your executive summary, describe your experience with this
program as a whole. Take note of your successes and how you plan to advance
your career in project management moving forward. This should feel inspiring and
fun, so feel free to include all kinds of highlights. Maybe you scored high on a
certain quiz, and you want to pat yourself on the back for that. Maybe you were
able to apply some of the concepts you learned to the planning of your family
reunion. Maybe you learned a lot about a specific topic that you had never
researched before and you really enjoyed it. Whatever it is, be sure to highlight it
here. And with that, you're ready to complete your personal closing report. Take
this report with you as a project artifact to look back on your experience with us
throughout this program. Just like you would for your team at the end of a
project, celebrate your successes and strive to always keep growing and
improving. That brings us to the end of the program, but it's just the beginning of
your journey in project management. Take a moment to celebrate yourself and all
you've achieved. Not only did you remain diligent in your search for new
information and knowledge, you also have a portfolio of work to show potential
employers. No matter what comes next, you should feel confident that you have
the skills you need to be an amazing project manager. I can't wait to see what you
do, congratulations and good luck.
❖ Activity: Complete a Personal Closing Report
➢ Activity Overview: You will complete a personal closing report to recap and
reflect on your experience and your accomplishments.
1. Add key accomplishments. What challenges have you overcome throughout the
process? For example, are there lessons or concepts you weren’t sure you’d understand,
but were able to figure out? Perhaps you overcame challenges in your personal life, such
as managing other work or family obligations while completing the course.
2. Add lessons learned. For example, maybe you set a learning goal but realized the
strategy you used wasn’t effective. Or, you might have learned that you enjoy certain
types of tasks more than you thought you would.
3. Add next steps or goals. Think about what steps you can take from here to advance your
project management career. For example, you could update your resume with the new
skills you’ve learned and this certificate. You could also create a job search plan and
practice interviewing for project management roles. Then, create a list of SMART goals to
show how you plan to follow through on your next steps.
4. Add an executive summary. For this report, the executive summary should be an
overview of your experiences of the program. Describe your journey through the program
as a whole. Make note of your successes and how you plan to advance your career in
project management moving forward.
What to Include in Your Response:
➢ Key accomplishments
➢ Lessons learned
➢ Goals and next steps
➢ Your goals
➢ Your own executive summary
❖ Course 6 Glossary
★ Accountability: Refers to being responsible for decisions associated with a project
or task.
★ Alignment: Reaching agreement between two or more parties.
★ Artifact: A project management document.
★ Behavioral questions: In an interview, these questions ask the interviewee to
share an example of when they had to practice a particular skill.
★ Benchmarking: Refers to evaluating success against a standard.
★ Benefits: The expected gains of a project.
★ Beta distribution (PERT): A three-point estimation formula that takes into
account that the “most likely” case is more likely to occur, so it gives it more
weight.
★ Budget: An estimate of the amount of money allocated to complete the project.
★ Closed-ended question: A type of question that can be answered with a single
response, like “yes or no” and “true or false.”
★ Coalition: A temporary alliance or partnering of individuals or groups in order to
achieve a common purpose or to engage in a joint activity.
★ Confidence level rating: An indication of confidence in an estimate’s accuracy.

★ Conger’s four steps: Refers to Jay A. Conger’s four-step approach to effectively
persuade and influence another person to consider new ideas: establish
credibility, frame for common ground, provide evidence, and connect emotionally.
★ Constructive criticism: A respectful form of feedback that is intended to help the
recipient improve a piece of work.
★ Costs: The money spent on project tasks as well as prices of things like time,
resources, and labor.
★ Deliverables: Specific tasks and tangible outcomes that enable the team to meet
project goals.
★ Dependency: A relationship between two project tasks, where the start or
completion of one depends on the start or completion of the other.
★ Domain knowledge: Knowledge of a specific industry, topic, or activity.
★ Effort estimate: The actual time it takes to complete a task.
★ Empathy: The ability to understand and feel what others are feeling.
★ Elevator pitch: A quick professional summary of yourself.
★ Evaluation: The act of observing, measuring, and then comparing findings to a set
of agreed-upon criteria.
★ Evaluation indicator: The specific type of data that needs to be collected to help
answer an evaluation question.
★ Evaluation presentation: A presentation that examines how well your project is
working according to a set of standards.
★ Evaluation question: A key question about the outcomes, impact, and/or
effectiveness of a project or program.
★ Executive summary: A few sentences to a paragraph that describes a project’s
purpose and outcome; provides an overview of the main points of a larger report.
★ Factual questions: In an interview, these questions aim to assess the interviewee
on knowledge of basic project management skills.
★ Good product hygiene: Refers to compiling all links and documentation into one
place for historical purposes.
★ Hypothetical questions: In an interview, these questions present a scenario to
assess the interviewee on how they would go about working through that
experience.
★ Impact report: A presentation guided by a deck or slideshow that shows key
stakeholders the value that’s been added by the project.
★ Influence: Refers to how much power a stakeholder has and how much their
actions affect the project outcome.
★ Interest: Refers to how much the stakeholder’s needs will be affected by project
operations and outcomes.

★ Key accomplishments: The section of the executive summary that discusses
which activities, tasks, and milestones helped your project find success.
★ Lessons learned: The section of the executive summary that discusses potential
improvements and how future processes will be changed for the better.
★ Micromanaging: Refers to when a manager too closely observes, controls, or
continuously reminds the people they’re managing of the work they’ve been
assigned.
★ Milestones: Important points within the schedule that indicate progress.
★ Most likely estimate: An estimate for a task that assumes some issues might
occur based on how long the task usually takes under normal circumstances.
★ Multiple choice question: A closed-ended question that has several answer
choices.
★ Mutual benefit: Refers to when all parties involved gain some kind of benefit or
advantage.
★ Mutually beneficial agreement: An agreement that benefits all parties involved.
★ Objective criteria: Standards by which something can be judged based on neutral
information like market value, research findings, previously-documented
experience, or laws and regulations.
★ Objectives and key results (OKRs): A combination of a goal and a metric to
determine a measurable outcome.
★ One-pager: A one-page document that provides an overview of your project.
★ Open-ended question: A type of question that requires more than a one-word
answer; asks respondents to answer in their own words.
★ Optimistic estimate: An estimate for a task that assumes the best-case scenario -
that issues will not occur.
★ Out-of-scope: Details that are not included in the project plan and don’t
contribute to the project’s goal.
★ Overhead: The business expenses not directly attributed to creating a product or
service.
★ Pessimistic estimate: An estimate for a task that assumes the worst-case
scenario - that issues will definitely occur.
★ Power-interest grid: A chart that provides clarity about whom to prioritize and
how best to approach negotiations with each stakeholder.
★ Project charter: A formal document that clearly defines the project and outlines
the necessary details to reach the project’s goals.
★ Project closeout report: A document created by project managers for project
managers, future project managers, and anyone interested in the project
elements and artifacts.

★ Project goals: The desired results of the project.
★ Project plan: Documentation that defines the scope, tasks, milestones, budget,
and overall activities in order to keep the project on track.
★ Project summary: A brief overview of the project that outlines the project goals.
★ Project tasks: Activities that need to be accomplished within a set period of time.
★ Project vision: The section of the executive summary that specifies the need the
project is fulfilling.
★ Quality assurance: A review process that evaluates whether the project is moving
toward delivering a high-quality service or product; also known as QA
★ Quality control: The techniques that are used to ensure quality standards are
maintained when a problem is identified; also known as QC.
★ Quality management plan: Documentation of all the information needed to
effectively manage quality throughout the project life cycle; defines the policies,
processes, and criteria for project quality as well as the roles and responsibilities
for carrying them out.
★ Quality planning: The process that the project manager or team establishes and
follows for identifying and determining exactly which standards of quality are
relevant to the project as a whole and how to satisfy them.
★ Quality standards: The requirements and specifications that a product or service
must meet in order to be considered successful by the organization and the
customer.
★ Retrospective: A workshop or meeting that gives project teams time to reflect on
a project.
★ Scaled question: A closed-ended question that provides more than two options
and asks the respondent to rate their answers on a scale.
★ Scope: The boundaries of a project.
★ Slide-based presentation: A series of digital slides used to visually present
information.
★ SMART action item: A task that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and
time-bound.
★ SMART goals: Goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-
bound.
★ Stakeholder analysis: A visual representation of all stakeholders.
★ Stakeholder management: The process of maintaining good relationships with
the people who have the most influence on one’s work.
★ STAR method: A way of organizing a response to an interview question following
a story-like structure; stands for: situation, task, action, and result.
★ Storytelling: The process of turning facts into narrative to communicate

something to an audience.
★ Summary sheet: A one- or two- page write-up with just the most relevant
information.
★ Survey: A tool used to evaluate and measure the quality of a project’s process,
goal, or deliverable.
★ Survey question: A question designed to collect data that can help answer
evaluation questions.
★ Synthesizing: Refers to gathering information from multiple sources and using
those points to help form an analysis.
★ Three-point estimating: A technique used to help determine the most realistic
time estimate for a task.
★ Time estimation: A prediction of the total amount of time required to complete a
task.
★ Total duration estimate: An effort estimate plus any other factors, like getting
approvals, prep work, testing, and so on.
★ Triangular distribution: A three-point estimation formula in which the weight of
each estimate is identical, meaning the “most likely” case does not affect the final
estimates more than the optimistic or pessimistic estimates.
❖ Congratulations: Next Steps
Module 4 Challenge
1. You communicate a project problem to a key stakeholder. What question should you ask
yourself to ensure the information you provide is necessary?
a. Does this information help the stakeholder make a decision easily?
b. Does this information link to important project documentation?
c. Does this information provide the stakeholder extra context about the problem
and project?
d. Does this information give all the details of the problem to the stakeholder?
2. As a project manager, you notice there is a shipment delay from a supplier during a
project. If shipments are delayed too long, the final project date will be postponed. When
synthesizing this to the stakeholders, what are things you should include?
a. An estimate of when the shipment will arrive.
b. A summary of the shipment problem and its impact on the project.
c. An email with the project plan highlighting the missed shipment dates.
d. A proposed solution of finding a backup supplier.
3. OKRs combine a goal and a metric. What does the combination determine?
a. A business model
b. A key result
c. A measurable outcome
d. A reference point
4. You have synthesized the information around a problem you encountered in your project.
You are now ready to communicate the problem to your stakeholders. Which of the
following best describes how OKRs can help persuade your stakeholder to take the
problem seriously?
a. You can present how the problem reveals weaknesses in the company’s OKRs.
b. You can present how the original project goals fail to align with the company’s
OKRs.
c. You can present how your proposed solution addresses key results of a company
OKR.
d. You can suggest a new OKR that your stakeholder may present to their
company’s CEO.
5. Which of the following items should be included in the body of an effective email to
escalate a problem?
a. A sentence that identifies how the problem may impact your organization’s OKRs.
b. A brief paragraph that identifies documentation that your stakeholder might need
to review to make an informed decision.
c. One or two sentences that summarize the problem.
d. A complete list of team members and other project participants who are directly
affected by the problem.
6. You are writing the closeout report for a project that you are managing. You describe the
workflow you used with your team and that you implemented Agile principles in project
management. Which part of your closeout report is the best place to document this
information?
a. Project summary
b. Methodology section
c. Performance baseline section
d. Key accomplishments section
7. When creating an executive summary, what questions should the summary answer?
a. What did we learn from this project?
b. Would we want to do another project like this in the future?
c. How effectively was the project delivered?
d. What problems did we encounter during this project?
8. Which of the following describes the audience of your project impact report?
a. Future project managers or other readers interested in your project’s details
b. Senior stakeholders or project sponsors who were not involved in the day-to-day
details of the project

c. Potential employers interested in your ability to synthesize and communicate
information clearly.
d. Project team members and vendors who made essential contributions to the
project’s final outcome.

Applying Project Management in The Real World

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Capstone: Applying Project Management in the Real World [Project Management]

Getting Started with the Course:

Creating a Project Charter:

○ Who is the “decision-maker”?

if you don’t know the specifics of your goals, writing them in

■ Stakeholder management throughout the project life cycle

■ Step 1: Access the Template

○ Email Exchange: Stakeholder Intro

Review: Initiating a Project

Building Out a Project Plan

Identifying Tasks and Milestones

vendor as a prior task.

➢ Tips for Defining Project Tasks

Look at project task dependencies

Enlist help from team members

Identify project tasks by their “done” factors

➢ Reflection: Analyzing a Project Charter

● New options for customers to order food

➢ Identifying Project Tasks: Conducting Online Research

d. Saves time on future projects within that industry

primary expertise is product development. Which type of interaction would be best to

➢ Activity: Part 2: Identify Project Tasks from Key Conversations

What are techniques to identify milestones?

○ Are there any dependencies or prerequisites?

Making Accurate Time Estimates

The three-point estimating process

Determining a final estimate

Three-point estimation formulas

The Triangular Distribution

The Beta (PERT) Distribution

transcripts (there are at least six tasks discussed in the supporting

tasks you should track more closely.

a. The restaurant has attempted table wiring at least once before.

★ Listen with curiosity.

➢ Respond: Negotiating with Empathy

6. Which of the following may indicate a milestone for your project?

Review: Building out a Project Plan

Developing a Quality Management Plan

specifications, or guidelines that could be used to ensure the materials, products,

expect the tablets to last before needing to be replaced. Do industry research on

include functionality, design, safety, ease of use, productivity, and

primary quality standard the team is focused on in the Category column.

project's quality management plan, specifically quality assurance. Remember,

3. What does evaluation help project managers to do?

Evaluation tab in your project plan, in the Evaluation Indicators column.

a. 98% of customers who use tablets receive the correct order.

c. An evaluation indicator serves as a research tool that asks respondents to answer a

of your presentation, but keep it brief. Your introduction should be

results mean for project quality.

At the end of this activity, you should have a completed presentation.

Step-By-Step Assignment Instructions

As you review the survey results, take notes on the following:

during the planning phase.

➢ Retrospectives: Encouraging Accountability

project or task. Accountability is a really important part of a productive

➢ Reflection: Encouraging Accountability

➢ Retrospectives: Addressing Negativity

order to effectively lead productive discussions in the future.

individually to share their thoughts. Calling on team members individually does a

➢ Reflection: Addressing Negativity

customers who have an enjoyable experience, right?

b. A raw data report of survey feedback.