Project Updates

How to communicate what’s being worked on, what’s going to be worked on and what’s done

People either directly involved in your project or product or affected by the outcome of your activities will need to be continuously getting status updates throughout the process.

You have the great Kanban board and as the leader you know very well what’s being worked on – you just check the In Progress column. But others in the organisation may find this information overwhelming. It’s a good idea to think thru how you want to communicate updates to others in the organisation.

It’s also better to be proactive than to wait for others to ask. You’ll get a higher buy-in, more participation and people will get more excited. And with you working in an agile style – you can deliver many things often in small iterations.

There’s also the other side of this. If you or someone in your team is not responsible for communication – there’s a risk that people will go directly to ask the developers. You don’t want to put them in a situation where they either have to respond to questions like “when is it done” or “why isn’t it done yet” or even worse the “I want it do be done now”.

This goes against all principles of a predictable continuous development flow. Don’t get me wrong. If the team is cross-functional they can communicate between themselves as much as they want. What I mean is the micro managers sneaking in.

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