Tips to improve the Efficiency of Project Email
What are the Potential Improvements?
Project management or leadership often puts emphasis or urgency on actions, To Do’s, or project tasks. This sets priority and clarifies understanding of team goals and activities. Communicating ensures fulfillment of project milestones and tasks as well as fulfillment of the project actions or detail responsibility. It develops better teamwork by hitting the right tone and assists in developing motivation. But often difficulties arise in finding the appropriate emphasis.
What is Project Communication?
Standard project communication utilizes email or phone, which does not employ the advantages of personal meetings. Good communication bridges the gap without a loss in understanding the project priorities or how to action them. Typical business restrictions such as time restraints place further limits on clearly understanding and formulating how to fulfill project responsibilities and timing. Project communication contains complex concepts and relationships. It puts the emphasis on clear understanding of the problem, identifies the goals. It defines the steps to completing the solution. It documents these steps and distributes the information. Further it documents any implementation problems arising and distributes them to manage the solution. Documenting the problems helps to structure the processes in a manner that supports rational problem solving methods. Although documentation costs time it forces the writer to think through details and to order these details for insertion into the resolution cycle. It considers and complies with working time constraints. Time restraints take precedence over grammar and perfection of writing style; but not of clarity. Writing short sentences helps the clarity of the message. Avoiding the passive and using the active voice keeps sentences short and helps pick out suitable verbs to explain.
Proposal Example in the Session from June 17, 2008.
A review of this session shows that an easy to use proposal contains the following sections.
Key Questions precede the sections and ensure collecting the necessary information for the analysis.
Solution: State the solution and summarize the plan to attain the solution
Benefits: Sell the solution and plan by presenting the advantages and benefits.
Introduction: Analyze the problem, what has changed and the consequences. Describe the background briefly.
Conclusion: Induce an implementation of the solution, the plans and initiate the team motivation.
Process and Schedule: Explain the processes involved, timeline and service or support. Itemize all tasks and assign deadlines.
Needs: summarize how the needs have been met.
Costs: breakdown the costs.
Optimizing Project Management Emails.
An email must not contain all of the sections but choose the applicable ones. The following descriptions simplify use.
Asking the key questions first induces a question in the mind of the reader that makes him aware that he needs an answer. He opens to your suggestions.
Getting (project) details. Key questions for the analysis including What was the situation? What management goals needed to be met? What hindered completion and why? Answering these questions ensures getting the information to construct the proposed process. Asking the Key Questions before writing cuts down overhead and structures the information. Clear structures lead to understandable, rational flow.
Solution: describe the parts of the solution. Explain how they fit together.
Benefits: sell your position, use for the project, and contributions to project
Proposed process and schedule: Explain procedures, lead-time and after-sales service. Define the requirements of the process and schedule: What does the proposed process and schedule require?
Costs: Give a breakdown of the costs and items
Scheduling/ deadlines, timeline:
Conclusion: Offer encouragement to the team members to continue to complete deadlines on time. Briefly summarize their previous accomplishments and comment on the quality of work.
Project Communication connects team members to successfully complete goals on time, with the specified results, and within cost. These tips cut the time needed to write emails to interconnect team members and maintain motivation.
Writing Exercise
Now take one of the more difficult emails facing you to be written. Look at the sections outlined above and decide which ones apply to this email. Jot down the questions and answer them.
Then write the email.
After writing the email decide how satisfied you were with it. How well did it meet the requirements?
Think about answers to the following questions:
- What was difficult to write?
- What was the strategy used to write the email to surmount the difficulties?
- What standard terms or expressions would make the email more understandable and improve precision?
- How can the format be changed to make writing more productive?
- What methods could be employed to rationalize writing emails?
Send me the email you wrote as well as the questions and answers by email if you would like a reaction.
Practice the tenses
Correct the tense. Otherwise this slide has only minor written errors. Good job. Highlight these errors; correct them or we will discuss them.
Insert the following tenses (use) the verbs in parentheses
External staff _____ (increase) in 2000.
It ___ (remain) stable or increase in the following years.
We ____ (train) our internal staff well.
We ___ (develop) many innovations to save costs in the past.
Our services ___ (provide) technical support for the production.
Production needs ___ (change) continuously. We ____ (try) to fulfill them in the future. Our past accomplishments ___ (meet) the goals.
Departmental costs___ (drop) in the past. We ___ (work) in the future to find new ways to ___ (decrease) costs. Often we ___ (innovate) in the future to ___ (meet) these goals. We ___ (look) continuously in the past to find new partners ___ (provide) external services. In the past we ___ (require) a high level of quality service from them; so that we ___ (meet) our requirements.
Grammar
Simple Present. You answer the questions in the Simple Present because you describe the present situation at this moment. By answering the questions you analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your current capability to communicate in Business English.
Review how to build and construct the Simple Present.
How to build the Simple Present Tense: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/330/grammar/pres.htm
Reference: English Language Centre Study Zone. University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
If you have time, do some of the online exercises.
Online Help. If you want “public” help or discussion in the text or exercises, feel free to use the blogger as your medium of choice. If you have questions, or need help in using the collaboration platform at Google Docs [Google >> Mehr Text und Tabelle, send me an email at: mailto:Gary_Gabriel@web.de?subject=Online Help
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