Aligning Team Expectations with Project Timelines

Unclear expectations are a project killer When I first started managing projects, I thought everyone would be on the same page. Alignment on roles, responsibilities, timelines, & deliverables Spoiler alert - they weren't. Fast forward 6 months: → A task was delayed because no one owned it → A stakeholder expected something we never agreed to → The team was frustrated by murky priorities It all came back to unclear expectations. Now, every time I kick off a project, I focus on 3 key things: ☝ Define roles & responsibilities Who owns what? Don't assume people know. Spell it out. RACI charts work wonders. ✌ Clarify deliverables & deadlines What are we delivering and when? Be specific. Confirm alignment with your team/stakeholders. 🤟 Overcommunicate early Repeat key details. Document agreements/decisions. Follow-up to ensure understanding. Clarity by setting expectations prevents future problems. It also establishes trust, teamwork, and successful delivery. When everyone knows what's expected, they can execute instead of guess. PS: what's your go-to strategy for setting clear expectations? 🤙

Most problems are communication problems. Not misaligned goals. Not bad clients. Not poor execution. Just a lack of clarity. By not setting expectations clearly, not saying “this isn’t in scope” early enough, and just assuming that people understand timelines, you'll be stuck with a way more painful conversation later on. I always remind my team to overcommunicate. And honestly, it’s one of the biggest unlocks we’ve had operationally. Here’s what that actually looks like in practice: 🔁 Repeat expectations more than once: in writing, on calls, and in briefs. 📌 Define scope and what’s not in scope. 📆 Assign timelines with names attached to every deliverable. 📣 Say the “hard” thing early, before it becomes awkward. 📄 Share recap emails after every key call, even if it feels redundant. It’s not rocket science, and it protects your team, your clients, and your sanity.

“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.” — Neil Strauss A friend of mine does a lot of marriage counseling. He shared this observation with me: “Most of the problems I see come down to missed expectations. Too often, those expectations were unspoken.” That's not just an issue in marriage relationships. It’s true with our stakeholders, too. There are expectations that something will be included in a project—or that it won’t be. It was never talked about—or at least, not clearly discussed. But the expectations remain. So much of project management comes down to managing the balance between expectations and reality. The more aligned stakeholder expectations are with the reality of what we’re delivering, the more likely the project is to be viewed by them as a success. What are some ways to maintain that balance? Here are some ideas from our Essentials of Project Management course: ✔️ Give more visibility to assumptions. Document them. Review them with stakeholders. Update them. Don't keep assumptions tucked away in your head. Pro tip: People say all the time: "Don't assume! You know what the word assume means, right?" That's terrible advice for projects. There are always assumptions. The problem is when they're overly optimistic or not communicated and considered. ✔️ Use exclusions to help stakeholders understand what they WON’T be getting. For the longest time, I chafed against documenting exclusions. If I didn’t tell someone they were going to get something, why should I have to tell them they aren’t? Because they make assumptions. Pro tip: Out-of-scopes don’t always mean "never." They might just mean they’re exclusions for the upcoming delivery. It’s okay for something to be out-of-scope for now but on the roadmap for later. ✔️ Have frequent check-ins. The frequency can depend on the project, but our experience shows that reality and expectations can start to diverge if your check-ins are more than two weeks apart. ✔️ Validate scope as it’s completed. In those check-ins, let your stakeholders see what’s been done. There’s nothing like actually seeing a deliverable to help a stakeholder understand if there's alignment with their expectations. ✔️ Increase trust with your stakeholders. As obvious as this may seem, it's worth being reminded that the dirty little secret of business is that everything is done on relationships. When there's trust, you're just checking in. When there's not, you're checking up. Understanding flows faster and more clearly when there's trust. 👉👉 What else would you add to this list? ------------------------------- “I thought my husband would ____________.” “I grew up in a house where my mom would _____________ so I assumed my wife would as well.” Yeah, that's a recipe for trouble. Marriage relationships can struggle because of missed and unstated expectations. So can projects. According to Neil Strauss, being more clear about expectations can avoid premeditated resentments.