Developing Project Insights with Leantime’s Template

Created by Marcel Folaron,
Last Updated: 27 Oct 2023 at 03:54 PM by Marcel Folaron

Project managers play a vital role in understanding and effectively communicating the status, progress, and goals of a project to stakeholders and managers. To accomplish this, project insights become crucial as they enable project managers to deliver accurate metrics and make informed decisions. By utilizing Leantime's template, project managers can develop comprehensive project insights that not only enhance understanding but also lead to efficient and effective solutions.

What is Project Insight?

Project insight refers to how well a project manager understands a project and its effects. This can include its progress, issues, budgets, expected results, and how it relates to other projects. Project insight is important when managers try to resolve issues or overcome obstacles with team members or the project itself. They assess their insight to ensure they understand the issue and the most practical solution, then they communicate the plan to their team to motivate them.

Developing These Insights

To develop strong project insights, project managers need to gather both hard and soft data related to the project. This involves collecting quantitative data such as dates, deliverables, and financial figures, as well as qualitative data obtained through observations, listening to stakeholders, and being aware of personal biases and conditioned responses.  To help you succeed, Leantime provides a built-in template to collect all these insights in one place. 

Navigate to Leantime’s Observe/Learn- Insights template on the project blueprints page. To learn more about how to use this template, visit our article here. 

Types of Insight

Leantime’s template features five different categories for insights requiring both a description of the insight and data to support it. These five categories are: 

Ethnographic Observations: These are insights that consist of gathering observations in natural environments. In project management, this might look like observing team interactions, problem-solving situations, and perceptions. Pay special attention to actions, language, or what is not done or said. 

Ethnographic Interviews: These are interviews that ask broad questions focused on structural or descriptive insights. Examples include team members describing their daily experiences, discussing ideal solutions, or demonstrating their work. These open-ended scenarios create an open and approachable environment that can help develop an insightful team.

Focus Groups: Focus groups are a more structured form of insight gathering. They allow multiple viewpoints to be shared and discussed. These can help you gain insights into true customer beliefs or helpful products and solutions. 

Secondary Research: This refers to the process of collecting and analyzing existing data and information that has been previously gathered for purposes other than your project. This could look like reviewing and synthesizing published sources, research studies, reports, case studies, and other relevant literature to obtain insights, trends, and knowledge related to the project's subject matter.

Derived Knowledge: This is where you can synthesize all the information, insights, and lessons you have learned from your previous experiences. It could involve capturing and documenting your knowledge gained from past projects and applying it to current or future projects to improve project outcomes and enhance organizational learning.

By implementing Leantime's template, project teams can systematically capture, analyze, and apply valuable project insights. Developing project insights through observation and

Updated on: 28/05/2024