If you're a project manager, you've probably been faced with the challenge of improving a process. You were careful to gather all relevant details into a complete brief that you've shared with your design or development team. You set timelines. You determined who needs to review and approve and built them into the workflow. Everyone is aligned and on board with the process.
What’s next? One of the most important steps in improving processes is gathering feedback from team members. But gathering feedback isn't always quick or straightforward—especially if your process is complex or includes several steps and contributors.
Let's discuss how to streamline feedback loops, minimize rounds of revision and duplicative work, and continue to simplify and improve processes.
Why you should gather team feedback
Without gathering feedback, it's impossible to gain alignment. Ideally, alignment starts early in the process. If your project or creative brief is detailed enough and is tied to larger business objectives, the output shouldn't come as a surprise to any stakeholder. Still, the feedback stage of the project management process will ensure teams are aligned and build trust and collaboration across the organization.
Who to include in feedback loops
For any project manager, determining the appropriate number of stakeholders is key to optimizing results—if you fail to loop in the right stakeholders, you will miss critical inputs and institutional knowledge. Extend the feedback invitation too far, and you'll have "too many cooks in the kitchen," which can lead to watered-down creative output and endless rounds of review and approval.
Here's who you should include in feedback loops:
The manager overseeing the process
As a project manager, this might be you! View yourself as the first line of defense before sharing your team’s work across the organization. Of course, it's essential to include any other managers overseeing or responsible for the final creative output or go-to-market plan in the feedback loop, too.
Overseeing managers typically have a bird’s-eye view of how every project or task fits into the big picture. Gathering the feedback of the manager (or managers) overseeing the process or project is critical to ensure your team's work aligns to larger strategic objectives.
Team members who own parts of the process
If someone owns part of the process, it likely means their performance is also being measured by its success. As such, contributors deserve an opportunity to help direct the outcome and provide feedback for their stage in the process flow.
Other stakeholders
Who holds a strategic stake in the decision-making process? Who will be promoting and distributing the outcome of the project? Who is responsible for the larger initiative or campaign your project ladders up to? These are all examples of stakeholders, and they'll all provide different types of feedback depending on their priorities and role. It's up to the project manager to determine who needs to stay informed and provide feedback every step of the way.
How to gather team feedback for process improvement
It's fairly simple to determine who should be part of the feedback loop, but it's tougher to gather feedback in a way that ensures everyone has the opportunity to offer their input while keeping work moving.
It may be helpful to approach gathering feedback from a synchronous perspective. Often, when teams review a project in a vacuum, they may not have all the context they need to understand the reasoning behind certain strategic or creative decisions. Bringing everyone together to communicate and collaborate around feedback in real time, can help eliminate confusion and unnecessary rounds of revisions.
Ideas for getting synchronous feedback
When it comes to gathering synchronous feedback, collaboration is key. In hybrid work environments, the best and most efficient way to come together is virtually.
Facilitate Zoom discussions
The quickest way to get everyone in the figurative room is virtual conferencing. As a project manager, you can quickly review the brief, inputs, and strategic objectives to ensure everyone is viewing the work from a unified perspective. When a project is ready for review, set up a video call and allow the project lead, creative director, designer, or whoever is responsible for the output or production of the project to walk through the work.
Once the presentation is complete, open up the conversation to the room. If you're still early in the approval process, ask the team to share whether the project aligns with the brief vs. nitpicky comments and edits. You can dig into the details in later approval stages and collaborate on real-time updates.
Pro tip: Delineate the difference between strategic and subjective feedback early and often to keep conversations on track and projects moving along smoothly with minimal contention.
Map the process together
Sometimes, it's difficult for individual approvers to see the forest through the trees when reviewing a project and providing constructive feedback.
As a project manager, it's important to give your team the tools to understand their place in the process and the project's contribution to larger objectives and goals. A process map can help your team see where they fit in the work and gain insight into who is contributing to the project and at which stage. This context is crucial to maintaining alignment as work continues and allows team members to advocate for themselves and their work.
