Crystal balls, fortune telling, and reading tea leaves are the non-negotiable skills of a top-performing project manager. If you find yourself channeling your inner Mystic Meg to keep your projects on track, it’s clear you've made it to the big leagues. For the rest of us, however, who haven’t yet mastered the art of seeing the future, is it possible to spot potential risks before they show up at our door?
Well, the good news is that there are signs and ways to interpret signals so you can predict potential pitfalls before they happen. While it is impossible to “actually” predict the future there are a number of data points that are pretty strong indicators for pending project risk.
I’ll be honest, it is way easier to outline the signals and discuss them here, but tracking, monitoring, weighting and analyzing them is a whole other ball game. For the sake of this article I’m going to take you behind the curtain of Superdone’s AI Project Intelligence to share how we go about helping our customers see around corners and how we approach analyzing and monitoring conversations.
To keep things simple we will break down the items into what we call “Critical Detections”. These are the project anomalies we are listening for. From these we perform an enormous amount of data manipulation, structuring and analysis to produce project management improvements.
The five we will introduce in this article are Scope, Sentiment, Attendance, Blockers & Impediments, and Momentum. Let’s take a closer look:
Drift or Scope/Requirement Changes
Scope, work, feature, or requirement changes in any project are defined as material additions to the initial scope of work outlined in the project brief or plan. What is important to track is whether participants are being asked to expand their workload on a project. Equally important is identifying the new features or requirements being requested.
Strong project managers track scope changes closely and understand that cataloging and gaining consensus or approval before accepting changes is critical. Scope creep can silently erode timelines and put pressure on the team’s ability to deliver.
Some examples of what project managers should be listening for include:
- Individuals expressing that work, features, or requirements are out of scope
- Individuals suggesting that a current requirement should be expanded
- Individuals indicating that the timeline will be affected by additional work or requirements
- Conversations introducing new developments in the project
- Conversations suggesting a switch in strategy or any development that materially changes the end date
Sentiment
Sentiment can be harder to track or identify, especially when teams are working remotely. Fortunately, modern computing and the use of Naïve Bayes or Support Vector Machines (SVM) make it possible to interpret sentiment accurately.
In this context, sentiment refers to neutral, positive, or negative communication by meeting attendees. With the help of technology, project managers are encouraged to monitor attendee sentiment during calls to understand team dynamics and spot potential friction early.
Project managers, or their tools, should listen for nuances in tone and behavior that influence project health, identifying communications that are either constructive or disruptive.
Examples include:
Positive:
- Praising or complimenting others for their work or collaboration
- Recognizing successful task completions that move the project forward
- Expressing optimism about the project or related workstreams
Negative:
- Raising voices or interrupting others
- Showing disrespect or hostility toward team members
- Expressing frustration with progress or the project overall
- Abruptly leaving a meeting following an outburst
Attendance
We get it. A project manager tracking attendance feels a bit like being back in school. No one wants to feel like roll call is part of their workday. Still, attendance matters.
If you can clearly explain why attendance data is valuable in aggregate, your team is less likely to see it as intrusive. The reality is simple: project managers need accountable, responsible, and consulted team members to be present for key discussions. When people miss meetings, decisions stall, progress slows, and projects fail.
Attendance is important not only for individual meetings but across the entire project timeline. Every project has critical participants whose attendance should carry more weight. The RACI framework can be especially valuable for identifying these roles.
When reviewing attendance patterns, look for anomalies or trends that might signal trouble:
- Accountable individuals missing or dropping from meetings
- New accountable individuals added to the project
- Responsible individuals missing or dropping from meetings
- New responsible individuals added to the project
Blockers and Impediments
Blockers and impediments happen in every project and they happen often. The project manager’s primary job is to remove or resolve them as quickly as possible. Sometimes that is within the PM’s control, but often it requires help from team members who are responsible or consulted on specific areas.
Blockers and impediments are developments that slow, halt, or threaten to extend the project timeline. They can take many forms such as technical constraints, team bandwidth issues, external dependencies, or any other factor that delays or disrupts progress.
Common examples include:
- Discovering that something is not technically possible or practical
- Realizing a task is more complex than originally understood
- Learning that a key milestone is at risk due to an unforeseen development
- A team member being pulled into another project and unable to meet expectations
Momentum
Momentum is everything. When your team is in the zone, it is pure bliss. But when momentum fades, projects can drag and lose energy.
Momentum is influenced by many factors, especially blockers and impediments, but it can often be identified by meeting cadence. Healthy projects have consistent rhythms such as daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly.
When that rhythm changes, it is a signal worth noting. Meetings that are spaced farther apart, shortened, rescheduled, or canceled altogether can all indicate shifting momentum. These subtle cues are early warnings that a project may be losing steam.
Some Final Thoughts
You might be thinking, “This all sounds obvious, Superdone.” We hear you. It is. But for a project manager juggling countless meetings, tracking sentiment, attendance, blockers, and requirement changes is no small task.
We have lived through the chaos of complex projects and the frustration of missed deadlines or unhappy clients. That is why we created Superdone: a trusted co-pilot designed to make projects smoother, help PMs anticipate risks, and bring them closer to crystal-ball status.
If you are curious how Superdone automates everything we have discussed above, come take a closer look.
Thanks, folks. We appreciate you.