Communication Skills for Technical Program Managers

In my last article, I wrote about the four skills that, in my opinion, make a good Technical Program Manager (TPM). One additional skill that I mention deserves its own article: "Being able to communicate with stakeholders and the engineering team in ways that are appropriate for each becomes a crucial task used throughout the job." Without the ability to communicate effectively, the TPM really cannot do their job. Here are a few recommendations for improving your communication skills as a TPM:

Effective Written Communications

I still have the copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style that I got in high school and still refer to it regularly as the bible of effective English writing. Whether it is in emails, status reports, or briefing documents, it is so important that the impact of your ideas is not hobbled by your grammar or diction. A tool that I often use is the new Editor feature in Microsoft Word to go over my documents and mail messages before I send them. Get in the habit of using automated grammar checking tools just like you use spell-checking.

Status Reporting with Dashboards

I have gotten in the habit of creating interactive visual dashboards with Power BI to share the status of the projects I am running to be able to clearly tell the story of the project with pictures and data. The current dashboard for my project pulls data from Excel files, Jira projects, and Azure DevOps to tell a complete up-to-date picture of the project that can be easily turned into a static PDF. Every Friday when I want to generate my weekly report, I do this (in about 5 minutes):

1.  I confirm with my team that all their data is up to date in the systems that we use.
2. I add a row in an Excel spreadsheet with a paragraph that summarizes the project status.
3. I refresh the dashboard.
4. I publish it to Power BI dashboard to a shared location.
5. I print the dashboard to a PDF.
6. I send an email to stakeholders (I already have an email list) with the summary, PDF, and link to the dashboards.

I have found that no two projects are similar enough to reuse the same dashboard without modification. Don't force yourself to put everything on a single page. When creating a dashboard, I think about these things:

• What stories do I want to tell?
• Who is the audience?
• What visuals best represent the components of the project?

Edward Tufte wrote a series of books and runs courses on analyzing and presenting information – I highly recommend both to improve your visual communications skills.

User Experience Prototyping

Often a TPM needs to convey how a user experience needs to work – wearing the hat of a user experience designer. The ability to create a simple user experience prototype with tools like Adobe XD or Figma give the TPM that ability. They can replay an interaction sequence to stakeholders and engineers often showing aspects that are missed with static images.

Videography

As we all know with the phenomenon of YouTube – video is effective. Recording storytelling, walking through a user experience, or demonstrating an application are all common ways that a TPM will use videos to communicate to their audience. Though there are many tools available for video editing, I like the simplicity of Adobe Rush when creating videos.

Storytelling

As I mentioned in my previous article, the ability to tell the story of a project, is important because it is how the TPM can both relate their vision and explain the results in a way that others can relate to and retell. 

Inclusive Communications

As we don’t want to exclude anyone by our communication style and technique, it is so important to ensure that we as TPMs are inclusive in the way we communicate:

• Don’t use jargon.
• If you use acronyms (like TPM), always spell them out at least once.
• Ensure that you implement affordances for those who are visually impaired, like alt tags on images and descriptive labels on your dashboard graphics and use tools like Accessibility Insights if you build software or websites.
• Use auto-captioning in your web meeting software if available.
• If you use web meeting software like Microsoft Teams, opt for native sharing of presentations (like PowerPoint files) instead of screen sharing – as they can be “read” easier by visually impaired people using assistive technologies.

A TPM uses a collection of tools to communicate to their team and stakeholders – knowing what tools to use when – and how – is what makes the TPM an effective communicator.

As a Technical Program Manager, what are your favorite communication tools?