Project-M8
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Stage 03

Execution

Keep the team producing working output and remove what blocks them.

You are here if…

  • Work is happening but progress is hard to demonstrate.
  • The same blockers reappear week after week.
  • Status meetings are reporting theatre.

What to do

Make the work visible in one place

2 hours

One board, one source of truth. If you have three trackers, pick one and archive the rest this week.

Show working output every two weeks

Recurring

A demo to real stakeholders beats a status slide. It converts opinions into decisions.

Log decisions as they happen

5 min per decision

Date, decision, who decided, why, what was rejected. This is your single best defence against re-litigation.

Escalate blockers with a deadline

Ongoing

'I need an answer by Thursday or the milestone moves' — escalation without a date is just complaining.

This is the stage where most of my client work starts. Book a free 20-minute consultation — free, no obligation.

Where it usually goes wrong

The PM becomes the bottleneck for every decision.

Publish decision rights: what the team decides, what you decide, what the steering committee decides.

Stand-ups turn into status reports to the manager.

Change the question from 'what did you do' to 'what is in our way'.

Download and use now

Ready-to-use files from my own projects — no email required.

Requirement DocumentEpic → feature → user story → acceptance criteria in one sheet, with trace codes so nothing gets built on a verbal agreement.Excel workbook (.xlsx) · Fill it during scoping, then use the acceptance criteria column as the definition of done at review.Task List & Market Setup TrackerA working task log with type, priority, status, owner and a dated decision log — plus a market/setup overview sheet for rollouts.Excel workbook (.xlsx) · Run it as the single list in weekly delivery meetings; the log column becomes your audit trail for steering reporting.
Next stageMonitoring & Control →

Work with me

Sometimes the fix needs a person, not a template.

I am Tigran Zakarian, a senior project manager with 13 years of end-to-end delivery for clients such as H&M Group, TV4, SEB and Clear Channel. I work on exactly the situations described across this site: rescuing drifting deliveries, setting up governance that people actually use, and facilitating the workshops that unblock decisions.

Projects & programmes

  • Interim / rescue project management
  • Programme & multi-team delivery ownership
  • PMO, governance and steering setup
  • Product ownership & backlog clarity

Workshops

  • Risk analysis workshops
  • Planning and prioritisation sessions
  • Decision and stakeholder alignment
  • Retrospectives that change something

Talks & training

  • Educational talks and keynotes
  • Practical project management training
  • Kanban / flow ways of working
  • Team coaching for new PMs
Book a free consultation tigran.zak@gmail.com LinkedIn