Prompts for project managers: scoping, risks, and meeting minutes

A project manager gets an email from her director: "We're redoing the nonprofit's website for September, can you take care of it?" That's all. No budget, no scope, no idea who signs off. Before she can plan anything, she has to turn that sentence into a project.

This is the kind of moment where AI proves useful: it doesn't know your project, but it knows plenty of projects of the same kind, and it can list the questions people forget to ask. It's up to you to keep responsibility for the answers and the decisions.

Scope a project by asking the right questions

Don't ask for a scoping note right away. Ask for the questions, then write from your answers. This is the technique of having the AI interview you before it produces anything.

I am a project manager. Here is the request as I received it:
"[PASTE THE REQUEST]"

Don't write anything. Ask me the questions I need answered to write a scoping note: real objective, users, scope, what is out of scope, time and budget constraints, decision-makers, success criteria.
Group them by theme, from most important to least important, and mark with a star the ones I must get an answer to before planning. Ten questions maximum.

Put these questions to your sponsor, then come back with the answers:

Here are my answers to the scoping questions:
[ANSWERS, EVEN INCOMPLETE]

Write a one-page scoping note: context, objective, scope (included and excluded), deliverables, milestones, stakeholders with their role, constraints, success criteria.
For each element that remains unclear or rests on an assumption, write "to be confirmed" and name the person who can decide. Do not add any deadline or budget that I haven't given.

The "to be confirmed" items are the useful part of this note: it gives you the list of conversations to have this week.

A risk register that gets out of the abstract

Generic risks ("delay," "lack of resources") help nobody. To get the AI to come up with concrete risks, give it the particulars of the project.

Here is the project: [DESCRIPTION IN 5 LINES].
Team: [WHO, WHAT AVAILABILITY]. Vendors: [WHO]. External dependencies: [E.G., LEGAL DEPARTMENT APPROVAL, TEXTS DELIVERED BY VOLUNTEERS].
What went wrong on our last comparable project: [FACTS].

Build a table of the ten most likely risks for THIS project: risk, concrete cause, early warning sign, effect on the project, preventive action, owner to be named.
Rule out generic risks that apply to every project. Rank them by criticality and tell me which elements of my text you are relying on.

The last element of the prompt, which asks it to justify each risk from your text, lets you spot the ones the AI made up to fill the table. If a risk rests on nothing, delete it.

Meeting minutes that produce actions

Minutes that tell the story of the meeting are useless. Minutes that list the decisions, the actions, and the owners move the project forward.

Here is the transcript or notes of the project meeting on [DATE]. Participants: [FIRST NAMES].

[PASTE THE TEXT]

Write the minutes in 4 parts:
1. Decisions made (one sentence each).
2. Actions: table with action, owner, deadline.
3. Blockers and what is needed to clear them.
4. Topics postponed to the next meeting.

Only list an owner or a deadline if they are stated in the text; otherwise write "to be defined." Do not turn a discussion into a decision. End with the three points that need to be confirmed in writing with the participants.

Reread the decisions with the notes in front of you. A sentence like "we're going with vendor B" is a decision with heavy consequences, and it must not come from the tool's interpretation. If your meeting is recorded, check that the participants know it and that your organization allows transcription by an external tool.

The status email to the sponsor

The sponsor wants three things: where the project stands, what's going wrong, and what is expected of them. A prompt writes it from your loose notes.

Write a 120-word progress email for [SPONSOR'S TITLE], based on these elements: [PROGRESS], [VARIANCES FROM THE PLAN], [DECISION OR SUPPORT I NEED, WITH DEADLINE].
Order: overall status in one sentence (green, amber, or red, with the reason), what has moved forward, what is stuck, what I expect from them.
Don't downplay a delay and don't invent any cause. Factual tone.

To chain these steps without losing the thread, look at the prompt chains method, which works well for scoping done in several stages.

Before you start

Avoid pasting confidential project data (contracts, client names, financial information) into a tool whose terms of use you don't control. Anonymize, or ask your IT department which tool is authorized.

To try this week, take the project that gives you the most trouble to describe and run its initial request through the first prompt. In five minutes you'll spot the questions you haven't asked yet.