BLUF

BLUF in planning and project management

The BLUF model can also be used in planning and management to ensure the purpose of plans are kept in mind, decision-maker support is more readily attainable, and impact may more easily and accurately be measured. It is considered as the best way for intelligence analysts to communicate with policymakers and commanders, who are often too busy to read and carefully digest every word of the intelligence products they rely upon to make decisions. Summarizing each paragraph at its beginning allows decision makers to quickly skim intelligence products without sacrificing clarity. Because materials that are not in the BLUF format – such as academic texts – may contain paragraphs with several important ideas located at the beginning, middle, or end, readers who skim these publications may inadvertently miss important information.

The BLUF approach to sales talk, for example, is also called the elevator speech. It entails that the messenger should be able to pitch a story exactly as the elevator travels from one floor to another, which is approximately 30 seconds or less.

Following are some tips on using BLUF in project management from brighthubpm.com:

In order to synthesize the details well, there should be a great deal of topic mastery or familiarity of the whole story on the side of the messenger.
Inputs must be comprehensive yet concise. In other words, wordiness and fillers must be avoided.
For BLUF structured speech to work, all aspects of analysis must be understood such as "the critical success factors, the risks, the assumptions, and so on".
Since BLUF is audience-centric, salient points must be addressed clearly while taking into consideration the needs and background of the listener.
A clearly defined purpose must be kept in mind when structuring a speech in BLUF format: simple and measurable enough for a decision to be made possible.

A BLUF allows messengers to "think through relevant views and understand these ideas as our stakeholders see them".