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The Complete Guide to Agile Project Management

Have you ever wondered how tech giants manage to develop and update numerous products in such a short time? The answer lies in Agile. Agile project management focuses on speed, frequent releases, and feedback loops. According to Vitality Chicago, Agile’s failure rate is a meager 8% compared to Waterfall’s 22%. It’s no wonder 71% of companies use Agile approaches, and the interest is stronger than ever.

What is Agile Project Management?

Agile is an iterative approach to project management that prioritizes collaboration, feedback, and response to changes during the project lifecycle. Here, the project is broken down into short developmental cycles or stages called iterations. During each iteration, team members collaborate with stakeholders to adjust and improve processes and the final deliverable.

Agile project management traces its roots back to software development in the 1990s. Software teams, in particular, found traditional project management methods (such as Waterfall) to be too rigid. Software development requires autonomy, adaptability, and flexibility as opposed to more traditional projects (such as manufacturing) with fixed processes and predictable outcomes.

The Agile methodology has since found widespread use outside of software development and can be applied to virtually any project with constantly changing objectives.

4 Tools to Improve Agile Project Management Implementation

The Agile philosophy and principles aside, there are practical tools that you need to implement this methodology successfully. The most critical tools include:

1. Project Management Software

If ever there was a cheat-sheet for implementing Agile project management, you can find it in a software suite. There are project management tools dedicated explicitly to agile software development teams. However, this software tends to target DevOps since Agile is inherently a software development approach.

Instead, we recommend Wrike, a more flexible project management tool adaptable to various industries. Wrike’s features cover all the essential Agile principles and include:

• Customizable dashboards, request forms, and workflows to suit any team
• Enhanced collaboration, including files, reports, tasks, and calendar sharing
• Kanban boards, interactive Gnatt charts, and purpose-built templates
• Task automation
• Media integrations
• Time tracking
• Advanced analytics
• And more

Wrike also offers free trials for all its plans. Good project management software comes integrated with the essential tools you need to manage your Agile project from start to finish. Check out our Best Project Management Software post here for the complete picture of your best project management software currently on the market.

2. Agile Project Plan and Workflow Templates

As with all project management methodologies, you’ll need to develop a project plan. The first step is to define a project vision, including documenting the known business and technical requirements. This stage also includes gathering and documenting estimates for scope, time, and budget. Crucially, project planning also involves creating your project team.

Unlike traditional project management methodologies, Agile planning primarily focuses on the first sprint. An agile template helps make the planning easier by using a checklist-style approach not to miss anything. The project plan template also helps visualize the plan and is easily shareable with team members.

The workflow template is different from the project plan template. Depending on the framework you choose (Scrum is the most common for Agile project management), the appropriate template helps to hasten this process. Again, templates are crucial for visualizing your workflow. Also, the workflow for Agile PM focuses on the initial sprint or iteration.

Good PM software comes loaded with these templates, so it’s only a matter of filling out the details. Wrike, for example, easily handles the project planning and workflow stages, so you don’t need additional templates.

3. Work in Progress (WIP) Limit

The Agile PM methodology places a hard cap on the number of tasks that team members can complete at any one time. To stay true to this principle, a WIP tool helps visualize the pieces of work in progress and make the necessary adjustments. For example, Agile recommends a limit of three ongoing tasks at a time. This approach helps to avoid context switching and multitasking.

A Kanban board is a simple yet effective WIP tool. The board uses cards and columns to break down tasks into “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Complete” segments of a workflow.

Most project management software, including Wrike, already comes with integrated Kanban boards. If you want a Kanban-style standalone tool, we recommend Trello.

4. Burndown Charts

A burndown chart helps to visualize the team’s progress from the end user’s perspective. Simply put, this chart reveals how much work is left to do and the amount of time to do it in. A burndown chart includes the following crucial data points:

• Total work in each iteration
• Remaining tasks
• Estimated team speed
• Actual team speed

There are two main types of burndown charts. The first is the Sprint Burndown, which shows the work remaining in the sprint or iteration. Secondly, the Product Burndown showing the performance for the entire project.

Wrike, like most other project management software adapted to Agile, includes burndown charts.

The Basics of Agile Project Management

There are four distinct values laid out in the Agile Manifesto. These values form the foundation of Agile project management.

Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

Focusing on processes and tools makes it difficult to accommodate new thinking, new ideas, and unique requirements. This Agile value focuses on team members’ contribution to the project rather than processes and tools driving the project. This approach helps develop an agile team that can quickly adapt to internal and external changes rather than bogged down by bureaucracy and fixed procedures and tools.

In any case, team member’s energy, problem-solving abilities, and innovation are more straightforward to tap into than complex processes and tools. The latter requires plenty of time and money investment to maintain, which can divert focus from the crucial tasks at hand. Central to this human-centric value is communication, teamwork, innovation, and taking personal ownership of the project.

Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation

Traditional project management methodologies are heavy on documentation. From interface design documents, technical prospectus, technical requirements, documentation plans, and the subsequent approvals, it’s no wonder delays in the development process are inevitable.

While Agile doesn’t completely throw out documentation, it streamlines the process to the bare minimum to get the work done.

In Agile, documentation is replaced with User Story. The user story describes the software (or product) features from an end-user perspective. User stories use simple, informal, and natural language and are a simplified version of traditional documentation.

In short, a user story answers the “who,” “what,” and “why” of the products’ requirements to determine the steps in the project lifecycle.

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation

Traditional project management methodologies insist on detailed contracts before and after the project. Frequently, there is a mismatch in the contract terms, the final product, and the customer’s expectations. To bypass this challenge, Agile project management focuses on customer collaboration throughout the project lifecycle.

This approach ensures that the final product meets the customer’s expectations while minimizing wasted time and resources.

Responding to Change over Following a Plan

Agile project management is peculiar for its minimalistic approach to project planning. Traditional PM methodologies outline elaborate plans at the beginning of the project that team members must follow to the tee. This strategy can get in the way of customer satisfaction if the client requests new features or changes the project scope.

Agile proposes an evaluation after each project stage or sprint. Any new feedback or discoveries are then implemented in the next stage. This system allows for flexibility and adaptability and accommodates shifting priorities throughout the project lifecycle.

7 Tricks for Implementing Agile Project Management

Here are seven things you can do to implement the Agile approach to your project management methodology.

1. Choose a Suitable Agile Approach

While there are fixed principles that define Agile project management, Agile is actually an umbrella term encompassing several approaches. Ultimately, all Agile practices have two things in common. They are iterative and incremental processes. The Agile approach you choose largely depends on the project at hand. The specific framework may also change from one project to the next. Examples of Agile frameworks include:

Scrum

Scrum framework is almost synonymous with Agile and is arguably the most popular framework. Scrum breaks down the project into sections called sprints that are typically two or four weeks long. At the beginning of each sprint, team members prioritize a list of requirements to complete during the specific sprint. The project unfolds one sprint at a time.

Scrum teams consist of a Scrum Master and a Product Owner. The scrum master is the team’s leader and is primarily responsible for ensuring that the team sticks to Agile principles. The Product Owner is the subject matter expert for the project, responsible for ensuring that the project lives up to the stakeholder’s expectations.

The rest of the scrum team comprises cross-disciplinary experts such as designers, architects, engineers, and testers.

Kanban

The Kanban framework focuses on visualizing the workflow. This way, teams can break down the project into small pieces. Kanban is particularly effective at identifying bottlenecks and reducing waste. Also, this framework lays out explicit process policies and well-defined project limits to maximize efficiency and productivity.

Kanban encourages teams to focus on fewer work items at a time. This strategy helps keep the work items from getting blocked, stuck, or delayed during the different development stages.

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme programming is specifically geared toward software development projects. This framework is similar to scrum in that it breaks down the project into sprints. However, XP lays out explicit processes specific to software development.

Also, Extreme Programming is more focused on the quality of software practitioner’s habits, such as adhering to coding standards and frequently checking code against the master code.

Other Agile Frameworks

Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP) are the most common Agile frameworks. Additional frameworks include:

• Feature-driven Development (FFD)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
• Lean
• Crystal
• Bimodal
• Hybrid

2. Set the Scope for the Project

Project planning entails defining the project scope. The best time to do this is during the initial planning meeting. In Agile, you’ll be loosely defining the project’s end goal and how to achieve it. Since Agile projects are inherently flexible and rely heavily on feedback, the work scope should reflect this reality.

An elevator pitch works well for setting the scope for your project.

3. Train Your Team Members

While simple on the surface, Agile can be complicated to implement. For this reason, it’s a good idea to train the critical team members on Agile principles. The Agile Manifesto is a great launching pad, but your team may need more comprehensive training.

If you’re implementing Agile for the first time, it’s a good idea to start with a small non-crucial project. This strategy gives your team a low-pressure scenario to practice its Agile knowledge and expertise. Similarly, you can evaluate these small projects and determine areas of improvement before moving on to larger and more critical projects.

4. Implement Daily Standups

The daily standup is Agile speak for daily meetings. These meetings are crucial given the fast-paced nature of Agile project management. These meetings are typically 10-15 minutes and discuss three crucial aspects:

• What did we complete yesterday?
• What are we working on today?
• Are there any obstacles in the way?

Agile being a team-centric methodology, these daily meetings ensure that your team can identify and resolve problems as soon as they occur.

5. Stay Focused on Flow Efficiency

Traditional project management methodologies focus on optimum capacity utilization. However, in Agile, the main focus should be flow. By following the mantra “manage the work, not the workers,” you can create an environment where team members lean towards value-adding activities, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.

To this end, it’s helpful to identify specific value-adding activities and those activities that don’t add value. The former goes on the Kanban board, where it’s then easy to map the workflow from start to finish.

Swarming is also a valuable strategy for optimizing flow. When a team member finishes their assigned work items, they help other members with their tasks rather than starting new work. Swarming helps to foster teamwork and collaboration and is an effective tool for removing bottlenecks from the workflow.

6. Conduct Sprint Reviews

A large chunk of incremental improvement comes from sprint reviews. Ideally, you should have a functional piece of software (or product) shipped at the end of each sprint cycle. This is an excellent opportunity to review what the team did right and what could be improved during the next sprint.

Include everyone working on the project and the critical stakeholders in the sprint review. An effective sprint review should take an hour or two. This isn’t the time for lengthy PowerPoint presentations and feature dissertations. Instead, focus on the practical aspects of the sprint and how these can be improved.

7. Manage the Queue Size

Traditional project management places great emphasis on timelines. While this take is critical in delivering products on time, it can put undue pressure on the team. Agile project management takes a slightly different approach in this regard. Rather than managing deadlines, Agile focuses more on managing the queue size.

Managing the queue size naturally increases efficiency and reduces the cycle time. Visualizing the work queue with a Kanban board helps draw attention to areas where tasks tend to pile up. Next, you can take action steps to remove the bottlenecks, such as reducing the work items’ batch size.

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Best rates on SMX Advanced end Saturday – act now!

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Ad revenue up for Facebook & Twitter, Amazon buyers’ remorse: Monday’s daily brief

Plus, the hazards of credit card targeting

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Clone of Weekend Favs May 1

Clone of Weekend Favs May 1 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

• BuzzSumo– We explored Twitter conversation from 115k  marketers to discover the marketing and SEO chrome extensions that marketers are actually using.
• Wunderstock -Wunderstock is a free stock photo website with millions of beautiful free images. Check it out to find photos for your next project.
• Butter– Butter is a video conferencing tool that empowers facilitators to run interactive, buttery smooth online workshops!

These are my weekend favs, I would love to hear about some of yours – Tweet me @ducttape

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The Complete Guide to Project Management Institute

The project management field has evolved over the years. New technology, project management methodologies, frameworks, and project management software have changed the way PMs oversee projects throughout different industries.

One thing that has remained constant is the Project Management Institute (PMI). For over 50 years, this organization has become the go-to resource for project management professionals across the globe.

For those of you who want to learn new skills and advance your career in project management, you need to get familiar with the PMI—and this guide will explain everything you need to know.

What is the Project Management Institute?

The Project Management Institute is a nonprofit organization and certification provider that was founded back in 1969. It’s globally recognized as an industry leader in training, research, networking, and credentialing for the project management industry.

The PMI has assisted 3+ million project, program, and portfolio management professionals across the globe.

This organization has developed industry standards in the project management field. They offer everything from project management tools to project management job boards, awards, and events related to project management.

3 PMI Tools to Improve Your Project Management Skills

There are dozens of resources available from the Project Management Institute. But these are my three favorite tools that can immediately improve your career as a project manager.

#1 — PMP Certification

The Project Management Institute offers lots of different certifications. But the PMP Certification is arguably the most prestigious and most reputable. This is the world’s leading PM certificate and includes predictive, agile, and hybrid frameworks. It’s one of the best ways for project managers to instantly make themselves more appealing in prospective job opportunities.

According to the PMI, PM professionals with a PMP certification in North America are paid 25% more than those who aren’t certified.

To qualify, you must have a four-year degree, 36 months of experience as a project leader, and 35 hours of project management training (a CAPM certificate nullifies the last requirement). If you don’t have a four-year degree but have a high school diploma or an associate’s degree, you’ll need 60 months of experience leading projects to qualify.

The PMP Certification exam fee costs $405 for PMI members and $555 for non-members.

#2 — PMBOK Guide

The PMBOK Guide is the Project Management Institute’s flagship publication. It’s an essential resource for managing projects in any industry. This guide contains the foundation and knowledge required to be an effective project manager. If you’re only going to read one book on project management, this is my recommendation.

PMI members can download the PMBOK Guide for free. Non-members can purchase a physical paperback copy of the book for $99 or download the digital ebook for the same price. It’s something that you can always refer back to throughout your project management career.

When you order this book, the PMI will send you a free copy of the Agile Practice Guide as well. With agile project management skills in high demand, the extra book is a nice bonus for any project manager to have on their bookshelf.

#3 — CAPM Certification

A Certificate Associate in Project Management (CAPM) is the perfect credential to start your career as a project manager. It’s ideal for existing project managers that want to start managing bigger projects or prospective project managers that want to stand out in a competitive job market. For a fast way to add credibility to your resume, I highly recommend the CAPM certification.

To qualify, you need to have a high school diploma or an associate’s degree. You’ll also need to complete 23 hours of project management education before you take the exam. Unlike other PMI certifications, you don’t need any experience as a project manager for the CAPM. The CAPM exam fee is $225 for PMI members and $300 for non-members.

The Basics of the Project Management Institute

To say the PMI’s offerings are vast would be a drastic understatement. But everything that this organization provides can be summarized in the following core elements:

Membership

The PMI has membership opportunities for project management professionals who want to advance their careers.

There are over 600,000 members in the PMI community. Joining the PMI community is one of the best ways to network with peers in your industry. Anyone can create a PMI account for free and use it to track their certification status (more on this shortly). But to get the most out of your account, I’d recommended upgrading to the paid PMI membership.

The cost to join is just $129 per year, plus a one-time application fee of $10. But the paid membership pays for itself almost immediately.

In addition to joining the PMI community, you’ll also get to download the PMBOK guide for free—normally $99. The PMI also gives you access to over 1,000 free tools and templates as part of your membership. You can take these templates and immediately apply them to real-world projects that you’re managing. Use your membership to find relevant career opportunities on the PMI job board as well, which is only available to members.

Another top benefit of the PMI membership is the discount that you’ll get on project management certifications. Members pay a lower exam fee than non-members. For example, you’ll save $150 on your PMP certification with a PMI membership.

Certifications

The Project Management Institute is a reputable certification body for project management professionals. With a globally recognized certification, project managers are able to advance their careers, seek new opportunities, and get paid more for their added value.

A certification from the PMI is a big deal. It shows organizations that you’re qualified to manage certain types of projects. Available certifications include:

• Project Management Professional (PMP)
• Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)
• Program Management Professional (PgMP)
• Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)
• Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP)
• PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)
• PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)
• PMI Project Management Ready
• Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM)
• PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
• Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master (DASSM)
• Disciplined Agile Coach (DAC)
• Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant (DAVSC)

Each certification comes with a certain level of prestige attached to it. For example, the PMP certification is known as the gold standard in the project management field. Whereas the Project Management Ready certification is designed to prepare students with basic information related to project management.

All certifications follow the same standard process. First, you must meet certain eligibility requirements. The criteria are typically based on education level, completed training, and experience as a project manager.

If you meet the eligibility requirements, you can complete an application with information. You’ll also need to submit audit materials with proof of your eligibility. Once the application has been approved and you’ve submitted payment, you can schedule an exam appointment. The PMI will officially issue certifications after you’ve passed the exam.

Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) Program

Earning your certificate is just one step. But to maintain your certifications from the PMI, you’ll need to complete some additional requirements.

That’s where the CCR Program comes into play. It’s designed to help project professionals continue to grow and develop skills while maintaining their certification status.

Each certification requires recipients to earn a certain number of PDUs during a three-year cycle. PDU stands for “professional development units.” Each unit represents a one-hour time block for learning, teaching, or volunteering.

The number of PDUs required will depend on the certificate that you’re trying to maintain. For example, the PMP certification calls for 60 PDUs, while a CAPM only requires 15.

Track your progress on the PMI’s CCR system, a simple online tool for reporting PDUs. This will make it much easier for you to renew your certifications.

Education and Training

In addition to the project management certifications, the PMI is also known for its training resources. The PMI believes that professional development in the project management industry is more than just a one-time thing—it’s something that should be an ongoing component of your project management career.

The PMI has developed an ideal skill set for modern project management, known as the “Talent Triangle.” The triangle contains three crucial aspects of project management—technical project management, strategic and business management, and leadership.

There are training materials offered directly by the PMI, including online courses, disciplined agile toolkits, seminars, and webinars. If you have a PMI membership, you’ll have full access to 1,000+ webinars on projectmanagement.com. These contain tips, best practices, trends, how-to tutorials, and so much more. It’s also an easy way to earn PDUs for maintaining certifications.

The PMI also has authorized training partners that have exceeded rigorous standards for quality. You can discover these third-party training resources directly from the PMI website.

I enjoy the thought leadership resource from the PMI as well. This contains the latest ideas and principles from industry leaders in the project management field. It covers everything from portfolio management to cost management, sustainability, business analysis, scheduling, and everything else you could possibly need. Use this resource to gain a fresh perspective on certain areas of project management.

Events

Another excellent way to network and further your career as a project manager is by attending events hosted by the Project Management Institute.

Through uncertain times and struggles with in-person learning due to a public health crisis, the PMI has gone digital. You can still attend virtual events from the comfort of your own home.

In-person events will slowly get back to normal over the coming months and years. But in the meantime, virtual events are the next best thing. In some instances, this provides you with better access to an event that you might have otherwise been unable to attend.

There are also local PMI chapter events that you can join with your PMI membership. The events calendar is updated on a regular basis. So be sure to check it out to see what’s available and register online for any virtual event.

Core Values

The PMI stands out from other organizations in the project management space by maintaining a set of common values. These values remain unchanged, regardless of management trends or changes to business environments.

The Project Management Institute’s core values include:

• Project Management Impact
• Professionalism
• Volunteerism
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
• Community
• Engagement

As you continue to familiarize yourself with the PMI, you’ll see that these core values are a staple in everything that the organization offers.

For example, if you refer to the requirements to maintain different certifications, you’ll see that you can earn credits for giving back, which would fall into the volunteerism and community core values categories.

3 Tricks For The Project Management Institute

Apply these quick tricks and best practices to get the most out of your experience at the Project Management Institute. These simple steps will make your life much easier.

Trick #1: Get a PMI Membership

If you truly want to commit yourself to a career in project management, start with a PMI membership. You’ll get tons of benefits for joining, all of which we discussed in greater detail earlier.

But aside from those perks, the membership symbolizes your commitment as a project manager. You’ll be more likely to obtain certifications and maintain credentials throughout your career. The membership will give you access to exclusive materials and other useful pieces of information that you can apply to real projects.

As a leader, your team will always look to you for guidance. This is not always an easy position to be in. So it’s really helpful if you have a community of peers that you can fall back on for advice and insight.

Trick #2: Take Advantage of Free Online Courses

Not everything from the PMI will cost you money. There are plenty of great free classes as well. This is perfect for project management beginners or students who are considering a career in project management.

Before you dive in head-first, these free courses can provide you with a basic overview of project management to see if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing further.

Just head over to the PMI store and search for eLearning materials. Then sort the options by price from low to high, and you’ll see a handful of free courses. Examples include Project Management For Beginners, Free Introduction: Basics of Disciplined Agile, Foundations of Change Management, and Business Continuity.

Trick #3: Use Practice Guides

Earlier, we talked about the PMBOK Guide, which is arguably the most popular and well-known publication from the PMI. But there are other excellent practice guides that can be used to apply PMI standards in specific disciplines.

Some of my favorite practice guides include:

• Agile Practice Guide
• Governance of Portfolios, Programs, and Projects: A Practice Guide
• Benefits Realization Management
• Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide
• Navigating Complexity: A Practice Guide
• Business Analysis For Practitioners: A Practice Guide
• Requirements Management: A Practice Guide

All of these can help take your project management career to the next level.

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How to Disable Comments in WordPress

Comments are powerful and can enhance your WordPress site. It can encourage discussion and allow you to interact with your readers, and help build a community.

But sometimes, the same comments can be a pain. They can be self-promotional, spammy, and even hurtful. They may be completely unnecessary if you have a website with static pages.

So what do you do? You disable WordPress comments.

You can turn off comments on specific posts, pages, and custom post types. Globally disabling comments from your entire website is also an option.

Wondering how? Let’s find out.

What to Expect When Disabling Comments on WordPress

Disabling comments on WordPress is another feature by the platform to give you more control over your website. As one would expect, the process is simple and straightforward, and all you have to do is choose an option that fits your needs better.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Step 1 – Know Where You Want to Disable Comments on Your Site
• Step 2 – Change the Settings to Disable Comments
• Step 3 – Explore Other Comment Settings

The Good

Hateful, offensive, spammy, out of line—there can be all kinds of comments.

The good news is you can disable them all on your WordPress site in a few clicks. Trust me, it’ll take less than five minutes.

Moreover, stopping comments can help boost your loading speed as well.

Start by checking your site’s speed first using tools like PageSpeed and Pingdom. If you find that your site isn’t loading fast enough, turn off your comments temporarily. You can also globally disable them.

Comments generally spur conversation, but this isn’t the case for every website. So if you don’t need comments on your website or blog, you will be happy to know about the disabling comment feature.

The Bad

Like two sides of a coin, turning off WordPress comments also has its fair share of disadvantages.

Firstly, there won’t be any engagement or conversations on the site. This is a significant disadvantage as it ruins your chance at building lasting relationships with your audience.

Secondly, you won’t be able to gauge whether your WordPress posts are capturing your target audience’s attention. You’ll never know if you actually have a loyal base of engaged readers, which also means you won’t be able to attract and enjoy a lot of public attention.

Disabling your comments manually is more time-consuming than using a plugin. If you plan on skipping the plugin, you may find yourself spending plenty of time changing your comment settings when you want to disable comments, especially for individual pages or posts.

Understandably, this can be a rather frustrating experience for some.

Step 1 – Know Where You Want to Disable Comments on Your Site

You have to figure out where you want to fully disable comments. This can include posts, pages, attachments, individual sections of your side, or just the whole website.

To decide whether it would be appropriate to disable comments, you have to check on your readers’ behavior.

Analyze the Comment Patterns and Frequency

As discussed previously, there can be plenty of reasons why you might want to turn off your comments.

However, based on the comment patterns and how frequent the discussion is on your website’s front-end, you can determine whether you should disable comments for your whole website or a specific post or page.

Take the frequency of comments, for example.

When people leave comments under posts, they expect answers or acknowledgment. You know it, I know it, they know it. Precisely why it would be better to turn off comments if you get tons of comments every day and don’t have anyone to or want to respond to them.

That said, if only a specific page is receiving the majority of the comments, you should turn off comments for that page only.

If you find your website is experiencing higher bounce rates due to slower load times, you should again turn off comments. Every comment left on your website needs a database ask/request, and when the number of comments gets far too many, it could slow your site down.

You may also experience an onslaught of spam comments. Typically, spam is mostly targeted towards specific pages, so it would be better to disable comments on those pages.

Disabling comments for your whole site is best when commenting just doesn’t serve your website goals or brand, you have static pages, or you want to direct the conversation towards a forum instead of on your posts.

Think about the various scenarios mentioned above, and then based on your findings, determine which part of your website you want to disable comments for.

Step 2 – Change the Settings to Disable Comments

The default setting of WordPress lets everyone comment on your posts but not on your pages.

Luckily, you do have the option to either disable/enable comments for either specific posts and pages or throughout your site. What’s more, you can also moderate your comments in different ways by updating settings on the main WordPress dashboard.

Let’s take a look at how you can disable comments for different parts of your WordPress website.

#1 Disable Comments on All Your Future Posts and Page

Go to your main WordPress dashboard, and click on Settings followed by Discussion.

You’ll find that the option to Allow people to post comments on articles in the Default article settings field is already checked. Uncheck it.

You can also disable trackbacks and pingbacks for all your future posts on your site. To do this, uncheck the Allow link notifications from other blogs (being pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles option.

As mentioned before, commenting and pingbacks are already disabled on pages by default.

#2 Disable Comments on Selected Posts or Pages

Go to All Posts on the admin dashboard, and select the posts you want to disable comments for.

Remember, you can only select up to 20 posts at a time. If you want to select a greater number, you’ll have to make the required changes in the Screen Options section.

Click on Bulk Actions.

Follow this up by selecting Edit and then Apply. You’ll see a new Bulk Edit option pop-up on your screen that allows you to adjust the settings.

Select the Do not allow option from the dropdown menu for Comments.

Again, comments are turned off by default on all your pages. But it’s possible to change this setting.

Click on Pages on your WordPress dashboard, followed by All Pages from the left sidebar. Hover your cursor over the page title you want to disable and enable comments for, and click on Edit.

Select the three vertical dots icon located on the top right-hand corner of your screen. Click on Options from the dropdown menu.

A pop-up box will appear on your screen. Enable the Discussion box here. Close the pop-up box.

On the right-hand side of your WordPress editor, you’ll see the Discussion meta box. Uncheck the Allow comments box. This will disable comments on the specific page.

Tip: If you don’t see the Discussion meta box, click on the Document tab to view it.

Click on Update to save the settings.

If you want to enable comments for a specific page selectively, just check the Allow comments box to enable it for the respective pages.

#3 Disable Comments on Existing Posts Individually

On your WordPress dashboard, go to All Posts, followed by Edit Post.

Just below the writing area, you’ll see the Discussion field. If it isn’t visible on your screen, enable Discussion under Screen Option.

Uncheck Allow comments under the Discussion field. 

Alternatively, you can click on Quick Edit and uncheck the Allow comments option.

Step 3 – Explore Other Comment Settings

WordPress lets you control your comments however you want. There are a host of options that you can try out besides disabling them altogether.

Open the Discussion Panel

After logging in to your WordPress site, click on Settings in the main dashboard. Then go to Discussions.

Test Out Other Comment Options

Here’s a list of all the other options you can opt for:

• Blacklisting IP addresses, usernames, or emails. You can blacklist known offenders or add a snippet of code to .htaccess to block known malicious IPs. Even a partial match to the list will be blocked.
• Require a moderator to approve the comment before it is published. I highly recommend this as not only does it catch bots and spam, but it also lets you approve the comments you want to publish on the front-end of your website. You’ll find all unapproved comments in the comments queue on your dashboard once you enable this setting.
• Requiring a user to register. This tactic can be useful to combat a higher frequency of comments. Every user will have to register—something not everyone likes doing—before leaving comments. It can help to bring down spam as well as the comment volume.
• Closing comments on older articles. You can specify the number of days you want to let your visitors comment on your posts. Once the last day approaches, comments will be stopped automatically. Spammers generally target older posts, so closing comments can work wonders to reduce spam.
• Approving comment authors. Approve people who can comment on your posts beforehand. This way, your posts have comments that could help with SEO, and you won’t have to waste time filtering through unnecessary ones.
• Limiting links. This is a good setting to stop spammers who leave comments with way too many links.
• Be notified when you receive comments. Receiving notifications for every new comment can help you maintain active control over your comments section. You can remove unwanted comments swiftly.

Delete Comments on All Published Posts or Pages

If you think you can remove all comments on your already published post by disabling comments, I have news for you: You thought wrong.

There’s a whole process that you need to follow.

Open the WordPress admin panel, and click on Comments from the left sidebar.

Select all the comments you see. Click on the Bulk Actions dropdown box, and choose Move to Trash. Follow this up by clicking on Apply.

Every single comment on your existing posts will be deleted. Yep, it’s that simple.

Alternative Method: Disable WordPress Comments by Installing and Activating a Plugin

I love shortcuts as much as the next person. And no doubt, manually disabling and deleting comments for every single post or page can get very frustrating very fast.

Thankfully, you can skip all the hard work by simply downloading a sophisticated WordPress plugin.

I recommend the plugin Disable Comments as it enables you to globally disable all comments on your WordPress site. But you can choose any other plugin you prefer.

Install and Activate the Plugin

Log in to your WordPress website, and go to Plugins. Click on Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

Type in Disable Comments in the search bar, and press Search. Once you see the login displayed on your screen, hit the Install Now button.

Once the installation process is over, click on Activate. This will make the plugin ready for use.

Disable Comments on Your Website

At this stage, your Disable Comments plugin is ready for use.

Click on the Settings from the side menu bar, and select Disable Comments in the WordPress dashboard.

You’ll see an interface on your screen where you can manage your website’s comments. You have to choose between two options here:

• Everywhere: Disable all comments and related controls in WordPress
• On certain post types: You can disable comments on specific posts, pages, and/or media.

Check the option applicable in your case, and click on Save Changes.

Voila! Everything’s done and your WordPress comments are now disabled.

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