There is a lot of anxiety around any project. The project manager wonders if he or she will meet the Triple Constraint (Time, Cost and Quality).
The sponsors are wondering whether the project manager is the right person to manage the project and team members wonder if they are in the right project and if they have the necessary skills for the project to be a success.
On top of that, you are going through a typical scenario: your project will take ten months to complete, you are in the sixth month and no deliverable has been produced yet. Nothing you can show to the customer to see, check or approve.
What happened during this period? The team has worked in the office, as in a laboratory, preparing documents and working in parallel on many deliverables of the project, but none of them has been finished yet.
This is a big mistake.
Anxiety increases every weekend, everyone wants to see what is coming out from the factory but you still have nothing to show.
You, as a project manager, feel observed. Your team feels the same, but they don't tell you.
Advice: when planning the project and designing the schedule, think of some deliverables that you can produce fast and in an easy manner, which you can show at the beginning of the project. Shows quick results. This will inspire confidence to all stakeholders inside and outside the project. This will inspire confidence on your team too.
Your project has only one deliverable, very large, and it only can be showed at the end?
Maybe you can make a prototype? Maybe you can make a demo of it when you reach 40% completion, 60%, 80%?
Maybe you can present a sketch of the product, a layout, the same way architects present a sketch of the house before
building it?
All you must do is learn how to manage expectations from all stakeholders.
There is a Chinese proverb that says "Believe in your eyes more than your ears". What you see is more real than what you hear.
Plan for quick achievements even if they are small, show your work, stakeholders want to see, not hear.