Earth has a habit of aligning the planets in a way that this day and this day……forget about that. Here is a different way of looking at your projects. As on a prince 2 Dublin and practitioner training.
Projects are strange beasties; you have no idea whether or not they will run in a synchronised manner, or all out of alignment against your original plan.
You will also have no idea whether or not your given timeline and budget will be adhered to, or if the results will be “good” or “bad”.
Because of this, the first and most important part of project management is to plan the project. Without at least a basic plan, a scribe, if you like, will have nothing to prevent things not going according to plan.
There are lots of different options open to a project manager to come up with them own plan. The two main approaches are:
There are much more options in many areas of project management, including the actual process of bringing an idea to life for the purpose of your business or company. The one I like much more is the Life Cycle concept which I talk about in the Business Planning stage of a project.
If you’re a one man band, just starting out and are fuzzy on how to start this new phase of your businesses life, start with:
If you have a bit more time you can work out how to create, the Life Cycle plan combined with the Business Planning tends to reflect better personality than the business planning alone. It really is about managing projects more than planning them, especially for your own business.
If you have a bit less time at your disposal feel free to create a Life Cycle plan and follow the Business Planning instructions, but first create your own Life Cycle plan, that is, first decide at what point in this Life Cycle you must get things under way.
“But wait there’s more!”
Once you’ve charted out your Life Cycle, all that’s left is to keep all the balls in the air. If this has ever happened to you, you’ll know just how annoying it is when you look forward to all of the things you planned on achieving, but find no stones in those countries!
Pick a place near the center of each cycle and consistently keep a focus on the critical points in the life of the project. Once you’ve met your most critical transition, be sure to get up a little straighter. You’ll find you’re able to come up with your desired outcomes more easily at this point.
A Working Relationship
If you’ve not done your primary planning, start picking cycle participants and get them to sit down with you, as a group, and go over all their needs and expectations for this project. If you’ve over-thought it, you’ve got lots of people who need to rest of the list for a little while and get some distance from it. Then, you’ve got to brief them on the end-state of each phase and what they need to do to achieve the results they said they needed to.
You may well have submitted your plan and, after a least a little reflection, understand if this and other plans can realistically be achieved. If not, then are left to act!
Do you know where you’re going?
Do you know what it will take to get there?
Have you left aside ideas behind?
Are you managing tensions androuse the fear of poor results?
Need to know the people who really have to be driving this project or do you need someone else to do the communicating?
Need to plan your construction of this?
Need to ensure no key decision makers have failed to meet their goals?
