START AT THE END AND PLAN BACKWARDS FROM THERE
1. What will things look like when you’re done? Start with that vision and keep in clearly in your mind as you work on the project.
2. Write a statement describing the completed project. That helps you to focus and clarify your thoughts.
3. You can’t do a project. You can only do tasks. It helps if you start at the end and work sequentially backwards until you get to what your first step will be. Starting with your end result, keep answering the question,”What has to happen to make this happen?” Your final question will be what your first step should be.
DIVIDE THE PROJECT INTO A SERIES OF SMALL TASKS
1. Think big but also think small.
2. Remember, “By the inch, it’s a cinch, but by the yard it’s hard.”
PLAN THE DETAILS
1. Make sure you’ve identified all the required action steps and put them in the right sequence.
2. Have enough planning details to show the reality of what’s going to happen in the project.
Don’t overdo it, however, because too many details can overwhelm you and mean too much time and effort spent is spent constantly updating the plan.
LOOK FOR POTENTIAL TROUBLE SPOTS
1. A project is controlled by its scarcest commodity. Usually it’s how much time you have or how much money is available.
2. If it’s time or schedule driven, identify and carefully monitor the critical path.
The critical path is the time path that will take the longest to complete.
Anything that slows down the critical path, slows down the whole project.
3. Clarify when you’re working with optimistic, pessimistic, or most-likely time estimates.
4. If the project is limited by availability of money or some other resource, focus your attention and control on the parts of the project that use the most of that resource.
USE GRAPHICS TO EXPLAIN AND PERSUADE
1. A picture is worth a thousand words. People want to know how they fit in and how their part contributes to the whole project. Be sure to give them the big picture and show how and where and they fit in.
2. As things progress, use graphics to communicate the big picture of the progress on the project and how, if one part is delayed, other parts of the project may be late.
Project management requires thinking ahead and constant monitoring of the activities going on and resources being used up. Keep this list handy the next time you’re starting a project and refer to it to help you stay on track.