Affected by Brexit? You’re gonna need this
It’s the classic situation that all project managers find themselves in, sooner or later. The deadline is fixed but the requirements still haven’t been decided. Every day that passes is a day lost than can never be recovered.
But this time it’s different. This is the true nightmare scenario.
There isn’t just one project – there’s a whole bunch of them. And worse – they’re all happening in parallel.
If this is you then you’re going to need to do some new things that you haven’t done before.
So here – for openers – are three things that will help you. You can do them now, straight away.
1 Learn how to estimate properly
If you can’t estimate a project properly then you’re probably doomed from the outset. You’re like someone who sets out to cross a desert not knowing how wide it is. Will you get to the far side? You might. You might also find that you’re part way across with no more water and no idea how much of the journey remains.
Next week we’ll tell you how to do this.
2 Learn how to scope and plan a project in a day
At the beginning of a project is where the greatest opportunity to accelerate it is.
Imagine what it would be like if – on day one of the project – you could scope it, plan it and launch it i.e. allocate jobs to people and have it up and running.
You can be skeptical about this if you like but it’s entirely possible.
3 Stop multitasking (for goodness sake!)
Multitasking is catastrophic for productivity https://fastprojects.org/2017/06/23/multitasking-is-disastrous-for-productivity-so-why-does-everybody-do-it/. Stop it.
Instead:
- Make a list of the projects that have to be done.
- Prioritize the list.
- Flood the most important one with resources to get it done. Do this with the next most important one, the next most important and so on.
- Do this, even if it means not starting some projects just yet. You will still get them done quicker than if you had been multitasking.
- As soon as a project completes and its resources free up, move them to the next project on the list.
- Eat up the list of projects in this way.
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