Managing to Get Things Done

by Virginia Cockerline, Director of Operations

I would like to give anyone taking the time to read this a fact or technique they could use to manage their own projects. Managing a project, especially on a large scale, requires thorough planning which will pay off in the completion of it. The more thought you put into it, the smoother things will run and the less time you will be spending scrambling on your contingency plan. An important step during planning is to include the people who will be using the end product as well as the originator of the project. All the details and the fact finding you perform before setting a plan into motion, will define the success of your project. How much money do you have to complete the project? Will there be other people working with you? When is the project due to be completed? While planning, think everything through, forward and backward. Make sure that you have made provisions for anything unexpected and don't leave any holes, not a one.

The scope of an entire project may seem daunting and complicated. Simplify this by dividing it into work items or smaller pieces of the project. Ideally, these smaller pieces should be budgeted for in terms of both time and cost. Whenever possible, have the smaller pieces be in meaningful chunks so that the work can be effectively performed by another. While planning and managing a project, one of the most important tools is the project timeline. A timeline should include all items of work, when they need to be completed, and the sequence they need to be completed in. Many things on a project cannot be started unless one or more other things have been completed first. During the project, work items should be reported on to the manager by the percent completed and the cost of time and materials. The ratio of cost to budget should be close to the percent complete. This indicator will let the project manager know how the work is going and whether the budget will cover the completion of the work. This information can also be used to determine if a work item will impact the timeline and scheduled completion of the project.

Too often, projects are not documented until the end if they are at all. Going forward, start documenting while you are planning the scope and timeline, record the progress and the challenges you encounter and how you solved them. This information is invaluable when looking back over a project or in managing the next one. More often than not, the plan for the project will change as the work progresses. A good plan will have the elements of flexibility, a scope of work, budgets, a timeline, and documentation.