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Project Management Basics

What is project management?

Project management is the art of making a plan, then executing on it.

Project management skills

Communication

  • Team members need clarifications, stakeholders need status updates and sponsors need the results.

Time management

  • Aside from managing the project’s schedule, you’ll need to keep meetings on track (and manage your own time, too).

Problem solving

Organizational awareness

  • Get familiar with other projects that might need the same people and resources at the same time you’re going to need them.

Diplomacy

  • Be prepared to negotiate scheduling snafus, conflicting priorities, and personality clashes with grace.

Project management steps

1. Envision it

Iterate on your understanding of the problem space, and potential solutions, until you’re confident you’re on the right track.

  • Build the business case

    • Define the problem you’re trying to solve, and the value in solving it.

    • Talk to your target customers (internal or external), so you fully understand the problem space.

    • When building a business case for your project, focus on what you want the customer to be able to do.

    • Leave the specifics of how for when you brainstorm solutions with your team.

    • Recommended activities:

  • Form the project team

    • Gather people with the skills you’ll need to solve the problem.

    • Recommended activities:

  • Define “success”

    • Agree on measurable outcomes to shoot for, and metrics to track your progress toward them.

    • Make sure the project contributes to larger objectives the business is pursuing.

      • If it doesn’t, this might be the wrong project (or it might be the right project, but at the wrong time).

    • Recommended activities:

  • Brainstorm solutions

    • Think about specific solutions, how you’d implement them, and how the customer will interact with the final product.

    • Involve your team, and be ambitious at this stage.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Disrupt – Generate a long list of great ideas in a short time.
      • Mindmapping – Explore different facets of a problem, and organize your ideas for solutions.

  • Prototype and test

    • A prototype could be anything from flowcharts on the back of a cocktail napkin to quick-n’-dirty (but working) code (depends on the project)

    • Put it in front of your target customers and stakeholders for early feedback. –> This is the ideal time to fail and adapt!

    • Recommended activities:

      • End-to-end demo – Visualize your concept so it’s easy to get feedback.
      • Experience canvas – Make sure your concept is user-focused, feasible, and valuable to both the customer and the business.

Signs your project is at risk during the envision step

  • The project’s value is unclear

    Solution

    • Choose a specific customer persona (whether internal or external customer), and turn on your empathy. Imagine why they would want this
    • Map that to the company’s larger goals
    • Iterate until you’ve got customer value with strong ties to business value.
    • Recommended activities:
      • 5 “whys” – Give your team a deep understanding of the problem and its impact on your customer.
      • Customer interview – Understand your customers’ needs and the contexts in which they’re using your product or service.
      • Experience canvas – Make sure your project is customer-focused and makes sense for the business.

  • Goals or priorities conflict

    Solution

    • Agree on one (yes, one) objective to serve as your North Star for the project
      • Then sort through the conflicting priorities with that in mind
    • When you encounter trade-offs, prioritize the option that’ll get you closer to that North Star objective
    • Recommended activities:
      • Goals, signals, measures – Make sure the project stays focused, and you know what a successful outcome looks like.
      • Trade-off sliders – Create sliding scales to show how important each metric is and agree on what you should prioritize.

  • Nobody knows who is in charge

    Soluiton

    • Reach a shared understanding across the project team, stakeholders, and sponsors as to who is ultimately accountable.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Roles and responsibilities – Define each person’s role on the project, and what’s needed of them so the team can be successful.
      • Project kick-off – Build a shared understanding of the project’s main objective, scope, value, timing, and decision ownership.
      • DACI decision-making framework – Understand who’s accountable for specific decisions, and what role the rest of the team will play.

  • The project team can’t agree on a direction

    Solution

    • Make sure your team truly understands the problem you’re solving and it’s impact on the customer
    • Don’t be afraid to ask management to clarify what’s a priority for the business vs. what’s not.
    • When seeking guidance, make sure to present them with options you’re considering, instead of an open-ended “what should we do?”.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Problem framing – Explore the problem space and its impact on customers.
      • Demo trust – Create a space for open discussion and feedback from company leaders so everyone feels confident about the value and direction.

2. Plan it

The planning process should be relatively short. While it is recommended an iterative approach to planning, there are a few high-order tasks before moving into project execution mode.

  • Nail down the project’s scope

    • Based on feedback from early testing, and keeping your success metrics in mind, prioritize what to include in the project.

    • Be clear about the trade-offs you’re making.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Trade-off sliders – Create sliding scales to show how important each metric is and agree on what you should prioritize.
      • Journey mapping – Understand the existing journey so you can design a better experience.

  • Understand and manage dependencies

    • Map out what the project depends on (work, resources, or assets from outside the core project team, etc.)

    • Noting who will own each piece of work and when they’re available to do it.

      • Even if you can’t resolve bottlenecks at this stage, you need to identify them and factor them into the project planning process.

    • Recommended activities:

  • Build a roadmap and backlog

    • With scope agreed upon and dependencies understood

      • Break the project plan down into discrete pieces of work
      • Estimate the time and effort required for each

    • Project when you’ll hit major milestones and set a target completion date

    • Collect all pieces of work into a backlog you can use to plan in short, iterative cycles.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Roadmap planning – This exercise comes from the software world, but can be adapted to suit any project.

  • Anticipate and mitigate risks

    • Think through ways the project might fail, and dive into prevention mode

    • Also identify chances for mind-blowing success that you haven’t yet considered

    • Recommended activities:

      • Pre-mortem – Imagine what could go wrong, and make plans to prevent them.

  • Make a communications plan

    • Establish a cadence for team meetings and updates to stakeholders, and share it around.

    • Schedule any recurring meetings, and put reminders on your calendar to update the project’s plan and dashboard (or internal homepage) regularly.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Stand-ups – A daily opportunity for your team to share the status of work in progress and discuss blockers.
      • Project poster – An easy way to share your goals, status, and schedule. If updated regularly, the poster serves as your status report (but far less painful).

Signs your project is at risk during the planning step

  • You are stuck in planning mode

    Solution

    • Shake off that “analysis paralysis”, and get going!
    • If you’re using an agile approach (and you really should), remind the project team you’ll have chances to demonstrate progress and course-correct as you go.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Project kick-off – Build a shared understanding of the project’s main objective, scope, value, timing, and decision ownership.
      • Pre-mortem – Visualize risks and opportunities for the project, then figure out how to navigate yourself away from (or toward) them.

  • Others don’t understand what your project is about

    Solution

    • Call upon those communication skills and share small, frequent updates that are easy to digest
    • Make sure you’re sharing the right information in the right level of detail with the right people
    • Recommended activities:
      • Elevator pitch – Create a simple explanation of your project and the value it delivers to your customers.
      • Project poster – Shape and share your ideas, articulate what success looks like, and build a shared understanding with stakeholders.

  • Your project team is missing critical skills

    • Re-shape your concept so you can move forward with the resources you have
    • Recommended activities:
      • Trade-off sliders – The basic trade-off sliders exercise clarifies which aspects of a project are negotiable (and which aren’t), but you can give it a twist. If you can’t do “X”, what other aspects of the project can flex to help you navigate the skill gap?

3. Execute it

Work in 1- to 2-week iterations, with a demo for stakeholders and a team retrospective at the end of each cycle.

  • Work iteratively

    • Agile methodologies are useful for any project

    • Start each cycle with “just enough” planning, then knock out the work

    • Hold a short retrospective at the end of each iteration.

      • Share what went well (and what didn’t) so the next iteration can be even better.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Sprint planning – Plan the next 1-2 weeks’ work based on what’s highest priority.
      • Retrospectives – Provide a safe space for the team to reflect on and share what works well (and what doesn’t!) so you can improve.

  • Track your progress

    • This includes

      • which pieces of work are complete
      • how much of the budget remains
      • whether you’re on track to meet your target delivery date.

    • Use something digital like Google Docs, Trello, or Jira so everyone can see your status easily.

    • If you start burning through budget or time faster than projected, raise that with your sponsor and team right away so you can course-correct before things get out of hand.

    • Recommended activities:

  • Test and incorporate feedback

    • At the end of each iteration cycle, update your end-to-end demo to reflect the work completed, and show it to stakeholders (and customers, ideally).

    • Capture their feedback so you can take it into account when planning the next iteration.

    • Recommended activities:

      • End-to-end demo – Visualize your concept so it’s easy to get feedback.
      • Sparring – Let others challenge your own ideas and inspire new ones.

Signs your project is at risk during the planning step

  • You are stepping on each other’s toes

    Solution

    • Remove and prevent bottlenecks in your process.
    • Clarify each person’s role or area of responsibility on the project so you’re not blocking each other or doubling up on tasks.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Stand-ups – Start the day with updates on who’s-working-on-what, what got done yesterday, and which tasks each person intends to tackle next.
      • Roles and responsibilities – Understand everyone’s role on the team, and learn what teammates need from each other in order to succeed.

  • Feels like you’re just spinning your wheels

    Solution

    • Shine a light on everything your team is accomplishing.
    • Recommended activities:
      • End-to-end demo – Celebrate the incremental wins by iterating on a demo. As it evolves from diagrams to prototype to an MVP, your team’s progress will feel more tangible.
      • Stand-ups – Create a feeling of momentum by highlighting what got done yesterday (and/or expose the hard truth that nothing is getting to the “done” pile).

  • Score creep!

    Solution

    • It depends.
      • If your schedule and/or budget are flexible, you might opt to expand the project’s scope.
      • Otherwise, you’ll need to deflect additional ideas or make trade-offs to accommodate them. Just don’t skimp on the quality of work you deliver!
    • Remember: for most projects, you can keep making improvements after you deliver the initial “minimum viable product” (MVP).
    • Recommended activities:
      • Trade-off sliders – Decide which aspects of the project you’ll prioritize, and think though the trade-offs you’ll make in their defense when new ideas are introduced.
      • DACI decision-making framework – Agree on who makes the call and who contributes recommendations – either for individual decisions about scope, or for the project as a whole.

  • Communication has broken down

    Solution

    • If people are purposefully withholding information because they’re playing politics, you may need to involve a neutral party (such as HR) to facilitate.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Stand-ups – Practice communicating and build trust: share quick updates on tasks and raise blocking issues.
      • Sparring – If team members aren’t pushing each other creatively, use this technique from the design world to get honest, structured peer feedback.
      • Health Monitor – Provide a safe space for the team to discuss how you’re working together (strengths, weaknesses, warts n’ all).
      • Working agreement – Codify the team’s values: the practices, results, and conduct you expect from one another.

  • Estimates were way off-target

    Solution

    • Recalibrate your projected timeline based on the information you have about the actual effort needed to reach your milestones.
    • Be open about this so stakeholders have a chance to adjust their expectations and any down-stream plans.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Retrospective – Set aside time in each retrospective to compare that iteration’s estimates with the actual effort needed so you can continually recalibrate.
      • 5 “whys” – Start with one estimate-gone-wrong to analyze and ask why it was so off – then keep asking “why” until you’ve uncovered the root cause.

4. Deliver it

  • Deliver your “minimum viable product” (MVP)

    • Make sure the customers accept the project as complete
    • Depending on how smooth or rocky the journey was, you may want to get their acceptance in writing.

  • Close out the budget

  • Do a project retrospective

    • Put questions up for discussion with your project team

      • What went well?
      • What went horribly, horribly wrong?

    • Be sure to capture the lessons learned and share them with your peers so they can benefit.

    • Don’t forget to chat about how you might improve on what you just delivered.

    • Recommended activities:

      • Retrospective – Reflect on and discuss what works well (and what doesn’t!) so you can improve. Mistakes are ok if you learn from them.

Signs your project is at risk during the planning step

  • The project isn’t accepted as “Done”

    Solution

    • Talk to your sponsor (or client, or team, or whomever is unhappy) and figure out where the discrepancy lays
    • Your goal for this conversation is to agree on a definition of “done” – something you should put in writing so it’s easy for everyone to refer back to later
      • From there, draw up a list of tasks that’ll close the gap between here and “done”, and set your team on it.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Demo trust – Use this as a forum for discussing “done” and next steps with your management team.

5. Improve it

Take a moment to consider these questions:

  • Have you achieved your definition of “success” for the project?
  • Are there ideas that were de-scoped from the MVP?

Signs your project is at risk during the planning step

  • Your MVP isn’t being used, and you don’t know why

    Solution

    • Do some qualitative research
    • Talk to your target customers to find out what’s preventing them from putting your project to use
    • (If appropriate) Set up a user test (either live, or using an online service) so you have a chance to observe their behavior as they interact with what you’ve delivered.
    • Recommended activities:
      • Customer interview – Go straight to the source and ask what the hang-up is.
      • Empathy mapping – Pair your quantitative data with your knowledge of the customer to understand how they think and feel about your project.

  • Incremental cahnges aren’t moing the needle

    Solution

    • Go bold. This might mean a major pivot, or overhauling your project entirely.
    • Don’t get discouraged, though. Making one major change on your way to success puts your batting average at a respectable .500
    • Recommended activities:
      • 5 “whys” – Use this analysis technique to uncover the root of the problem so you know what future changes need to address.
      • Disrupt – De-calcify your neuro pathways and generate fresh ideas.

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