October 26, 2011

Reviewing: the final step

Phew. Now that we covered the hard work of executing, it’s time to focus on the last step in the six steps of project management: Reviewing.

Reviewing is a way of ‘coming up for air’ as you’re busily driving towards your goals. When you review you revisit your goals, your scope, your plan to check progress and confirm that you’re on track (or not, and if so, why?) as well as determine whether or not your goals, scope, plans and estimate still make sense.

Reviewing is important for two reasons. The first one is that life is not static and goals and projects may need to change. The second reason is that sometimes reviewing helps us gage if we’re still on track; and if we’re not prompts us to take measures to remedy the situation.

It’s important to strike a balance between rigidly ‘sticking to plan’ and making course corrections and adjustments as we get new information. You may find that working towards a certain goal does not bring you as much joy or revenue than you originally thought. Perhaps a you find a project is going to take twice as long as your originally thought. That’s okay, the only thing that is constant is change.

We plan, God laughs.

You will usually get an organic sense of when it’s time to go back over to review and rework items from your goals and scope to estimation and your low level plan. The key thing to remember is that it’s best to strike a balance between totally forgetting about everything and reworking it too much and too often.

We’ll look at some rules of thumb for reviewing each item in the next post.

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September 7, 2011

the importance of under-scheduling

Montana Landscape from Courtney Grigg

Montana Landscape from Courtney Grigg


I get stressed out easily. I wish it wasn’t so, but that’s the temperament I was born with. I also tend to try to do too much and bite off more than I can chew. These two qualities make perfect ingredients for a bi-weekly freak-out cocktail.

When I over-schedule myself and think that I can cram productive activity into every waking minute I find myself feeling tyrannized by my calendar. I have a constant, nagging feeling that I’m ‘off track’ and not doing enough. I can’t enjoy the spontaneous moments and events that life brings and find myself snapping at my husband.

There is a great German word for this kind of thing: Selberschuld. The literal translation is ‘self-guilt’, what it means practically is: It’s your own damn fault.

And it is. Each week I have to remind myself anew to leave some ‘air’ in my calendar. I am only one person (for now) and it is just going to take time to get all the things done that I want to accomplish.

The ironic thing about all of this, is that I find it helps me to be more productive. One way to get your inner resistance monster into high-gear is to create an over-managed, over-scheduled, unrealistic plan.

When I try and do one to two really important tasks a day and then a little maintenance stuff, I find I’m much more relaxed and that I end up doing stuff that I wanted to do but didn’t plan for anyway.

Funnily enough, I find the work I do in the times when it isn’t on the ‘official plan’ is actually fun because there is no ‘I have to’ feeling associated with it.

I’m (slowly) learning to get just enough of the ‘must do’ stuff on my calendar, but allowing space for work to be fun or for no work at all. I’ve got a suspicion that this is a big part of learning the art of working joyfully, not just efficiently.

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August 3, 2011

low level planning: a few final points

Planning

Planning

In closing out the section on low level planning, the final few points I’d like to make touch on being specific when calendaring in your activities, making sure to look at your plan every day, creating a plan that allows for flexibility, and setting it up at the beginning of the week.

Be specific - Avoid being vague about what you need to get done when blocking out a task.  If you have three hours planned to do ‘keyword research’ what is that exactly? Brainstorming a list of keywords? Signing up for a word tracker account? Rolling around in the Google Keyword tool for an hour? Describe what it is you need to do in each task in as much detail as makes sense.

Look at your low level plan every day – Even if everything goes out the window, and you can’t do what you planned on doing, it helps to see what you wanted to do. You can always push the work out to another day or pick it up the following week.

Build in flexibility - One of the reasons I like a calendaring tool is that you can create activities as calendar ‘events’ and then move and drag them around to different days on the calendar, so that the work doesn’t get lost. It also makes me feel better if I wasn’t able to get something done, or was in the mood to do something else. I can always swap tasks around. You should also leave as much ‘air’ in your calendar as possible. It’s tempting to cram an activity into every bit of time, but the reality is we aren’t wired to be constantly producing; we need time to recharge.

It’s helpful to remember the expression ‘Life is what Happens while you’re busy making other plans.’

Life does, indeed, happen, and most of it won’t be stuff that you plotted on to your low-level plan, so leave some space for it.

Set it up at the beginning of the week – I find if I don’t do this, my entire week gets messed up because I begin the week feeling like I don’t know what I should be doing and feeling like everything is out of control(!) I try and make a habit of sitting down on Sunday evenings and doing the following to put together my low level plan for the upcoming week:

  • Reviewing my mid-level plan
  • Reviewing what I didn’t get done in the previous week
  • Looking through whatever notes or to-do’s I’ve jotted down
  • Talking to my husband about our social calendar for the upcoming week
  • Getting all cranky pants because there just isn’t enough &%*$& time
  • Accepting that it is saner to plan for half of the things I want to do, and that I will most likely only get half of that done!

Which reminds me, it might be a good idea to baseline in some daily meditation…

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July 13, 2011

Down in the Weeds – Low Level Planning

An Example Low Level Plan

An Example Low Level Plan

Low level planning is your day-to-day work planned out at the granular level, usually by the week, with activities blocked out by the hour. This is the plan that I find most important when it comes to really getting down to brass tacks and working.

A low level plan is where the rubber hits the road in terms of seeing what you have to do this week, today, right now – and doing it.

The example above illustrates one way a low level might be laid out. It illustrates the more granular break down of activities related to the original project item ‘Optimize the content on your site for related keywords and better Google rankings’ we identified in the scope definition process. This project was broken into subsequent activities, including ‘Keyword Research’ in the high level plan and ‘Buy and Read SEO Book’ and ‘Research SEO on web’ in the mid level pContinue Reading

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June 29, 2011

A Helicopter View – High Level Planning

High Level Plan Example

Example of a High Level Plan

Planning is the combination of goals, scope, and estimates all plotted along a time line. A high level plan is this combination at its most elemental, and provides a ‘helicopter view’ of what you’ll be doing for the next year (or three, or five.)

At it’s simplest, a high level plan is a collection of milestones.

‘Milestones’ is a standard part of project management jargon. The original meaning of the term is for a series of markers along a path. Milestones in project management, appropriately, refer to major achievements along the path leading to a pre-defined goal. For example, a milestone can be the completion of a project, or ‘shipping’ a product.

The difference between creating a high level plan and creating a list of goals is that on a high level plan, you jot down the projects that will contribute to accomplishing your goals.

This is where you start putting your scope and estimates to work.

Let’s go back to our earlier example of a jewelry business wanting to increase online sales by 30%. The projects (scope) defined to accomplish this goal were:

  • Open a storefront on an additional online marketplace
  • Write a monthly post on your blog about jewelry care
  • Optimize the content on your site for related keywords and better Google rankings

The high level plan above shows milestones associated with the projects listed above, as well as very broad ‘ball park’ estimates, plotted along time. What you don’t see are any detailed activities, additional day-to-day or fulfillment work, etc. The high level plan just has the basics.

Use whatever tool makes sense for you; spreadsheets, online calendar tools, post-its – whatever. The main thing is to review it at least four times a year, and make sure it stays current.

I make an initial high level plan on a spreadsheet and then print it out. When I review it, I refer to the paper version, where I write notes and cross things out. If it gets too messy I’ll update the digital version and print it out again, but I avoid getting hung up on the administration of perfect ‘digital artifacts.’

A high level plan is incredibly useful during those times where you are down in the weeds of your work, feeling discouraged or a little overwhelmed by what you are trying to do. You can whip out your plan and, like a map, it helps you get re-oriented on your path.

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