Big Project Productivity

Domain: Productivity - Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The ability to effectively execute larger and more complex deliverables is a springboard for one's career growth. It requires a set of skills that must be learned and practiced in order to be effective. Because it is learned and honed, the development of this skillset makes you more valuable within your organization and the broader market. Big projects lead to big exposure which can mean big opportunities in the future.

These "big projects" can be anything from an important presentation to managing a multi-year effort. The common theme is that they require forethought, decisioning and execution of non-repetitive tasks.

The ambiguous nature of a project's early stages is often where many professionals get tripped-up. The focus of this issue is to provide you with some very high-level tools and tactics needed to stay productive at the beginning of and throughout any project.

Time and space

To set yourself-up for success, you'll first want to make room for the project in your professional life. This means scheduling regular time on your calendar and creating a space (physical or digital) to maintain all project tracking and documentation.

By scheduling regular time on your calendar, you are ensuring that you are consistently dedicating time and attention towards progress on your deliverables. The frequency and duration of these scheduled working sessions will depend on the scope and scale of the project itself.

Creating space for all project documentation helps to keep things organized and on track. For most projects, I recommend documenting things in a way that allows you to track your progress through implementation. This could be as simple as a few items on a to-do list for easy projects to full project plans for larger efforts.

Think it through

Sit down and think through all the steps and requirements that must be met to ensure a successful outcome for the project. Ask yourself "what does success look like here?". This might include tasks you need to complete, desired outcomes, budget guidelines and project deadlines.

Document everything you can think of but don't get too obsessed with making it perfect before you take action. There are bound to be things that come-up mid-effort that you'll have to incorporate into your project.

Break it down

If you're not sure where to start on a project, it's likely because your task list or project plan is too vague. Professionals often procrastinate on big projects simply because they don't know where to start.

To remedy this, break-down and document the requirements you listed above into individual tasks to be completed. You'll know that you've reached the individual task level when there are no "and" or "then" statements for any given task.

For example, "draft and submit proposal" should not be one task but two separate tasks. Drafting the proposal is one task. Submitting the proposal is the second.

Even tasks without "and" or "then" statements can be broken-down into more manageable steps. For instance, the task of "complete training PowerPoint" can be broken down into individual tasks for each section or even each slide of the deck. Whatever approach prompts you to take immediate action is the right one.

Know your dependencies

Another mistake people make with project planning is not thinking through task sequencing and prioritization. Some tasks will have dependencies that require other tasks to be completed first. It's important to map-up out these tasks so that you can prioritize accordingly.

Generally, you'll want to get an early start on the groups of tasks that include the largest number of dependencies. If you start these while simultaneously working tasks with no dependencies, you'll have less delay on the back-end of your effort.

Hedge your bets

Unexpected challenges are bound to come-up in any large effort. For that reason, it's important to factor that into your timelines and budget.

I recommend planning to complete milestones and the overall project slightly ahead of schedule and under budget. That way, you have flexibility if something unexpected comes-up. If that doesn’t happen, you'll have exceeded expectations. Of course, this is a balancing act as you don't want to deliver so early or so underbudget that you've sacrificed quality.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Make sure you have reoccurring time on your calendar dedicated to the project.

2. Make sure you have either the physical or digital space organized to track your progress.

3. Define how you will measure the success of the project along with any parameters that must be met.

4. Breakdown all the work into single, actionable steps.

5. Map out your project dependencies so you know what you need to start working on early.

6. Give yourself a buffer for both timelines and budgets in order to defend against any surprises that may appear.