Are You Or.gan.i.zed?

Get your ducks in a row from the start..or forever be chasing ducks

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. —James Clear

I’m currently helping/consulting/advising a new project as it struggles to get off the ground. Myself and two other experienced PMs were brought in as part-time stop-gap help while the project recruits a full-time project manager to take over. We’re helping with WBS development, Project Execution Plan (PEP) drafts, and other fundamental project documents. It’s fun, but also aggravating at times. See, they have have a really cool and important project ahead of them, but they’re also starting out disorganized and undisciplined. Whoever they hire to take over is going to struggle to get everyone back inline, systematically working together, and performing at optimal productivity.

As just a simple example, we’ve been helping them create an ersatz Scope Statement document that they can use as an informal communication tool with their funding agency. At last count, there were eleven (yes, 11!) copies of the same Word document being emailed back and forth between participants in the span of one day. I spent half an hour yesterday editing what I thought was the latest version of the document, only to discover there was a newer version that slipped into my inbox while I wasn’t looking. Argh. I had to basically re-read and re-do my edits in the new document—all while hoping there wasn’t yet another version inbound.

As a PM, you must bring order to a project. From. Day. One.

No one else is going to do this for you. You must set ground rules, create document templates, organize files and document repositories, and do all the other things necessary to ensure there is as little wasted effort as possible.

Maximum productivity is the goal. Productivity is comprised of three things: effectiveness, efficiency, and endurance. This project has two of these things going for it, but efficiency ain’t one of them.

Getting organized from day one is a necessary ingredient to project success.