Mind maps can help to break down large projects into manageable chunks.
Managing your workload with online tools or a great to-do list is fine for smaller jobs, but what about big projects? Here are 5 tools and concepts that you should consider when managing a large project.
Mind maps
A mind map is a diagram that starts with one word or phrase at the centre, with various thoughts and ideas spreading outwards. The further out you go, the greater the detail becomes.
Mind mapping is a great way to get all of your thoughts down on paper without trying to do it in a conventional list. You can organise your thoughts into a list later, but if you start with a top-to-bottom list you may run out of room. Mind maps are better for using all of the available space, and are much easier on the eye mostly due to the use of colours.
Project scope
Some projects may be susceptible to “out of scope” requirements being included just to get them done. Establish clear goals for the project and consider small changes, but stay within the project scope: that is, evaluate whether the changes submitted will meet the project objectives. Surplus changes can be considered if you run ahead of schedule, but are not the highest priority and should not detract from the critical path.
Dependencies and the critical path
Once you’ve got your tasks written down, it helps immensely if you can organise each task to indicate any dependencies on other tasks. For instance, you might want to create a design on paper before trying to code it, and you might want to think of a solid niche for a blog before planning your first posts.
Some projects have far more critical dependencies than others. For instance, if you’re a property developer and you’re building a house from the ground up (literally), you can’t build until you have a solid plan, and you can’t put the roof on first. It may seem obvious, but if you’re project managing a team of builders, you’ve got to understand the dependencies so you can tell them what to do when.
The “critical path” refers to the tasks that must be completed for the project to meet its objectives. Note that if you have 5 tasks to complete but each of them has a dependency, the dependencies become part of the critical path too.
Milestones
A milestone can be used as a kind of checkpoint to indicate when a specific workstream has completed. Assigning a date to a milestone means you have a goal to work towards. Big projects usually have several milestones, which poses less of a risk than having one milestone for the whole project. That way, if a milestone slips, you can adjust the subsequent milestones accordingly. This means you have a much clearer idea of when the project will conclude.
Milestones can break up inter-project dependencies. For instance, in software development projects there can be milestones to indicate the start or end of requirements gathering, design, development, system testing, user acceptance testing and implementation. There is often some overlap between the tasks, and there may be dependencies that span milestones, but milestones can still be used to highlight that non-urgent changes will not be accepted beyond a certain date. This is important to avoid late changes throwing the project timescales out.
Stage reviews
A vital part of running a large project is reviewing progress along the way, not just at the end of the project. If certain tasks are not going according to plan, they need to be addressed before those tasks start impacting on the other tasks. Early identification and resolution of problem areas is an extremely important part of getting your projects completed on time.
What other tips do you have for managing a large project?
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
I’ve often found I manage a large project just like I manage a smaller one. My mind works best in a very linear, logical, and almost anal way.
Mind maps feel too ‘messy’. Instead, I have notebooks (one in my handbag, one at my desk, one in the kitchen, one in the car, one by my bed…). I scrawl ideas as they occur. If these notebooks aren’t frequently sorted it can get cluttered so I regularly transfer from my notebook into to-do list like structures.
I have files of story ideas and links, quotes, project ideas, web site design concepts, and general snippets alongside files that list current projects and future projects by project sorting the concept or idea, a track of what tasks need to be completed in priority (when I KNOW the priority lol) notes that come up with that project, etc. I also have a filing system for my emails so that emails are tracked by sender and subject/project.
The advantage of keeping my lists via computer is it is easy to move projects, actions, and tasks from one place to another. Higher priority tasks can be shuffled to the top of the list, intermediate can be slotted into the middle.
Still, despite all these makeshift ways to stay organized none of it feels ideal. I love sharing organization ideas with others and learning new options. I am sure we can all discover new ways to work more efficiently. The trick is finding what works for us as it may not be what works for someone else.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:52 am
Oh my mind maps bring back floods of memories from Uni. I had a professor who was a huge fan of them and even graded us on our mind maps!
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
[...] Having a list of tasks that need to be done is vital before you go any further. Establish a clear sequence of events, identify dependencies, and add in some [...]