Week 4: The Project Plan
How to prepare a schedule that will be your great tool
Monica was very happy as her customer's partner Olivier approved the proposal and requested to start preparing the campaign.
As the project seemed to be quite complicated, Monica prepared detailed project plan. Then she invited her team for a kick-off meeting to present it and start the activities.
The Challenge: Present The Plan to Team Members
Monica came into the kick-off meeting a few minutes before the team. She powered on the projector and displayed the schedule. The team members started to appear in the conference room.
After a few moments she started the meeting and presented the schedule piece by piece, detail by detail. The team asked many questions. Some people pointed out that there are missing pieces, some could not understand what should they do. Monica patiently explained every detail and after 2 hours wrapped up the meeting. She sent the project plan to her boss and to team members.
The art director prepared the first designs a few days later. But the graphic designers were confused, because they have not understood that they have a task in her project! Even though Monica booked their time in agreement with Traffic Manager...
The Problem: Team Members Do Not Understand The Plan
Recently I did a customer research for FoxyTasks project management app. I enjoyed very interesting and inspiring
chats with many creative project managers. All of them are successful and professional, but they often have completely different needs and approaches to project management techniques. Differences between them are quite well reflected by how their project plans look like.
The style of a project plan should depend on the environment too. Managers use various styles of planning, often reflecting their characters, backgrounds and attitudes to life.
Whiteboard with Sticky Notes: The Team Player
One of my friends told me that I influenced him to start using the whiteboard, and it was the most important management technique (or the only one?) he copied from me.
The whiteboard is a great information radiator, the tool which propagates the project status to your team. Project managers who are team players often use the whiteboard as a their scheduling tool.
There are a few management techniques focused around whiteboards: you might have heard about Agile, SCRUM or Kanban.