Uncluttered project planning

Whether you’re taking on a new assignment at work or clearing clutter from your basement, successful projects have basically the same structure:

  1. Open lines of communication
  2. Gather data
  3. Identify final outcome and deadline
  4. Envision achievement of final outcome
  5. Set small milestones on a realistic timeline
  6. Do the work
  7. Stay in communication with relevant parties
  8. Finish project
  9. Cleanup, review, and/or reflect

The first step in this process could be opening up lines of communication with your boss, client, or possibly a service provider like an electrician. With a project like a closet cleanup, the communication might simply be motivating yourself or letting your roommate know you’re going to be making a giant, but temporary, mess.

When you’re gathering data in the second step, you’re looking to learn as much as you can about the entire project. Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Someone else might be giving you this data or you may need to seek it out yourself. How much clutter lurks in your attic? What is it? How should you handle it?

Steps three, four, five, and six are pretty straightforward — you want to know where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there, and then you need to take the steps to make that happen. Setting small milestones in addition to the overall large goal keeps you on track throughout the entire project.

The seventh step is often forgotten, but vitally important if you’re working with or coordinating others. When you provide status reports to everyone involved in the project you’re managing their expectations of your work and helping them to plan and complete their part of the work.

Step number eight is the best step, and may be worthy of a celebration.

The last step is important for getting you ready for the future. Cleaning up helps objects get returned to their storage space and ready for the next time you or someone else wants to use them. Reviewing the project after it’s completed helps you identify what worked and what didn’t, and reflecting on the entire project motivates you to take on more projects (or fewer) like it in the future. Completing this step, and even writing it down or logging it in some way, also gives you something to reflect on later for a performance review or even in your personal life.

Posted by Erin on Mar 4, 2010 | Comments

4 comments posted

  1. Posted by Dawn F. - 03/04/2010

    10. Have a margarita and make a toast to your hard work and awesome results! :)

  2. Posted by chacha1 - 03/04/2010

    Nicely done. I’d put number 4 in bold: envision your result. If you can’t imagine achieving something, your odds of completing it get much worse.

  3. Posted by Queen Lucia - 03/04/2010

    I’m definitely going to use this list at work – we often struggle with lack of momentum on projects, and this list will help frame the work and keep those cats herded. One change I’d make is to know the desired outcome from the first, before gathering data. Maybe for us the steps would be more like this: 1. Identify problem/issue, 2. Open lines of communication, 3. Identify desired outcome, 4. Gather information, etc etc. I think you can refine the outcome as you go, but I find knowing where you want to end up from the first is the biggest factor in completion. And I’ve been involved in plenty of projects that bog down in the middle and then no one can remember why we’re doing them to begin with! So thanks for this.

  4. Posted by Whelk - 03/05/2010

    Oh, I love step 7! I always forget step 7 when I’m decluttering at home. Two weeks after the declutter, the forgetting of step 7 usually leads to the “Where is the…” “Why can’t I find…” conversations that end with me waving off my husband’s cries with “Those things live HERE now, how can you not know that?” Never forget step 7.

    (Actually, even if I don’t forget step 7, the same conversation ensues anyway. Step 7 isn’t the most memorable topic of conversation for those only marginally involved.)

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