Current Article

The Easy Way To Get Things Done

By Jim Symcox on Jan 28, 2008 in Business Growth, Project Objectives

Getting things done starts with understanding exactly what you’re trying to achieve. Now that’s just plain commonsense isn’t it?

Well you’d think so. However…

Directionless Projects

When I was an IT project director I came across projects that had no clear objectives. Even people who were managing projects who didn’t really think they were the project manager. And they had no objectives at all.

A project manager should be under no illusion whether they’re managing a project or not.

Similarly the whole project team should understand the project objectives. So whose responsibility is it to ensure the project managers understands their role and the project has clear objectives?

In all cases it’s the responsibility of the person assigning the project to the the project manager.

How Does That Apply To You?

It’s easy to think, “that’s nothing to do with me as I don’t run projects.”

Think again…

Everything you do is a project. It maybe fairly trivial, it may be enormous. However, unless you’ve clear goals you’ll never know whether you’ve achieved what you wanted and worse you’ll have no idea how close you are to finishing or whether you’re over-running the completion date.

Recognise Your Projects

Before you begin a task look and see whether there are actually several tasks rolled up in a single task. If there are you’ve looking at a project.

Simple, eh?

The 10 Minute 5 Step Project Objective Creator

Step 1: If there are no apparent objectives for your project take 3 minutes (it feels longer than you think) to think about what they might be.

Step 2: Write them down for 3 minutes.

Step 3: If there’s more than one objective show the list to someone else and ask them to come back to you with what they think. If there is only one objective skip straight to step 5.

Step 4: Review the list with them and agree the objectives in 3 minutes

Step 5: Publish the project objective(s) to everyone involved in the last minute.

Obviously objective setting can take more time. However, the 5 minute plan allows you to quickly get going and means you understand where your projects going. More complex projects follow the same steps and take more time and usually more iterations.

How’s That Easy?

Like I said at the start getting things done starts with knowing what you want to achieve.

Now you know your objectives it makes you focus only on achieving those objectives. Focus means you’re less likely to get involved in other stuff that’s nothing to do with your objectives.

Instantly life is easier.

Technorati tags: Project objectives, project goals, 5 step