Becoming a better project manager

Fully Complete The Project

Many people believe
a project is completed
when the new product is launched
or
the system is installed
or
the marketing campaign
is no longer active.

Those many people are
wrong.

Completing a project
means dealing with the waste
the new product produces.

It means completing
the return on investment calculation.

It means listing all the learnings
from the project
and presenting those findings.

It means figuring out
how to do that same project better.

It means documenting
and putting materials away
and cleaning the space.

I think of the project going live
as 2/3rds of the way
through the project.
There are still a lot of tasks
left to complete.

Fully complete the project.

Kill Criteria

When one of my self-published
romance novel series
started selling really well,
I told myself
I’d stop writing in that series
when pre-order sales
didn’t cover production costs.

Making that decision
near the start
of the series
was emotionally
much easier
than making it
when pre-order sales
had dipped.

And it ensured
I ended the series
(the product line)
with much of its profits
intact.

Identifying
clear ending or stopping points
is called
kill criteria
and it can be the difference
between profits
and losses.

It ensures
we don’t wait too long
to end projects.

Establish kill criteria
at the beginning of a project.

Set Up Auto Reminders

One of the pain in the a$$ tasks
a project manager
has to complete
is reminding team members
to do their d@mn jobs.

This task sucks
a LOT of time.

What I suggest
is setting up
automatic reminder emails
at the beginning of the project.
Base this
on the original project timeline.

Then adjust the delivery dates
as the project timeline changes
and delete future emails
when project members complete
their tasks.

These automatic reminder emails
save time
and it also saves aggravation.

Set up automatic reminder emails
for the tasks
and team members
you manage.