- What will my project deliver?
- What tasks do I need to do?
- What groups of tasks are there?
- In what order should I do these tasks?
- How long will each of these tasks take?
Remember that some tasks, or groups of tasks, can be run at the same time as others. For example, one team could be working on landscaping your garden, while another team renovates your house.
A great way to picture your plan is using a Gantt chart. These charts show the tasks, with a representation of these tasks against a calendar. The simple example below shows a plan for a couple of jobs to improve a house: renovating a living room, and landscaping a garden. You can see there is some logic in the ordering of the tasks – before painting there is preparation of surfaces, before that removing furniture to clear space. You can also see the estimate of duration, and how these add together to give the overall duration of the project. The tasks for renovating the living room take eight days. The tasks for the landscaping also take eight days, but are run in parallel to the living room, so these tasks must be done by a different person or team.
You can also see in this example that the work will be done during the working week, Monday to Friday. Bear in mind that if your project is a personal project then your available time may be in evenings or at weekends. Your plan needs to reflect this – don’t assume you can put in a 40 hour working week on a home project if you still holding down a day job.
Oh, and don’t worry if you don’t have a fancy-schmancy project management tool to build your plan. Use paper and pen, the back of an old envelope, whiteboard, butcher’s paper and crayons. What the plan looks like doesn’t matter. What matters is having a plan that is realistic, that you can commit to, and that will help you deliver whatever it is you’re working towards.
Have fun putting your plan together, and in the next post we will take a look at the plan to identify key milestones you can aim for along the way.
