A well thought through project plan is a great tool for both planning your project work, and also for tracking your project work. It can help you to identify all the steps that need to happen to get you to the end of your project. As you work through the tasks the plan also lets you know if you are on track, or falling behind.
The plan can act as a roadmap for everyone who is working on your project, including yourself. But it can only act as a roadmap if it is available. If don’t publish your plan for others to see then you are not using the power of the plan to communicate to your team what the project is about. Think about what the plan holds: tasks, who is completing each task, how long the task should take, what is dependent on the task…A wealth of information that can make your role as a project manager much easier.
What do I mean by publish? Just making it visible. Print it out and stick it on a wall, somewhere where your team can see it and refer to it. You could email a soft copy to team members who work remotely.
Try publishing in different ways. For example you could post the schedule gantt chart view – this has the advantage of all team members seeing not only their own tasks but the tasks of others and the dependencies between them. Team members might also find it useful to get a list of all their tasks – a to do list.
If you’re running a project for yourself, with just you as a team member, you should still make sure that plan is somewhere where you can see it. Stick it on the fridge, or by the cookie jar – use it as a motivational tool for those moments when you might prefer to be doing something other than your project tasks. Put a reminder in your phone or calendar to review the plan regularly.
Reviewing the plan is the first step towards monitoring the success of your project.
