Planning a large project or event is no easy task. Learn how to organize the project into easily manageable steps and track it all from start to finish.
TRANSCRIPT: This section is on project planning. If you have a big project, sometimes it can seem overwhelming. You don’t know where to start, so the key is to break it down. How are you going to make it happen? You’re going to do this with baby steps and action steps.
First of all, determine all the things that must be done to complete your project and their due dates. You might start out with a spreadsheet like the one I have here. These are also available on my website, I believe or in the show notes. You’re just going to list them all here — how long it’s going to take to do them, how many days or hours. Then along the top there, you can see that there is a series of dates projecting out either a couple weeks, couple months, or however long your project is going to last. You’re going to mark down the due date for each action step, so you can kind of see what’s involved, when it needs to be done.
The next step is to delegate the action steps to others as needed. (This is assuming that you are a leader of a team, a project team. If it’s just you, then your name is going to be on this whole list here.) Another good thing about this chart is that you have your action step, how long it takes, the responsible person, the deadline, and then you have listed the necessary resources you’re going to need for that action and any potential challenges that might prevent you from accomplishing that. You can see it all at a glance and see what you’re up against.
Then you can make a Gantt chart of who will do what and by when. You put the action steps in your personal calendars with reminders. Whoever is doing it needs to transfer what they’re responsible for into their own personal calendar. We have on this chart the entire project group, and then the subcommittees or task groups divided out underneath that, and the action steps that that group is responsible for, and when they need to have it done by. Then you can mark over there on the left when they have it done. Be sure to go and check this chart frequently. Or the one above — let’s see this one is all action steps with due dates to see how you’re doing. Then the individual people who are responsible for certain action steps should prioritize what they do each day.
This chart is called the Eisenhower matrix and it was popularized by Stephen Covey. I think it was originally attributed to Eisenhower, the president. You use this chart to prioritize what you do each day. You put each action step (or at least you mentally put each action step) into one of these boxes. We’ve got a four-compartmented box and we’ve got Urgent and Not Urgent and Not Important and Important. So if you’re listening, not watching, in the upper left-hand quadrant we have it’s Important and Urgent. You’re going to do those first. In the upper right-hand quadrant we have Important But Not Urgent, so you’re going to schedule those for later. In the lower left-hand quadrant we have Not Important But Urgent, and so you delegate these if possible. Then in the lower right-hand quadrant we have Not Important Not Urgent. If they’re not important and they’re not urgent, then you do these last or not at all for that day.
I hope this helps you with your project!
For more information you can contact me at my website: claritycoachingservices.com.