Project Management Simplified
By Chris Frye and Holly Mason
Project management tools and techniques were created to introduce order, but maintaining such systems often soaks up a lot of time. For all but the largest, most complicated Web projects, elaborate organizational systems are overkill. Often, these distract the project manager and the team from what's really important to the project's success.
After years of participating in and managing all kinds of assignments, we've prepared three core principles that apply to most Web projects. These techniques are highly adaptable and have helped us focus on what's really vital to the success of our projects:
- Find your targets:
Identify, communicate, and reiterate a small number of clear, measurable project objectives.
- Get focused:
Measure and communicate continuous progress toward your stated goals.
- Simplify the process:
Do only those things that contribute directly to progress toward project objectives.
Find Your Targets
A few very straightforward steps will help you determine which tasks are essential to your project: Set measurable project objectives, use those objectives to identify responsibilities, then draw up a project schedule and assign tasks.
Set measurable project objectives. This is the most important step, because everything else builds on it. You can't prove a project's success if there aren't any measures for it. Objectives expressed in specific business terms are the key. For most projects, four or five of these can define your mission.<>
