Treat Each of Your Important Activities in Life as a Project to be Managed

When you decide to do something, you need to put in a certain amount of planning to set the stage for successful completion. Some projects may be relatively small, such as determining what to get at the grocery store, to large, such as planning a wedding.

Thus, the number of tasks required for an individual project will vary based on its complexity. Besides considering WHAT you must do, it’s crucial to remember WHEN to complete different tasks but also in WHAT SEQUENCE of actions to finish a project not only correctly but on time.

In our personal lives, we carry out many separate projects every month, each comprised of hundreds of individual tasks (action steps). We just do these things without giving much thought to it. Most people go about things in a fairly haphazard manner, which ultimately results in some problems in getting a project done most efficiently and effectively.

For example, someone who has to go out to do some grocery shopping would be better off to consider what other items need to be picked up on the shopping trip, to maximize the use of not only time spent but money spent on gas. Treating it like a “shopping project” will force you to consider the various action steps involved as well as related activities that should be factored into the planning process before you leave the house.

As for planning something much more complex such as a wedding, there is a multitude of tasks to complete to achieve the desired outcome — a successful wedding. Missing any essential task could cause significant problems in carrying out a “wedding project” properly.

The best way to ensure that you don’t miss any steps is to break a project down into smaller actions in the correct order. Then group these smaller tasks into five phases that make them more manageable. Here are those phases, which are all part of a project’s lifecycle:

Project Initiation

In this phase, you think about what a project’s feasibility and value are. In the case of the “shopping project,” you know you are running low on groceries that you’ll need to cook meals for your family, so not resupplying your cupboard would cause some issues at home.

Is it feasible to do this shopping in a timely manner and get what you need? The answer is almost certainly “yes” unless there is something more urgent that comes up during that same timeframe. The value of this project is that once you complete it, you have a happy family at home enjoying the food you purchased and prepared.

In terms of the “wedding project,” assuming the date of the wedding has been set, you know you’ll have to work within a fixed amount of time from when you start until the wedding takes place. Everything that needs to be done has to happen before the wedding, so the only feasible thing to do is to stay on schedule, or better yet, ahead of schedule, in completing all required tasks. The value of doing that is a happy couple exchanging their wedding vows.

Project Planning

If all systems are “go” to proceed with the project, then the next phase is to do some reasonably detailed planning. Since we’re talking about personal projects, not business projects, the preparation can be fairly straightforward, such as using a To-Do List, or something similar that serves as an Action Plan, with task items and associated dates for completing those actions. Again, an Action Plan for a “shopping project” will look a lot different than one for a “wedding project.”

The “wedding project” will contain a much larger number of tasks than a “shopping project.” Nonetheless, each must have whatever amount of detail is required to ensure successful project completion. In either case, things to take into account are the project budget, supplies needed, etc.

While preparing the project plan, you should factor in some potential obstacles that may come into play as you consider the entirety of a project’s cost, scope, and timeframe. Making a misstep at this stage can cause significant problems in the later phases of the project cycle.

Project Execution

It’s important to remember that every project should keep a “customer” in mind. For a “shopping project,” the customers are the members of the family. For a “wedding project,” the customers are primarily the bride and groom, but everyone attending the wedding, as well.

After doing an excellent job of project initiation and project planning, the next phase is project execution, where you carry out all of the actions laid out previously. A project may involve one or more people, so these “team members” will need to focus on ensuring they complete their assigned tasks. If it’s a multi-person project, a “project leader” will oversee the overall project execution.

The key here is to get things right during the project planning phase so that you’re executing all the right things at the right time in the right order, so you are successful in the end.

Project Monitoring and Control

While executing a project, it’s essential to closely monitor what’s happening to check on progress and keep things on track. You might think that this doesn’t apply to smaller efforts like the“shopping project,” but you’d be wrong because all it takes is for a distraction of any kind to prevent you from doing everything you set out to do.

The same goes in spades for a much more complicated effort like a “wedding project,” which involves many more “moving parts” that can get out of whack if not carefully monitored and controlled. Remember: No plan ever winds up being executed precisely as you put it down on paper. You will usually need to make adjustments along the way, hopefully, nothing too major. So you must always be vigilant so that your project moves ahead smoothly.

Project Closure

Only when you have a successful conclusion to a project can you declare closure. Your “customer” must be satisfied before you can close out a project, no matter what that project is or how big or small it is.

The good news is that if you correctly carry out the five phases of the project lifecycle, your chances of having a successful project, and thus delighted customers, are excellent. If some things didn’t go quite as you planned during execution, be sure to note these issues and make the needed adjustments for the next project.

In our daily lives, once we complete one project, another one pops up before you know it. That’s just the way life is. But in utilizing the five phases of the project management lifecycle, you’ll be all set to succeed in carrying out any project that comes your way.

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Thanks for reading. Copyright Terry Mansfield. All rights reserved.