Can Your Project Make It to The Finish Line?

I read an interesting article from Michelle LaBrosse over at ComputerWorld titled Get ready, get set, go! Getting to the project finish line. It's a good piece outlining what you need to do to be prepared for the last stretch of your project. Here's the intro:

Every race to the finish line begins with similar instructions: “Get ready, get set, go!” Every race, that is, except the race to the deadline assigned at work. In business, the starting gun is sometimes shot without any heads up ("get ready" or any project planning ("get set"). People seem to run with it, but not successfully.

But if you take just an hour out of your schedule to "get ready" and "set," you'll get to the finish line faster and without stumbling. Before starting a project, you must first gather all of the information so you can assess what needs to take place.

LaBrosse even includes a nice timeline broken into a one-hour chunk that you can follow to help keep you on track during this planning process:

An hour of your time
30 minutes — Identify deliverables and acceptance criteria
10 minutes — identify processes
10 minutes — identify conflicts
10 minutes — tree diagram
20 minutes — milestone reviews

Read more here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Project+Management&articleId=9131617&taxonomyId=73&pageNumber=2

I liked this article because it talks about an often neglected area of project management - the end game. We focus on planning, kicking off the project and post mortems - how often we forget that final stretch of making it to the finish line. Get more prepared - check out the article!

If you liked what you read, you should check our Michelle's blog: http://www.everydaypm.com/ or follow her on twitter @michellecheetah.