From the course: Project Management Simplified

Use Post-its to plan the order of tasks

From the course: Project Management Simplified

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Use Post-its to plan the order of tasks

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- [Instructor] Step three is really the heart of your project plan. It's when you work out how all the tasks fit together, what has to be done before what. And this is the point where you decide how you're actually going to do the job. The project goes from "I have no idea how to do this" to "I have a plan, I know how long it's going to take, "and I know where I'm going to start," which feels much better. I'm showing an example here based on a real project that I managed where we were setting up a new branch of our company in a foreign country. And you can see the project starts with choosing the country. After that, I can do three things. I can start recruiting my manager, I can apply for a permit, and I can look for a suitable site. The manager's going to get the staff and buy the furniture, and then I'm thinking that I won't purchase the site until I've got the permit, and obviously, I also need to have found it before I can buy it. So there are two arrows coming into purchase site. After purchasing it, I can modify it, and then install the furniture, which I will have had to buy, of course. Finally, I don't want to open until I've got the staff and the furniture. Once they're in roughly the right places, you can join them up with connecting arrows, either on the whiteboard or with pencil on a piece of paper. The arrows mean this task comes next, or more correctly, you can't do this task until you've done this one before it. So now, every Post-it has one arrow or more coming and coming out apart from the start and finish ones, obviously. And that's my Post-it note diagram done. I know this seems a little low tech, but it's so easy to move them around until you're happy with the order. Also, I would recommend doing this with two or three colleagues. And once there's a group of you, a computer is never going to be any good. Inviting your team to help you is a great idea because it's a fun process, and they will help you come up with a better plan, and they will be more motivated to carry out the work later. And even if they know nothing about project management, they will immediately understand what you're trying to do. And remember that there could well be more than one way you can do your project. You might expect project management to be about finding the one right answer, the best answer, but actually, it's usually about coming up with a plan that you and your team are happy with, agreeing it with your customer, and then sticking to it. Try doing the Post-its now for one of your projects. You'll find it's quick, easy, and fun. It always works really well.

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