Five Considerations Before Your Next Project

Five Considerations Before Your Next Project:

While teaching courses to high school graduates it became apparent that many of them weren't prepared to plan, to strategize, or to think in future tense. At first glance it comes off as an arrogant inconsiderate lack of will, that's what a person without the ability to formulate plans seems like, they are listless, without direction, in bygone terms we'd say, they lacked "spunk." Listening to the students talk, describe where they were at, and what they considered to be important versus unimportant, it began to dawn on me that they had little future sense, a highly active present sense, and somewhat of an active examination of the past.

What happens in the rush to learn rudimentary matters of education is that some of the refining which used to be part of the system has been removed. As we emphasize not leaving any child behind, we rush forward a person who has no concept of what it means to put that information to use in planning a future. This is why my students had no sense of where they wanted to go, they were still trying to figure out where they were. It is, after all, a puzzling world, so full of information that it becomes overwhelming, so overwhelming that it becomes better to not participate. This writing is in response to them, to assist those who will take the moments to take it in, for it provides a synthesis of good project management thought.

Here are some boiled down considerations in projects:

1) Snapshot - Everyone knows what a picture can reveal, the cliché' is that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this instance, that's true. The snapshot describes where you are at in terms of the project, as it stands right now. This means all the resources, or lack of resources, people or lack of people, place; places or lack of place or places, time to accomplish whatever aspect you are seeking to accomplish. In the snapshot is a description of what exists as it is, it's also good at this point to describe what you can of the "want to" or the why of the project.