Anyone can manage a project without formal training by learning core practices: set clear objectives, define milestones, establish a simple communication plan like a weekly email, and do a post-mortem after. Think of it like learning basketball fundamentals.
I've talked a lot about projects in my videos that I've done here and also in my email list. And I want to just break it down a little bit more in how I think about projects. So, first of all, there's what I call good enough project management. And this applies when you're assigned a project at work or you're responsible for a project. And sometimes I think when that happens, people think, well, I'm not trained as a project manager or I don't have that title. And I want to use a basketball analogy because the UAF men's basketball team has had a couple of great upsets and is in the NCAA tournament and still alive. And. And I love the sport of basketball. So, you know, you wouldn't think necessarily that you couldn't play basketball, even though you'd never been on a basketball team or done formal, a formal program, you can still get on the court and play basketball. And you'd learn the basics. You'd start learning how to dribble and pass and shoot. You learn how to play offense and defense, you'd learn how to get rebounds and box out. You know, eventually you'd start building things in your repertoire, but just getting on the court and saying, I'm going to play basketball, you can do that without any formal training. And so good enough. Project management is kind of that same philosophy where you don't necessarily have to be formally trained as a project manager or have the. The title or be a professional in order to start applying project management principles and take on that responsibility. There's some things you can learn and as you build, you can add more and more to it. Project thinking, which is what I've kind of talked about so much in the videos, is using the construct of a project, either personally or professionally, to try to get things moving. So kind of continuing on with the basketball analogy, this would be like if you've got a group of people and you say, well, we really need some team bonding or some way to come together. We need to get out our energy before we, you know, dive into something. Let's go play basketball. And you get them all together and you go play basketball. That's kind of what project thinking is, is where you use the constructs of a project to get things moving, like I said, either personally or professionally. And I've outlined the kind of the basic things I think of, which are the objectives, milestones, communication plan, which I'll be talking about my simple Sunday's email shortly. And then the last one, which I haven't addressed much, but is I a post mortem or a post project recap? So that's kind of two aspects of project management from my perspective. Good. Good enough. Project management, which is where you've been assigned a project and you've got responsibility, but you don't have necessarily the professional training and project thinking, which is applying the project constructs to get things moving. Thanks, we'll see you soon.
Episode 116: Guest Brian Walch - The 3 Stages of Career Growth: What Engineers Need and Managers ...
