Project Management

With email, instant messaging, texting and mobile phones, we’re always reachable. Being available always can be a problem. Here are a few tips on how to detach your self sometimes and get a little time to get work done. Your email client doesn’t need to be running when your computer is turned on. People sending email doesn’t expect an instant answer. Turn you mail client off, and start it when you switch to ”mail processing mode”. Turn it off again once your done. While the little pop-up notifications may be practical, they do break the attention away from the task being done, when the mail arrive.

Make a small list every day of the items you need to do. Use checkmarks and track your progress throughout the day an notice which thinks out side the list, eats you time away. Run with the system a week and use the result. First the list helps you notice how much you get done throughout the day. Most people seem to work more by the clock than by tasks. By planning tasks and noticing the task progress, you learn how much you handle on a day and hopeful get better at guessing how much time a task actually takes.

Every workplace seem to have a certain fondness for mettings, and some organizations seems to have so many meetings that they hardly have time to mind their business. There are a few tricks, which can help you make the most of meetings – or at least lessen the pain. If you’re invited to a meeting…

As a general rule expect at least two days notice before any meeting with more than 3 participants. Meetings arranged with a tighter deadline (unless some current event is the cause) are too often a joint coffee break than a meeting.

Generally I’m a fan of the GTD-thinking, and while I may not be following the system (yet anyway) I have picked up a few habits, which seems to help a lot. I’ll try to post a few items on some of the things, which seems to work for me. First item on that list, is the ”no morning meetings”. Whenever I manage my calendar, I make an effort to keep the first 30 to 60 minutes after I get to work free of meetings and other interruptions.

The past months my calendar at work seems to have been a pure mayhem of meetings, seminars and other activities away from my desk and the feeling of during actual work. There are however one trick, which seems to do magic – make a meeting without inviting anyone. In modern offices with enterprise calendaring systems such as Outlook&/Exchange setting up meetings is much easier than ever before (maybe too easy but that’s a topic for another post).

It seems most software has a lot of features, that we don’t know about or don’t use. Some of these features can actually prove themselves highly valuable in the every usage of a given program, and one of the small but powerful tips is how to color code your mail. I used to have an inbox with more than a thousand messages lying around. Through some heavy vetting and through cleaning it’s rarely below a hundred messages. While a 100 messages isn’t too uncommon its still too many to conquer in a single glance and there are an easy way to break it down further.

I’ve been reading a lo ton the GTD philosophy the past six months, and while I haven’t fully adopted the preaching’s, some things are working better for me, than in the past in terms of time and project management. This is how I try to work towards less stressful days and more actual work.

Inbox management

I used to have well over 1.000 mails in the inbox. Through focused and efficient cleaning, it’s now down to around a hundred on an average day. Short mails are read and killed. Important issues are managed. FYIs and reference materials are either killed or filed in archive folders upon arrival.

It seems most people are capable of launching an email application and do understand most of the technical skills required to use the application. It does however also seem that a fairly large part of the same people lack the social intelligence and skills required to make efficient use of their email capabilities. Scanning through my inbox I saw a fair and typical number of examples in the ”bad email usage” category. These include:

Why is it that lawyers and project managers keep information to themselves until the very last minute, and the present the non-negotiable deadline to developers when the point of ”reasonable notice” is long past? – Today marked yet another occasion. … and even more strange – why is it, that we developers do magic every time and actually make the impossible happen? – I’m seriously questioning if that’s a bright strategy, if we ever want to get something in due time – and not burn the midnight oil while the project managers a sleeping.

It’s almost funny in a tragic sort of way how many project managers seems to think a project plan is a one-time event in the project. It isn’t. It is a continious task through out the project. As the project progresses, a bright project manager ajusts the plan so it fits the actual project progress. If the project plan isn’t updated, there might be selveral reasons. Updating the plan maybe causing a headace and take hours and hours. Keeping the plan up to date must be worth the effort, and if your project planning tool is easy to use and manage, then you just don’t do it.