Even if we don’t have the word ‘Project’ or ‘Manager’ in our job title and we have no ‘Management’ role as such, we are still making priority decisions on a multitude of mini projects every day.

In fact we are continually juggling project participations, goals, strategies, MBOs, KRAs, Account Development, quarterly targets…. The list is endless…. The ruthless reality is that most of us do more ‘Project’ and ‘Structured Assignment’ work than simple task work.

How we do it is what makes the difference between delivering with ease and delivering despite overwhelm. I know which way I prefer! Anyway, here is the good news ………

You can easily bring Best Practice Project Management sanity to the madness of all the competing priorities in your daily To-Do List

Think about it. Project Management methodologies have been researched, tested, codified and improved rigorously over time as well as being tested in the crucible of the commercial world.

The resultant Project Management Body of Knowledge, PMBOK , is, therefore, authoritative and we can use it to our advantage in our day jobs.

All we need to do is respect and incorporate a handful of fundamental Project Management principles and build a robust light-weight, flexible framework to allow us to manage our competing priorities and multiple projects with authority and ease.

The best news of all, for accidental occasional project managers, is that we don’t need to follow fancy consultant created, complex processes; we don’t need additional software tools (whether stand alone or add-ons), and there need not be a steep learning curve to get good at it.

In fact you can drive best practice multiple mini project management directly through Microsoft Outlook – plain vanilla Outlook, right out of the box. You can’t build a bridge with Outlook only but you can build Goals, Strategic initiatives, MBOs, Improvement Plans, account development plans, product development, change management initiatives, customer service and product delivery and much of what most knowledge workers do for a living all day through Outlook with relative ease.

5 reasons why you should use a principles-based flexible project management framework to manage priorities and workflows

  1. You can create or enhance a culture through a common language and common expectation and delivery mechanisms for project and other dependent workloads across the business.
  2. You can add and subtract complexity within the framework to suite your accidental, occasional project managers as well as the professional  aspirations of your senior Project Managers in your Project Management Office
  3. You can plan and deliver project and other dependent workloads through common tools like Microsoft Outlook – adding other tools only as complexity requires.
  4. You can build an appreciation and understanding of even complex Project Management concepts within your accidental, occasional project manager employees.
  5. You can improve team working effectiveness and profitability through better collective management of highly dependent workloads in your teams.

A simple, flexible 5 step framework for managing multiple mini projects alongside the day job

If you would like a complementary copy of my 5 Step Framework simply email me from your business email account and I will get it to you.

Till next time,…

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