There are lots of jokes about how the masons house is crumbling, painters house needs a paint job, seamstresses children’s clothes are never mended, and on and on. The questions is, "How does this play out in project management?"
Your Life as a Project
How do we do at personal project management?There is an interesting website called blogspot.lifelongproject.com which explores the idea of projects about our lives. Yes, I think we would all agree that often times we get VERY wrapped up in our professional lives. I sometimes get so wrapped up in my professional life that I neglect many things in my personal life. When that happens I try to shore up the projects in my personal life. I try to use my basic project management abilities to get them back on track.
This is something worth thinking about in your own life and I recommend having a look at the above-mentioned blog in this post.
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John Reiling, PMP
Project Management Training Online
Lean Six Sigma Training Online
5 responses so far ↓
1 ameyer32 // Sep 23, 2008 at 8:29 pm
John,
it’s interesting that you post this. One of my favorite questions to ask PMs in an interview is whether they created a project schedule for their wedding (or any other major event.)
I’ve never yet had someone say “Yes .” To me it points up a weakness in PM. If the tools are so useful, why don’t people take advantage of them in their personal life?
People use email in their personal lives, they schedule things on calendars, they use cell phones, they make lists, but they don’t use PM tools.
Why?
Things that make you go… hummmmmm
Andy
http://alignmentinquiries.blogspot.com/
2 pawelbrodzinski // Sep 24, 2008 at 9:15 am
I’d be very far to apply all project management paradigns in personal life. Most of the time I care more about my happiness at the end of different personal “projects” than on having them on time and on budget.
On the other hand not having strict customer on your back squeezing you with deadlines and money gives you much more comfortable position to plan anything.
From my experinece I can use “lighter” approach to different things in personal life and achieve very good reasults. Talking about example Andy has given - I had no project schedule for my wedding project yet all went fantastic and of course on time. We could probably argue how much risk management, scheduling, resource management etc. was used there, but none of those was used consciously.
After all, why should I stress myself?
By the way: knowing much about project management in professional life definitely helps much in personal life, even if we use that knowledge unconscously.
3 fsimcock // Oct 1, 2008 at 7:43 am
I think one of the key points from the lifelong project site is that life is temporary, like a project and it has a unique product - each of us! Whether we have detailed plans is a question of our personal style, I guess but at least we can think about our objectives as we go forward.
Just a quick technical note: the address for the blog is http://blog.lifelongproject.com.
And, at the risk of sounding very, very sexist and non-PC - I definitely had a project plan for my wedding, including risk analysis and contingency plans and most of my girlfriends also did!
4 John Reiling // Oct 6, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Thanks for your comments! I agree that approaching a project in personal life requires thinking in terms of different priorities, but really, every project does, too.
5 My Private Project // Dec 17, 2009 at 11:48 am
[…] So far postings were always about professional side of project management. However after reading one of recent posts of John Reiling on PMCrunch I realized I’ve actually started quite big project in my personal life – I build a […]
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