PMcrunch

As project managers we… well, manage projects! Or, do we? Actually, as I have been thinking about my experience managing projects and my experience managing my own time, I really think all we do manage are tasks. It is actually the practice of project management that simply allows us to manage more complex collections of tasks. Likewise, managing programs enables us to manage all that much more complex tasks, managing a company goes even further, and so on and so forth. This is a revelation to me that I actually find refreshing and empowering.

I have often been frustrated with personal time management and, sometimes, even more frustrated with much more complex challenges that I have faced. It always comes back, I have found, to task management, no matter what level I am working. For example, I am interestingly finding that managing a project is simply an umbrella over a more complex set of tasks, and the only thing that really moves the project forward is the completion of those tasks. I am almost laughing as I say that, as it seems so simple, so trite. However, I sense a bit of freedom in that idea.

Looking at a more complex situation, such as, let’s say, building a system or building a building, proves out what I’m saying. In the end, all we end up with, after all the planning, meeting, discussion, thinking, is a set of tasks that, if completed on time and within budget into proper quality standards, advance the project. So it is simply a collective of everybody’s task list and the strategy of determining what those tasks need to be and prioritizing them.

I feel like I am delighting in the obvious, but, nonetheless, this seems a bit different to me.

______________________
John Reiling, PMP
Project Management Training Online
Learn Six Sigma Training Online