Ines Lopez

Do you have an idea circulating in your head but you don’t know where to begin? Do you think you need a certification in project management to be able to organise a project?

A project is a set of tasks with a specific beginning and end. With all the hype about project management, a whole universe of certifications has been born over the last few years making the subject a bit more intimidating than it has to be. If you have an idea you can create a project out of it, just follow these simple steps. To make it even easier I am going to illustrate the process with an example, writing a book.

1. Define the benefits of the project for you

Benefits are the good things the project is going to bring. You will have different ones depending on the nature of your project. Following the example of the book some benefits could be having a sense of achievement being a published author, feeling fulfilled as a result of sharing your knowledge with others, and additional income. 

Starting a new endeavour is going to require some sort of commitment and energy. You probably are going to have to focus your attention and time away from other activities and into this new work. Understanding the benefits the project will bring you will help you stay motivated throughout the process. This way when you have a busy day or you struggle to find the energy to do what you need to do you can read the benefits and reconnect with your project. 

2. Define the benefits of your project for others

Having a full understanding of what you are trying to deliver is going to help you gather support for your project. It can also help you stay motivated even more. Now that you have looked into what the project will bring to you it is time to widen the circle. Think about the things your project will bring to those around you, family, friends, and existing or future customers. In my book example, these could be the sensations you want the readers to have when they read the book if you are writing a novel. Or the knowledge they will acquire and what they will be able to do with it if you are writing a technical book. 

Doing this step will also help you understand your customer or avatar. The person that would benefit the most from the project. This can help you if you need to do marketing down the line. If the only person who benefits from the project is you, (for example you are creating a project to move home) then this step will merge with the step before.

3. Choose the ideal date you want your project to be done by

Set a date as a baseline. Be careful not to be too demanding or too relaxed about it. Do your best to make it a realistic date with the little information you have now. This will help you start bringing down all the energy associated with the project, which now is just floating around in your head.

4. Think of all the tasks

Now comes the time to start adding substance to the project, and defining the tasks. List out in any order you can all the things you know that need to be done to achieve your goal. 

When defining tasks there is a concept called granularity. It relates to the level of detail or size of the task. For example, some of my book project tasks are going to be: writing the book, editing the book, creating the cover, etc. I can define “writing the book” as one task or I can break it up into researching for the book, which includes all the investigation I may need to do for the content and references and the actual writing of the book. You choose the granularity of your tasks. 

Keep in mind that big granularity means your tasks would be bigger and take more effort to carry out. Smaller granularity would give you a bigger sense of achievement in the long run. It would allow you to tick things off the list quicker than if you had big tasks. But it may also make you feel more overwhelmed having many tasks to do on your list rather than a few.

Once you have your list make sure all the things you have written down are covering all the aspects of your benefits. Otherwise, you will not be able to deliver all that you originally intended.

5. Order your tasks

Now that you have all the tasks on paper think about their order. There would be things that need to happen before others. You can’t edit a book without having written it first for example. Go over your list ordering it in sequence. Make a note of the tasks that you can do at any time because they don’t depend on anything else. Place them wherever you prefer.

6. Understand what tasks you can do and which you can’t

Review all the tasks and make an assessment on whether you have the knowledge and time to be able to carry all of them out or not. If you have it great!. If you don’t you have two options. 

a.You can create some tasks that reflect the fact that you have to learn those skills and knowledge. 

b.You can outsource that work to people that know how to do it so you don’t have to learn about it. Which takes you to the next step.

7. Ask for info from suppliers

Outsourcing means that someone else would carry out the tasks according to your requirements. Normally you would have to invest some money to get that work done. Although if you have a friend with that skillset you may be able to do some other sort of exchange for the work. Many companies and people use websites like www.upwork.com or www.fiverr.com to outsource different parts of their projects or operations. If that is your route you need to be very mindful and careful on the list of requirements you are providing to your possible contractors. Make sure you are clear on what you need and how you want to receive it to avoid misunderstandings and frustration at both ends. Ask them for a quote in terms of money but also time. You will need both things to be able to build your project completely. 

8. Assign durations to the tasks 

Now look at your task list. Think about how much time will you need to carry out each of the tasks. Assigning durations will be easiest on the tasks you are more familiar with. For the tasks you are not familiar with do your best to assign them some time. If you are outsourcing some tasks you can use the time the contractors are providing you with. Go task by task assigning durations on any length of time: hours, days, weeks… 

– Writing book 1 week

– Editing book 2 weeks, etc.

9. Put the tasks and durations in order

The next step is bringing a bit more detail into your task list. First, decide when are you going to start working on the project. Let’s say I am starting the writing on 1 February. I said that writing the book is going to take me 1 week. And I know that editing can’t begin until I have finished writing. So Editing the book won’t start until 8 February at the earliest. One by one now I can translate the durations into real dates, based on the starting date I have chosen. 

Make sure to also include the tasks in your list that don’t depend on anything else. For the time being, you can add them at the end one after another if you don’t find a better place for them.

10. Compare final dates

Now your project should be a list of tasks in sequence. One must end for the next in line to start. As you add dates to the tasks you will reach a final date for the project, the date by which the last task ends. 

In step 3 you chose an ideal end date for your project. Now compare it with the one you have got in step 9. Is the ideal date after the date you just got? If that is the case amazing! Your project will finish before the date you originally wanted. 

If that is not the case, ask yourself whether you really wanted that ideal finish date or you can live with the new one. If you want to shorten your project don’t despair there are a couple of things you can do.

11. Ways to shorten the project

If your final date is too far in the future you can apply two techniques:

– Review the order of the tasks to see if there is any work that could be done in parallel. This means doing one task while another is happening. This is very effective when you have tasks that perhaps you have to start off but there is a waiting period until you can continue. You can use that idle time to make progress with another task. For example, if I am sending my book to an editor for editing I could start thinking about the cover of the book while the editing is taking place. This way I am shortening the whole project by doing things in parallel.

– Review the duration of all your tasks, and see if there are any tasks that you could do in less time without its quality being compromised. For tasks that are being done by third-party providers make sure you have a conversation with them about shortening the timescales and what would be the conditions. They may ask for a bigger budget. Shortening the durations may introduce more risk to the project. At the end of the day some things require a certain amount of time and not wanting to reflect it as such in the project doesn’t make the need less real. Sometimes compromising on a different ideal final date is the most sensible approach.

12. Understand the cost of your project

The last step is understanding how much your project is going to cost. Now that you have settled on your timescales you can add a cost to each of your tasks. For the tasks you are going to be completing yourself, it would be good that you assign yourself an hourly fee. After all the time you are doing this you are not going to be doing something else. Maybe you are not going to pay yourself as such but it is something good to keep in mind.

You are all set. You have organised your idea into a project. There are many tools you can use to do the management of your project. You could use www.clickup.com or www.notion.io to create a free timeline by adding the tasks and their dates. This is a video to do it in Notion so you can graphically see your project through time.

If you want more support to guide you through this process you can find all these steps and video tutorials on how to use free software tools to help you in my ebook Idea to Project. You can also get it on paper in Amazon. And if you want someone to guide you through out as a coach or consultant you can contact me here.

Now is time to start working on the first task. Good luck!