You were asked to lead or own a project. Now what? Here are a few practical steps to help you succeed.
- Leading a project doesn't mean you do all the work. This is a cat herding role. You are responsible for getting it done maybe even accountable. Ask for help.
- Create a project in your task management system. This is where everyone will go to check Are We There Yet? If it doesn't answer their question, they'll ask you directly.
- Define the outcome. Every project should have a clear outcome that tells you know when the project is done. Avoid forever projects like "Make the feature better".
- Define a target date. Dates help you focus on the impactiful parts of a project. You could keep working forever but there's lots to do. Having a date grounds your efforts with a sense of cost and helps you say No to low-impact work.
- Define what's out of scope. Once you know the outcome and a target date, you can clearly define what you're not doing. This may change as you learn more about user needs. You can then use the target date to kick something else out of scope.
- Set a weekly core team meeting. Everyone who works on a project should meet at least weekly. It is critical that your stakeholders are in this meeting. Stakeholders tend to be in many projects (consulted and informed) and find it easier to join a 30min weekly meeting than to read everything async.
- Break the project into shippable chunks. For large fuzzy projects, set milestones with dates. By this date we'll have X, by next date we'll have Y. Between the bigger milestones, try to ship something every day. The more often you ship, the sooner you'll know if the project is veering off track or your approach doesn't yield the right outcome. Smaller PRs are easier to review.
- Lead the weekly team meeting. Start with demos of what you've built since last time. This helps stakeholders see tangible progress, watch their vision come to life, and give useful feedback. Turn that feedback into tasks. End the meeting by stack ranking the feedback and next steps.
Align everyone on the goal, show progress, get feedback, adjust in real time.
Cheers,
~Swizec
Continue reading about How to lead a project
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