What’s The State of Your Project Management Skills?

Project Management is something I have wrestled with, well… for a very very long time. From the professionals perspective I am a fully certified PRINCE2 Registered Practitioner, a skill utilised in the days of my Public Sector employment (Predominantly Information  & Communications Technology [ICT] Projects) but don’t let the digression lead you astray.

PRINCE2 is all well and good for big oft times Multi-Million projects (though PRINCE2 is a methodology spanning the entire small/medium/large project space) – what about projects on a more personal scale?

The crazy thing (at least for me) is that self project management is actually quite hard, providing ample opportunity for cognitive confusion and deep frustration capable of driving a generally relaxed and composed composition into an irritable version of AADD personified!

When it comes to organisation of what I call ‘self-time’ I admit to have tried just about every old/emerging/new technique there is and to be fair, I still have not got it ‘totally’ nailed at least not yet anyway.

My current organisation is based upon the GTD approach with a sprinkling of the Pomodoro technique as a driver with which to FOCUS, and focus is THE key when it comes to actually pulling off an organised approach to lining the right ducks in a row before actually shooting them down!

The main thing which seems kind of ‘obvious’ is to NOT involve yourself in too many projects (In GTD this is anything requiring more than two steps) which is a weakness of the GTD system as described elsewhere. Yes (if we set it all down on paper) we all are likely able to build a very long todo list (and along the way dump a lot of noise from ones mind) but that just isn’t really much use, especially when clusters of ‘TODO’ elements are morphed into ‘Projects’ which in turn become a TODO list of Projects – Aaaagh!

The important thing to take on board AND put into active practice is to rationalise that Project list down to truly significant (important to you) list of projects, rather than list out a train spotters manage of things you are in all likelihood never going to get around to. In so doing you will find yourself fitting into a practical and workable approach to organising your ‘productive’ time.

Another article  which further explores my ‘rationalise the project list approach’ – further, can be found over at lifehacker.com (a great site by the way) in an article entitled ‘how-to-maintain-a-project-list-that-doesnt-crush-your-soul‘ it’s a good read and you will I think, find it useful.

I’d be interested in exploring what aspects of self Project Management you find challenging and why? Leave a comment and let’s explore different experiences/tips/approaches.