Project management Tools
(for non-project managers)
There's a reason Project Management is a comprehensive profession. It takes a strong, broad skillset to be done well and makes use of decades of tested frameworks and business applications. And yet, more and more knowledge workers are responsible for managing projects on their own with no formal training. Luckily, there are simple steps you can learn and follow to make your project a success.
In this article, you’ll learn:
Benefits of using structured project planning
How to structure your project planning
How to execute your project plans
Our template provides a generic structure you can use for your project planning list along with other critical resources for managing your project such as a kickoff deck, project brief document, and status update template.
Why should I structure my project planning?
You may have been handed a project or given a goal with no clear direction on how to accomplish it- you may have not even realized you were responsible for a full-on project until you started working on it! Often in these cases, you might just jump into the work moving from one task to another until you hit a roadblock or finish the work. This spontaneous approach can end up wasting a lot of time and delaying the speed with which you are able to finish your work. Or it can prevent the success of the project altogether. If a great idea fizzled because you weren’t able to move it forward into work, a lack of planning could be to blame.
If you learn and use basic project management techniques and steps, you can apply them to any project big or small to help make it a success. Below are some of the benefits you can expect if you begin using a more structured project planning approach:
Aligned on goals and project fit within objective
Instead of prioritizing based on which team is yelling the loudest or moving haphazardly from one task to the next, a structured project plan allows you to clearly define why you are prioritizing the project and how it aligns with your company, team, or individual goals. This ensures the time and energy you put into the project are all well spent.
Secure necessary resources ahead of time
A structured project plan can help you look around the corner so you can request and secure necessary resources ahead of time instead of scrambling each time a new cross-functional need arises. By knowing what resources you will need, you can have discussions, understand cross-functional bandwidth, and get approval for any budgeting or tools that you will need for your work.
Realistic allocation of time for each action item and area
By mapping out a clear project timeline and a detailed list of tasks, you will be able to get a bigger picture on how much time the project will take, what a realistic completion date is, and how much help you will need along the way. This can help you to set expectations with stakeholders, get other project participants involved, and manage your own schedule and bandwidth in the context of your project work.
Source of truth for project participants on what needs to be done
With a clear project planning list that details out the work involved, your collaborators will know what is being asked of them, when it needs to be done by, and how it fits into the bigger picture. This allows them to plan for their involvement and how it connects with other work on their plate.
Source of truth for stakeholders on how project is progressing
If you create a structured project plan that your collaborators use and update, you’ll always have a clear understanding of what is done, still left to do, and being blocked. This will help you communicate status updates to your stakeholders and provide a dynamic resource they can check for real-time check-ins along the way.
If any of these are important for you or your team, create a more structured approach to your project planning today. Again, there are many frameworks and methodologies you could use for your project management, and you can find many resources online. Below are the basic steps I recommend taking and resources I recommend creating to make any project a success based on my own experience. The steps are very generic and you can add your layer of PM techniques on top as you see fit.
How to structure your project planning (a high-level overview):
To make your project a big success, you can follow these basic steps and adjust the scope and complexity based on the size and needs of your project. There are templates for each of the noted resources in our project management template kit and you can get more detailed instructions and videos for each in our course here.
Develop project brief that defines goals, alignment with objectives, timeline, resources, and stakeholders
Start by outlining an overview of your project including:
Why you are prioritizing this project (alignment with objectives)
What you hope to achieve & how you will measure success (goals)
Who will be involved in the project (stakeholders)
What resources you need (resourcing & costs)
When you will work on and complete the project (timeline)
Try to be comprehensive but succinct in your brief to include all of the essential information that is critical to get buy-in and inform approvers. Consider your audience and what information they need in order to participate the way you need them to. If you need to get approval for your project, you can include more detail about the background, prior work, business case, and anticipated questions in your brief as well.
Once you have drafted your brief, share it first with your closest project collaborators to get input, feedback, and contributions, and then you’ll use this brief to inform the other steps of your planning.
Develop project planning list with detailed, realistic timeline
After you’ve aligned with your key collaborators on the overall brief, develop a detailed project plan that demonstrates exactly what needs to be done in order to complete your project. This should contain all of the necessary action items and milestones for the work including due dates, owners, and relevant information.
Your project plan will likely become more robust over time as you begin the work and collaborate with others, and in this initial creation phase you should be detailed enough that your collaborators can understand the plan of action and your stakeholders and approvers can understand the timeline and resource allocation throughout the project.
Get buy-in from key stakeholders and approvers
Once you have a strong brief and a detailed project planning list, you are ready to get buy-in from your stakeholders and approvers. This should include input from anyone who will need to fulfill requests, provide resources, or approve any part of your project. The volume of stakeholders and approvers and the intensity of their review and approval will vary greatly depending on the culture and hierarchy of your organization and the defined approval and decision making processes in place.
At a minimum, you should plan to hold a meeting with your stakeholders and approvers to review the strategy, timeline, and plan and get their input, resourcing commitment, and approval as needed. For this, create presentation slides that outline the general information from your project brief and project planning list and then share both documents with the group following the meeting.
Here is a sample meeting invite and agenda:
Thank you for joining us to discuss [ABD Project]. The goal of this meeting is to get your feedback/approval on our project plans so we can continue moving forward. Below is the agenda of what we will plan to cover:
Project purpose
Strategy & alignment with objectives
Project goals and success criteria
Project resources
Core project team & responsibilities
Cross-functional requests & needs
Budget & tooling
Project timeline (high-level overview of project plan)
Duration
Milestones
Communication plan
Project kickoff
Async updates
Check-ins
Questions & Feedback
Hopefully you will be able to get the buy-in you need to move forward coming out of these discussions and conversations. If needed, continue following up, addressing concerns, and driving alignment to get the buy-in of those needed for your project’s success.
Kickoff project with collaborators
When you have the approvals and buy-in you need to fully execute on your project plan, you are ready to begin! Before moving fully into execution mode, hold a kickoff meeting with your core project collaborators to review roles and timelines and get their commitment to the action items and timeline they are responsible for. Hopefully at this point your collaborators are already aware of the project and their involvement, so this meeting can be more tactical and help build enthusiasm for the work ahead.
If you’ve completed each of the 4 steps above, you should be set up for project success and are ready to start working! Of course the success of your project relies on you doing the work as outlined in your plan, but there are also steps you can take during the execution of your project to help you stay on track and keep everyone in the loop.
Just like the planning steps, below are 4 general steps you should follow for any project and you can adjust according to the complexity of your project and the communication culture of your team.
How to execute your project plans and stay on track:
Now that your project is in motion, you want to keep it moving forward. Follow these 4 steps to keep the momentum going for your project as you execute on your plans.
Regular check in meetings with core collaborators
Hold regular check in meetings with your core project team. These could be daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly depending on the duration of your project and the volume of work being done each day. These meetings should include:
Quickly check in on each person’s responsibility areas (have each person participate and share)
Discussion of open questions, blockers, and concerns
Review of upcoming milestones
Coming out of the meeting, you should adjust the project planning list with any changes, capture and assign any new action items, and share notes about the discussion points.
Regular async updates and progress reports
Your core collaborators will be involved in the day-to-day execution and will be able to provide updates in your check-in meetings. It is also important to keep your stakeholders and approvers informed on progress and any changes to the plan. Wherever possible, try to provide these updates in asynchronous channels, ideally in your project planning tool.
The best way to do this is with weekly or bi-weekly status updates, and in these updates you should write a quick summary that includes:
Status of the project (on track, at risk, off track) and tl;dr summary
An overview of milestones or key action items completed since the last update (be sure to give recognition to collaborators who contributed)
A list of the next action items or milestones until the next update
Any blockers or areas where you need input from the group
Dynamic use of project planning list
Your regular progress updates and check-ins will keep everyone on the same page, and it will be much easier to facilitate these updates if you have an accurate, dynamic list of your action items and the status of each. Ideally, you would use the same project planning list you created at the beginning and have each collaborator update their items as they work on and complete them. If everyone updates this regularly, you will have a real-time source of truth that you can use to inform your updates and to get involved where needed in between your regular check-ins.
Unblock with approvers and resources as needed- get scrappy
The final component to driving success for your project execution is unblocking action items as issues arise. If collaborators need requests fulfilled, new items approved, or resources from other teams, you may need to help to unblock these needs so your team can keep moving the project forward.
Sometimes there may be needs that arise that can’t be fulfilled by other teams or won’t get the resources you originally hoped for. In these cases, you should try to be scrappy to find creative solutions that can move the work forward in the meantime while you wait for a more ideal solution in the future. Sometimes, finding scrappy solutions can be the difference between a hit project success and a project abandoned halfway through. So get creative and take a few risks!
You’ve learned the basic steps to creating a structured project plan and executing on it to completion, including:
Developing a project brief with an overview of your strategy and plans
Creating a detailed project planning list
Getting buy-in from key stakeholders and approvers
Kicking off the project with collaborators
Checking in regularly with collaborators
Providing regular async updates to stakeholders
Updating your project planning list as the source of truth
Unblocking the project as needed by getting scrappy
If you want help developing the resources noted or structuring your project planning list, get our project planning template here.
Happy planning!