I want to share some recent events from my personal life that have helped me better understand project management and planning. I enjoy how life lessons can be applied throughout my career (“enjoy” is not the term I used at the time the events below took place).
We recently moved to a beautiful new home and 5+ acres. We’ve been in the home just about one month. The house is around 10 years old. The previous owners built the house and took great pride in their results. From the first moment my wife and I saw the home, we fell in love. Eventually, we were able to agree to terms and purchased the home.
So next, we needed to coordinate a move. I approached the moving process as an opportunity to plan a project. A project has a defined beginning and an end. We knew our tentative start date, and while all our stuff is here, I’m not sure I would say this project has officially ended. For the planning process, I considered the following:
- Who is willing to volunteer?
- Should I rent a truck or can the contents be transported via pick-ups and trailers?
- How long will it take to move the contents from the old house to the new house?
- How should I “pay” volunteers? What’s in it for them?
- What about the weather? What if it rains?
I started to seek answers to these questions and formulated a mindmap and plan:
- Resources:
- 10 – 15 willing volunteers.
- ~6 pick-ups and three flatbed trailers.
- Timeline: Considering the resources available, moving majority of contents (the big stuff) should take 3 – 4 hours.
- Payment: Food and beverages.
- Contingencies: None really. Constantly watching the weather forecast for the entire week leading up to the move.
- Other points:
- Prepare contents at the old house and organize ahead of the move date.Â
- Move contents room by room and put in place at the new house.
- Manage the process at the old house and the new house; act as a foreman.
For the most part, the plan I developed was executed as I had hoped with a couple of exceptions:
- Not all resources were available at the same time.
- No rain but it was damn hot!
- 75% of the contents were boxed and organized at the old house.
- Some of the remaining 25% required the attention of my wife (one of the project managers).
- With the rest, the project resources took initiative and packed and moved the contents. This was not supervised or known by either project manager. (I still do not know where some stuff is at the new house).
Could things have gone more smoothly? Probably not. The project was short in duration and did not require mid-stream contingency planning. I’m not one to doubt the need for thorough planning and think this process can be applied to life projects and professional projects. This experience and my preparation only reinforced the following:
- Planning does not yield results until execution. Execution of a project, though, is as good as the planning efforts. To borrow the cliche, “fail to plan and plan to fail”.
- It is impossible to plan for everything. But enough time and effort should go into the process to ensure the best possible results.
- Sometimes things go wrong or not as planned due to lack of oversight.
- Project resources are often willing to go above and beyond their assignments. Channel this energy and the project efforts can be strengthened dramatically.
