Your Project as a Road Trip
It may seem redundant, or silly to think about, but a large part of having a successful project is giving yourself a roadmap from the start. Without a clearly defined set of goals, a path to achieve those goals, and openly delineated responsibilities, a project can easily spin out into an unorganized, inefficient mess. While even some of the best projects evolve into something that was not their originally intended goal, this doesn’t mean that they too didn’t begin with a well-organized plan. Below are some steps that can aid in the process of managing your project, keeping it on schedule, and keeping you motivated throughout the process.
Decide Where You’re Going
Though it may seem obvious, starting a project without a goal can lead to a long and winding road to nowhere. Though you may have put hours and hours of work into something, a finished product won’t come to fruition without first deciding and envisioning what you’d like the culmination of all this hard work to look like.
Know Your Role
Are you the driver, the person in the front seat playing DJ, or someone lounging in the backseat just asking when you’ll be able to get to the next rest stop to go to the bathroom? Although it could be an uncomfortable (but it definitely doesn’t have to be) conversation, you and your partner(s) should divide the responsibilities and determine where each of the group members’ focus should be. During this time, a de facto group leader usually emerges, though this doesn’t necessarily need to be the case. Instead of having a leader, you and your partners could have equal decision-making power, and take turns deciding what’s next — just as long as someone makes a decision.
Remember Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
Some days you’ll feel like you’ve accomplished massive amounts of work and that you’ve made a hug dent in your project. And those days are great. However, there will be some days that you’ll be discussing logistics, for instance deciding which API you’ll use, or figuring out how to get and use the token for that API. While these days might feel like you haven’t accomplished as much work as you would’ve liked to, you have accomplished a lot. These days are important, still take a lot of hard work, and most of all, are necessary. If you’re building a CLI application and are using data accessed from an API, the entire project depends on your successful communication with the API.
Remember All Roads Lead to Rome
Back to our CLI application example, if the API isn’t accessed correctly from the start, this will lead to a number of headaches later on, and ultimately will result in having to go back to the start and doing that work over again. Part of why the “laying-the-groundwork” days are so important is because without executing these steps properly, the rest of the project will have bugs throughout. Any misstep in the groundwork will come back to haunt you at later points in your project.
Keep Yourself on a Schedule
A schedule or calendar with a list of goals with an aim of having them accomplished by a certain time can not only help keep the project on track, but also helps to keep the group motivated. Especially with larger projects, it can feel as though you’re toiling away at something to no avail. However, with a checklist of goals each day, even the simple action of crossing these items off a list can make you feel as though you’re making good progress, as well as can keep the project on track as far as due dates.
Accept the Struggle, Trust the Process
In any project, you can assume there will be some level of confusion, miscommunication, struggling, frustration and hitting a few roadblocks. To think otherwise would just be foolish. The good news, however, is that these roadblocks often lead to better levels of understanding and give you more tools for the next group project. Instead of fighting them, expect them and accept them. Know that these issues will arise and use them to your future advantage. No matter what you’re struggling with, there will always be a solution. The trick is coming to this solution with your project partner(s) together, in a collaborative manner.
