Chapter 3. Management: you have to manage your life.
Prologue
When the work on analysis and planning is done, the implementation of the planned begins. We received a huge amount of information that helped us determine our approaches and choose a rational path. Let me remind you that we are moving in a fog, so we must always be ready for changes. Our approaches and tasks are not static. They may vary depending on the introductory ones on the opening sections of the path. Thus, from the plan we get a lot of scenarios for the development of events. With new introductions, connections and tasks. It will not be possible to organize work with such a living structure only with the help of a fixed plan.
We need an implementation management system. By management system, I mean the configured process of monitoring and controlling information and tasks at different layers during the implementation of the plan. You can draw analogies with the dashboard of an airplane. It’s full of indicators and buttons. They help to monitor the situation, make decisions in advance and influence the control object “an airplane”. We also need such a dashboard. We need to see the pattern of tasks and priorities, measure progress, check the path map and the result, notice changes and risks in time, react and correct actions in time. In this chapter, we will create our own management system using services and processes. As before, I will show my system and tools, but once you understand the principles, you can use your own. Our task is to make an exoskeleton for the brain, which will help to control everything, not to forget anything and manage changes in our path.
Who is a manager of a project?
It is important to understand that you are the manager of your main project — your life. It, in turn, consists of subprojects, which we call goals. To implement any project, you need to manage and organize everything you need to achieve the goal. Do it efficiently and on time. Whatever you do, you are a project manager. Get a new job, move to a new apartment, organize a picnic — all these are projects with a different set of tasks. Even going to the store is a project. It’s just that it’s so small that you don’t perceive it as a project in everyday life.
“A person’s life is a set of projects in which a person plays project roles”
Anatoly Levenchuk
I will not dwell on approaches to project management. During the existence of project management, many approaches have been created, but for their use it is important to understand what project thinking is, who is a manager, what is a project, and what stages are in it. Then you will easily understand any approach and be able to use it.
The project manager ensures that the project goal is achieved in any situation. He sets the vector of movement, the pace of work, monitors deviations, corrects the direction, analyzes the situation, makes decisions, organizes everyone, directs execution and much more. The task of a project manager is to manage deadlines, quality, resources, content, processes and risks. A lot of people may be involved in the project, but all responsibility is on the manager. A manager cannot explain a bad result by blaming others or complaining about poor conditions. He is responsible for his decisions, victories and failures.
“Managing yourself responsibly means choosing and then learning from the consequences of your choice”
Carl Rogers
A project is a set of actions and processes, interrelated and time — limited, aimed at achieving results. Each project is divided into stages to make them easier to manage. The stages are divided into tasks, and the tasks are divided into specific cases. To achieve results effectively, it is important to learn how to think in projects. You should see any goal as a project. With this approach, automatically any goal becomes not a mythical image of the future, but a set of specific tasks. By doing the right things at a certain time, you will do them and get the result. The main thing is to ensure their management, so that there is less stress and enthusiasm remains.
In short, any project consists of preparation, planning, execution and completion.
1. Preparation.
At the beginning of the project, you answer the questions: why do you need to launch this project? What problem does the project solve, or what goal does it move you to? What should be the result of the project? What tasks will be in the project? What resources will be needed, and what needs to be prepared for the start of the project?
2. Planning.
Determine the best or optimal set of actions to achieve the project goal. Form a project plan with a sequential or parallel chain of tasks that will lead you to the goal. Restrictions, deadlines and risks are taken into account.
3. Execution.
Ensure the implementation of the project by organizing processes and participating persons. Distribute responsibilities and responsibilities, provide a system of control and monitoring of the project. In what condition and at what stage is the project? How many resources are left? How fast are you moving towards the goal, how many tasks are left and are you on time?
4. Completion.
Organize the process of completing all work on the project. You fix the result of the project, evaluate the success, conduct reflection, save the artifacts and processes obtained for further use.
These stages can be found more often in the description of the classical project approach. They are very common and exist in any project. Different approaches of project management have their own processes, tools and approaches within the stages. Each has its pros and cons, so different approaches are used for different types of projects. “Go to the store” is a very small project. “Change job” is already a bigger project. “Buy an apartment” is a project that contains more subprojects inside, for example, “change job”. So, we’re moving from the smallest projects to the largest. And in each project, you are the manager who organizes the achievement of the result. In small projects, you do a lot automatically, so it’s hard to think in terms of projects every time you go to the store to get potatoes. In bigger projects it is already easier.
Our life is a huge project with many large subprojects. The cycle of system life consists of analysis, planning, management, optimization, reflection and training. This is my set of project stages to lead a huge project and all the subprojects inside. The purpose of this book is to show you an approach and thinking that can be used at all levels of life. From the smallest projects to managing the whole life. Life is a complex project, where there is a lot of uncertainty. You have to be a very skilled manager to succeed. At the beginning I wrote that uncertainty should be accepted. I hope you have already made sure that there is no other way, and accepted it. Now I want to tell you about the tools and methods that help to work with uncertainty.
In any project, as in life, there is a lot of uncertainty. To reduce it in project management, managers use classical and flexible methodologies. The most famous classical methodology is Waterfall. It is also called cascading, since the work is built as water falls in a waterfall. Sequentially, from step to step. This approach is very simple and consistent. Each next stage follows the previous one. If the first stage has stretched over time, then the other stage is shifted.
Waterfall is suitable for simple projects. Many people still use it to develop websites. When I worked for a website development company, I also used it. Then I was just studying, and this method was clear and logical to me. Everything seemed easy: we break the project into stages, we do them one by one, and that’s it. But all projects have a client. Therefore, in life everything happened like this. We want to make a website. We collect requirements from the client and users, understand the task, evaluate, sign a contract, and start making a website. We do it, show it to the client, and he says that everything is wrong.
Then we begin to coordinate everything with him at each stage, he makes remarks, the stages take more time, the deadlines are shifted. As a result, we got out of the budget and are finishing the client’s website using our own money. Then we thought that we would invest more in the cost in order to reduce the amount of these edits and shifts in deadlines. This decision led to the fact that the cost was too high, and few people were willing to buy it. There were also clients who, in the middle of the project, asked to make new functionality, which we did not immediately evaluate.
Then we had to reevaluate everything and rebuild on the go. It is painful, inconvenient and ineffective. These are just a small part of the examples that have been in my practice. And just the examples of sites of medium complexity. Imagine what happens in large digital services and products. They take so long to be made that during this time they may become unnecessary or obsolete. While they are being made, VUCA world is changing, and there are changes that no one thought about. Like our life, product development takes place in uncertainty. In the same fog, when you need to take a few steps to see what’s next. Recently, other people have been running blindly in the same fog, and also cars are driving that can hit you at any moment.
In order to create products and implement projects in conditions of uncertainty, flexible methodologies were invented. Their main feature is iterativity. When we move in small steps, we look at the result at each stage and are ready to change course. We are ready to adapt on the go and get value at every stage. It is this property of flexible methodologies that every person needs to adopt in order to live in the VUCA world. If you write “agile methodologies” in the search, you will definitely see the words Agile, Scrum, Kanban or Lean. There are many variations on what it is on the Internet. Agile is called a philosophy, a methodology, a set of rules, and so on. We will not go into this. Let’s agree that Wikipedia is right:
Agile is a generalizing term for a range of approaches and practices based on the values of the Agile Software Development Manifesto and the 12 principles underlying it.
In 2001, smart people gathered together and wrote an Agile Manifesto with principles that were an alternative to the classic Waterfall. You can easily find the Agile Manifesto in Russian as well. It doesn’t really have rules, so I agree that it’s more like a philosophy or a set of values.
The main ideas of the Agile Manifesto:
1. People and interaction are more important than processes and tools;
2. A working product is more important than comprehensive documentation;
3. Cooperation with the customer is more important than agreeing on the terms of the contract;
4. Willingness to change is more important than following the original plan.
All the points are applicable in life, but we are more interested in the last point. After all, we live in a world of rapid changes. Flexible methodologies for project implementation have been developed based on Agile values. Such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Prince2 and others. If you are going to work as a project manager, then you need to know and understand them. Moreover, it is more important to understand, since it does not happen that the project is conducted exclusively according to one methodology in its original form. Each company has its own mix of methodologies.
Usually, Waterfall is mixed with one of the agile methodologies. Therefore, you need to understand the principles of work in order to combine them correctly. For life, we don’t need to go much deeper, there are enough basic tools to learn how to move iteratively correctly. If you want to develop into a project manager, then I definitely recommend reading the book “Scrum. A revolutionary method of project management” by Jeff Sutherland. If you want to expand your horizons on the use of Agile in life, then read “Just space. A workshop on Agile-a life filled with meaning and energy” by Katerina Lengold. Katerina is very accessible and clearly bring to people the idea of how to apply Agile in life. She is very cool and I highly recommend the content she creates.
