– Make a list of stuff that needs to get done.
– Use that list to make a shorter list of what you can act on today that will get something done, or get the information needed to get it done, or get the information or resources to someone else needed to get something done.
– Give those tasks to everyone that you possibly can and ask when they would like you to check back to see if it’s done. (their estimate).
– Find someone to do the tasks no one else can.
– As you get things done, cross them off your list.
– Tomorrow morning repeat the process.
In essence, project management boils down to breaking an elephant down into little bite-sized pieces, and tracking the progress of digestion every single day without fail.
There are a few ways of making lists (simple, column/state, and timeline, and timeline with dependencies)
You can work with fixed or variable pools of people.
You can work with fixed or variable amounts of money.
You can work with fixed or variable amounts of time,
But in the end, that’s the job.
What’s changed over the years is that we don’t do everything by paper. And more and more of our economy has become project and task driven – and less and less of it driven by repeatable processes.
This trend will continue. Which is one of the reasons the lower end of the spectrum is going to be forced out of the working pool permanently.
Because we are all paid by the rate at which we learn and adapt to increasingly complex information, in increasingly large volumes, in increasingly shorter time periods, with increasingly abstract formulas and rules, and increasingly complex tools to assist us.