There are three things that every project manager should always have readily at hand.
• A 30 second Elevator Pitch
• A Summary Gantt Chart
• A Current Issues List
The 30 Second Elevator Pitch will provide a high level executive summary of what the project is and why it is important to the organization. When you live and breathe the project day in and day out, those things are intuitively obvious. But as you move up the organizational structure of the company, the number of projects and other initiatives grows exponentially. It is not uncommon for a vice president to have several hundred different things executing under their span of control not to mention additional things happening outside that span. So the idea is that a project manager should always be prepared to set the context of what their project is and what value it will deliver to the organization. And you should be able to do that in the span of an elevator ride. Try it. Practice it out loud some time. Every one of us knows it. But it can be harder than you think to actually get coherent words out of your mouth.
The Gantt chart will help explain how the project is progressing and where it is going. It should show the major phases of the project, high level activities, and all major milestones. It should not get down to the individual task level. If you get too detailed you will lose whatever audience you have in the weeds. This needs to be a one page chart with a visual timeline, not just a spreadsheet of tasks and dates. I truly appreciate how finance people can look at an enormous spreadsheet and see the implication of the data inherently. I, like many others, cannot and need a chart to visualize the information to make it digestible. I also like to include a one line budget summary. While not technically part of a Gantt chart, I have found it useful.
The Current issues List will provide a summary of obstacles, and who is working them. You never know where you will run into an intersection between other people, meetings, and activities and a potential resolution or cross-over of common issues. The ability to quickly summarize all of the issues that you have and who is working them has been very useful. In my experience, it has even prevented a team member from being reassigned to another project because she was working on a vital issue to a major project. Just that simple list is great. If you want to go the extra mile and have every issue rated for impact and severity, so much the better. But I often find project managers lacking the simple list. Issues are identified in meeting minutes, but they are not routinely tracked systematically. It is helpful to manage expectations of delivery as well. You might get help in a surprising place by having this quickly at hand.
Ready access to these three simple tools, can make the difference in people’s opinion of you as a project manager. Are you a seat of the pants fly jockey? Or are you organized and in control? Perceptions are reality whether they are true or not. These are a few very simple ways of influencing that perception in a positive manner. But it is up to you to actually do it.
