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Chapter 1
Establishing Project Management Fundamentals
schedule time to perform these functions, they may not happen. And talking to your team members
should rank high on your priority list. Keep these tips in mind when managing your time:
Schedule time on your calendar every day to talk to team members so your calendar shows
that time as “busy.”
Schedule time to update project documentation. Again, block out 30 minutes or whatever
time it will take so that no one else schedules you for a meeting during that time.
Don’t forget to add travel time before and after offsite appointments.
Set project status meetings, change control meetings, stakeholder updates, and so on as
recurring appointments.
Review your calendar and task list first thing every morning and again before you leave
the office. At the end of the day, determine what tasks need carried over to the next day
and review upcoming appointments. You’ll wish you had remembered this one the first
time you show up to work and realize you have an important stakeholder meeting on the
schedule but you wore your grubby clothes that day.
Handle every piece of information you see (email, regular mail, voicemail, memos, and so
on) preferably only once but as few times as possible. Read it, answer it, file it, or delete
it as soon as you’re finished.
If you find yourself always feeling rushed or find that your day manages you rather than
you managing your day, you should invest in a time management course that can offer more
information than we have the space for here.
Tips for Managing Information
Managing time and managing information have a lot in common. In fact, if you’re effective
at managing information, you’ll save time. How many times have you found yourself won-
dering where you put an email or stashed a file on your hard drive? Thank goodness for
search engines—but there is a better way. Developing an effective filing system and sticking
with it will cut down on the number of times you’ll need to call upon a search engine. Keep
in mind there’s no right way to do this. We’ll offer you a few suggestions, but you should use
what works best for you. Feel free to modify these ideas to fit your style.
Often project managers manage more than one project at a time. Therefore, it makes sense
to create folders for each project. For example, suppose you have a project titled Web Redesign
and one titled Retail Feasibility Study. Create an electronic folder for each project. Then within
each folder, you might consider subfolders with names that describe the types of information
they hold, such as, for example, project status reports, budget, vendor list, project schedule,
stakeholder communication, and so on. If your project will extend over several months, consider
creating another set of subfolders within each of these that are date based. For example, the
project status folder would have subfolders called Jan 2008, Feb 2008, and so on.
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