PaperCat

I recently underwent the hardest test of my career: the Project Management Institute’s Certified Associate in Project Management. Along the way, I found out that I truly have a passion for project management as a field. I also found that there are many ways to make use of the principles of project management methodologies in your daily life. If you have any project (and, as my manager says, truly: what isn’t a “project”?) I hope that this is useful to you.

First, the project management methods and systems all say that a project’s definition is any unique endeavor that has a defined start and end date. I have personally found that in the day-to-day, these endeavors may not all necessarily be unique but they do have a start and end, so deep cleaning my whole entire house can definitely be treated as a project. It is different from my weekly regular cleaning schedule, but it isn’t necessarily “unique.” The methods still apply if you can put a definite start and end to any of your endeavors.

To begin the project initiation path, we must have our defined goal and identified our stakeholders. A recent personal project of mine is a crochet sweater. Defined goal: make a lovely spring sweater. Who would the stakeholders be? Stakeholders are anyone who is interested in the project and its completion, or anyone who will be working on the project. Back to my crochet sweater, the stakeholders are me, myself, and I: I will be the one wearing the finished sweater, I am the one who wants the finished sweater and the one who initiated the project, and I am the one who will be constructing the sweater by hand. If you want to make your project initiation more “official” you can make your project charter (there are many online examples and templates) and enlist the help of a few more stakeholders. These can be people who will be helping you in your endeavor (such as family deep cleaning the house with you) or someone you want to be held accountable to. Once you have other people involved, I highly recommend creating the project charter so that the goals and stakeholders are on a piece of paper. This just helps to keep the project clear because if it’s just in your head, it won’t remain clear.

Once the project is initiated, it’s time to begin the planning, budgeting, and scheduling phase. In the case of my crochet sweater, this mean listing all the resources that I will need to complete the work and allocating those resources on a schedule. Resources will include things like labor, time, supplies, and money for those supplies. For my sweater, I will utilize my skills to use a standard size crochet hook to turn two skeins of synthetic yarn into a pattern that I found free on the internet. I know that I am a slow crocheter, I work full time, and I have a family with a child, so my time devoted to the project will be very limited. You don’t necessarily have to create an official schedule for a personal project unless you really would like to see it through to completion. In true project management methods, do not use a hard date for when you think the project will be done. Estimate the amount of time it should take based on the resources that you have and create the schedule that way. If needed, you can adjust your schedule as you go, but keep your stakeholders informed if you do! In the case of the crochet sweater, it would take me approximately a year to complete the project.

Now that you have your project goal and plan, it’s time to begin the work! This is the execution phase. It’s when things start to come together (perhaps fall apart a little bit, then come together again) and you begin to see the project come into being. Communication is the name of the game if your project involves a project team and stakeholders. For example, if you are deep cleaning, everyone should have an assignment already established during the planning phase. As tasks are completed in the deep cleaning project, ensure that your team has all the resources and supplies they need, check in with them on status updates, and check in with anyone who is awaiting progress updates as the project is completed.

After the execution phase, it is the closing phase. This is when the deliverables or the results of your project are handed off to the proper parties and any lessons learned from the process of the project are documented. In the example of the sweater, this means that I have my new, handmade sweater to wear, and I should take notes about what went well and what did not go well with my project, whether it was with the planning or the execution. In the example of the deep cleaning the house, the deliverable is the nice, shiny, clean house delivered to the family that resides there. If you worked with others, a good way to exercise the closing phase is to ask them how they think the project went and what, if anything, they would do differently. You can do this with an electronic form after completion or over a pizza dinner after completing the work. Take notes of what everyone says if you don’t use a form.

Now, there are many different methodologies for project management. This outline above loosely follows the Waterfall approach with a little bit of an agile idea. Most home projects and simple projects can easily follow a Waterfall approach. There are many more methods that are outlined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge as well as in courses on Coursera and LinkedIn Learning. The outline that I have provided definitely does not encompass all the ways someone could use project management in their daily, personal life.

If you have familiarity with project management, how would you utilize the ideas and methods in your everyday life? If you aren’t familiar with project management, what do you think you could use in your life from the methodology?