Don’t be afraid of project management! It has a reputation for over-complicated methods requiring specialist training, software, and certification. That comes from its origin in engineering. We can use much simpler but still effective versions of its basic techniques in our digital projects, without being overwhelmed by charts, metrics, schedules etc. All that we want to know is: what needs to happen, when, using which resources and techniques? We need a simple way to work this out, to identify tasks and schedule them. And we need a simple way to keep track of their execution. Spending some time recording this information, analysing it, critically evaluating our assumptions, and then reviewing their impact later, saves a lot of time, money, and stress. If we are working in a team, then doing this collaboratively using online tools is essential. We can more easily keep track of progress, and be certain that everyone is working together as required to achieve our goals.
The simplest and most effective method for this is called Kanban. We will explore software tools for this in a later article. Some of the common options are: Trello, Padlet, and Microsoft Tasks (built into Teams). But you can also use mind mapping tools like MindomoA sophisticated browser-based application for rapidly recording information and ideas (text, links, images, audio, video, files etc.) and organising it into either a spider-diagram layout with a central topic (mind map) or an interconnected web of topics (concept map). Large amounts of information m... More and Mindmanager, which are especially good for projects that can be divided up into multiple sub-projects. Here is a video illustrating the technique in Trello.
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