This post is about how my plans a, b, c, d failed miserably, and what I ve learned about project management.
The last few days I was preparing for a project that was to be delivered today at 9 am.
I worked a lot, tirelessly. I checked everything, even with a colleague - to make sure that everything was fine and ready on time.
Time passed, everything was checked and we were ready to go.
Ready, except of one thing that was not my responsibility.
So, I sent a message to the person responsible (since I had no access to that specific thing) and then I shut down my laptop. Then, at night, I fell asleep on the couch.
And this morning, I woke up at 6. I checked the thing and it was not ready.
I started panicking and thought of every possible way to rectify it before the deadline.
As I said, I had no access so I needed to find the person who had.
I tried contacting them in numerous ways (every way I could think of - through email, telephone, social media ...) The only thing I did not do, was sent a satellite over to knock on their door.
To make the story short(er), I failed miserably - but luckily I found the person shortly after the deadline. So no harm done in the end!
But I did get a valuable lesson.
If something depends on someone else, but the consequences are for the project overall - we need to follow up way way sooner than the deadline!
We need to make sure that we have the list of all the tasks to be done and tick the ones that are completed.
(This is for the not so complicated projects of course :))
For three hours this morning I was going crazy and had thought of all available solutions in order to overcome the drawback. But one thing is for sure, I have learned what not to do next time - and how to prevent such an issue from happening again!
Thanks for giving me courage and bringing me luck this morning
Let me know if you have any project management tips to share below!
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