Pebblepup's Writing Den

Once you have set deadlines. Or you have created your list of things that you need to do to complete your project, you can prioritize them. This is the first step in project management.

You need to know what your deadlines are and what you need to have done when. That’s where your planning can help you. If you did your planning right, you can work on the steps you need to to get the work done.

Depending on the complexity of your project, it’s easy to manage your project. You need to keep an eye on your deadlines, if you’ve set any. You don’t need to have deadlines, but they can be useful.

Do the items with the nearest deadlines before tackling any others. These are the things that usually need to be complete before you can do the next ones anyway. If you’ve set up a checklist, which is a helpful tool, check off each item as you complete them.

If you aren’t using deadlines, put the steps on the checklist in the order you need to do them. Then check them off as you complete them.

Project management takes focus. As long as you have focus, you can manage any project. The best tools are deadlines and checklists.
What you can do, is create checklists. You can do this in two ways. The first way is to have a single checklist with items and sub-items. Or you can have many lists, one main list, with other lists of supporting tasks for each step of the main list.

This is best when you have broken your project down into steps. That’s the basis of the checklist.
If you choose to use the checklist method, be sure to keep the lists together and in order. The main checklist is your top level control. In the simplest of terms, it’s a list of deliverables.

Deliverables are the things you need to have done before you can move on to the next step. This is how you do project management.

You divide the main project into smaller pieces. Take those smaller pieces and divide them in turn. This is what you need to do. This will help you to achieve your ultimate goal. This lets you know where you are in the process and what you need to do next.

That knowledge is the key to the process. Make sure you know how to set priorities as well. What do you have to do before you can do what you need to do next.

So all you need to do is set up your project checklists. Then mark off what you have completed. That’s the easiest way to manage your project. If you do this for each project, you have in play, you can keep them straight and do what you need to do. Good luck, and keep writing.