How to Plan a Very Urgent Project?

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the key information that must be produced by the project manager when receives a very urgent project and need understand the purpose, scope, budget, schedule and constraints of the project in a very short period. He explains that making a quick planning and not very detailed is not ideal and can not be a normal situation in the company.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes GAM podcast today. I like to discuss with you at Podcast suggestion that I received talking about how to plan a project in an urgency environment. So I have a project that I need to start as acute. We need tomorrow. I don't have enough time to do the full plan and the full analysis for sure. This is not the EDL path for project planning.

So this is not the best conditions. Sometimes if we have, instead of one day or two days, if we have maybe two weeks, we can produce a much better plan with a much lower risk, with a much more close approach to the reality. But this is not the case most of the times. So what could I suggest you to do if you do not have time, if you need to do all the Project Plan in only one day, first thing prepare the project charter and the scope statement together.

So instead of having two documents want for approval, and when the tail in the scope, let's produce only one in one page document, because we don't have too much time. And what I need to answer in this document first objective, what is the target clear target for doing this afford? Second? Why or why I'm doing this? Project what's the reason of this project to add one timeline. The base timeline I do not want to take is all you have 12 points, 35 days.

I know this is pointless. Approximately how much time do I have? How much money do I have? And we are done. We turned the restrictions that I have, the limits that I have, and this must fit in one page. And you can do this by hand. You can do this drawing, reading the book that I'm really enjoying called the back of the napkin from dumb Rome. It's unmapped my Amazon breathing list.

And this is how to show things to someone else using drawing. These is drawing. So draw, prepare mind-map but don't waste your time. This must be sharp, clear, concise, one page document done. Second document, the WBS, the work breakdown structure. I sat this many, many times. Any other podcasts eat. If you do not have time and need to do that, the only one, and you need to choose from the one document to produce this document is called WB S much more important than the scallop.

Much more important than the budget, because if you do not know what you must do, it's pointless to think about how much it will cost because you don't know what you need to do. So prepare the WBS, maybe three, four levels that will be S use a post it notes, or maybe use the basic software tool. Don't waste short time preparing extremely big. Why I'm telling you that because we are in a different environment.

We are in a hurry. We do not have time to plan properly, but at least we need to do something sharp, crispy to start tomorrow. So at Disney moment is pointless. Think deeply. I think in a broad perspective, after that prepare a schedule in how you can prepare a schedule without losing too much time clink in the WBS packaged is the work packages as a cluster, as a cluster, take five, six, seven work packages and put them together in a big group and put all in this big groups.

So instead of having 1000 tasks in our Microsoft project file know, please take five or take 10 in the boot, the most important milestone only to give you an idea of time, Dan prepare your risk list. And you can do that. If you listen past podcasts and talk about the sleep of crowd proffered, slip, and fall, also the NGT, the nominal group technique. So do basic data collection process and create maybe 10, 15, 20 different risks and try to put action plans in place to protect your Project against this stress.

So this for documents, basic pros, a charter plus a scope statement, one document work breakdown, structure, second BS, BS based scandal next, and the risk, the risk register with that, you will have at least the minimum information to move forward and to wrap up this it's really important that this cannot become a habit.

This can not say, Oh, he, God is telling us to do, Oh, we don't need to do any more of a detailed WBS know if this is wrong or I'm only answering a Podcast suggestion talk. And I do not have time. This has not a syndrome of urgency. I'm talking in a real case. I do not have time. So I have two options. Do nothing, or do the minimum if I need to do the minimum, which is the minimum, this for documents.

So this is basically why not like to share with you In this podcast. I hope you enjoy at this podcast and to see you next week with another five minutes PM podcast, bye-bye.

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