This topic has been simmering in my mind for years now.  Everyone’s favorite thing to hate: planning.  I don’t have all the answers but I want to try to provide some guidance to someone specific.  Yes, you, the dude who recognizes the need for planning when nobody around does.  The dudette who is tired of having projects go awry Every. Single. Time.  Beers are great to celebrate a project victory, but a lot of you are using (abusing?) them throughout the project cycle to help numb the pain.  I get it; I’ve been there.

There are a lot of things that this post is not.  It is not a crash course in project management.  I don’t talk about cool buzzwords like agile or scrum.  I’m not going to talk about change management processes or anything like that.  It is simply a collection of my observations about the multitude of businesses I’ve worked in or with, and the multitude of projects I’ve seen succeed and fail.  But read on, I think you’ll still find it useful. Continue reading →