Plan is everything, and plan is nothing - Eisenhower

As we all know, it's always better to underpromise and overdeliver. Here are some practical tips to help:

1. Learn to break things down – this is the key to getting from ‘vision’ to ‘focus’.

2. In essence, project planning is about Who does What by When.

3. The project takes as long as it takes to perform the longest task on the project. It's usually complexity or dependency that makes something take longer.

• It could be handled by creating dependency maps for such tasks and front-loading them

• Make sure the project is padded with buffers for unknowns.

4.Do less simultaneously and deliver incrementally

• Swarm around few workstreams and complete them rather than having team members each working on separate streams

• The goal should be to deliver something at the end of every sprint.

5.Stick to the fundamentals, deliver on commitments

6.Communicate early and often

• Proactively communicate slips, there is usually a good reason for the slip and it can be fixed by changing scope/timeline or adding more people.

• Be aware that not only external dependencies but internal dependencies may also require tracking; so make sure we communicate effectively between the BE, FE, Product, and Design.

7.Parkinson’s law states that a task will expand to fill the time available for completion.

• Possibly alleviated through timeboxing efforts

8.Strive to get all your gears in sync

• Partner with Triad on task assignment, task prioritization, tech-debt management, and managing risks.

• Identify key tradeoffs in decision making by understanding how projects are related to business priorities

9.Help decide when to stop a project; the last 10%-20% takes the most time.

10.Communicate successes 🎉